21 May 2009 | Author: R. Falconer SEO Consultant

Twitter and Google - in their own words

As the buzz about Twitter and the future of the microblogging site are called into the spotlight on co-founder Biz Stone's blog, we thought it would be interesting to see how the drama has been playing out in the words of the main players themselves.

Twitter has come a long way since its launch. It seems inevitable that at some point there will be linkups with Google - although rumours that the search giant might be interested in buying Twitter seem unfounded following CEO Eric Schmidt's comments at Google's Zeitgeist conference. So, let's let quotes from the people involved tell the story in a format that seems undeniably apt. Quotes are not in chronological order.

"The idea of taking money to run traditional banner ads on Twitter.com has always been low on our list of interesting ways to generate revenue. However, facilitating connections between businesses and individuals in meaningful and relevant ways is compelling. We're going to leave the door open for exploration in this area." - Biz Stone, Twitter

"When we speak publicly about how Twitter might become a profitable business, we talk about the idea of commercial usage and then explain that we're still exploring what that means—that's true. We also say traditional web banner advertising isn't interesting to us which is also true. However, to say we are philosophically opposed to any and all advertising is incorrect." - Biz Stone, Twitter

"We always believed that we could have an advertising system that would add value not only to our bottom line but also to the quality of our search result pages. Rather than relying on distracting flashy ads, we developed relevant, clearly marked text-based ads above and to the right of our search results." - Sergey Brin, Google

"We want revenues to be product-based. Google built something that can really scale, and that's our intention as well." - Evan Williams, Twitter

"We had this big leap of faith and we said we're going to sell text ads. The business people looked at us like we were crazy founders. Which we were of course. And it turned out that it was a really good bet. It wasn't very obvious at the time. We were very lucky." - Larry Page, Google

"I think Goto "did" become Google as I think 99% of Google's revenues come from pay per click. Seriously, Google did an amazing job of building upon Goto's early success.
Seriously also, we're honored to have played a part in causing such a fundamental and profitable shift in the internet advertising space over the last 10 years." - Bill Gross, GoTo

"We will make money, and I can't say exactly how because...we can't predict how the businesses we're in will work." - Evan Williams, Twitter

"Pay per click was just the beginning. The real evolution is pay per action." - Bill Gross, Goto

"Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man's email systems. "In other words, they have aspects of an email system, but they don't have a full offering. To me, the question about companies like Twitter is: Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or do they fundamentally evolve to have storage, revocation, identity, and all the other aspects that traditional email systems have? Or do email systems themselves broaden what they do to take on some of that characteristic?" - Eric Schmidt, Google

"When people hear about Twitter, their immediate reaction is that it's the simplest and stupidest idea in the world. They do not want to know that their brother is eating a hot dog right now, but then they discover that their friends are on it. And so are the L.A. Fire Department, NASA and JetBlue. Then they get it." - Biz Stone, Twitter

"I think the innovation is great. In Google's case, we have a very successful instant messaging product, and that's what most people end up using." - Eric Schmidt, Google

"[Twitter is] The messaging system that we didn't know we needed until we had it." - Biz Stone, Twitter

"I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real time search. At first, my team laughed and did not believe me. Now they know they have to do it. Not everybody needs sub-second indexing but people are getting pretty excited about realtime." -Larry Page, Google

"I'm pretty sure they [Google] are [planning to compete], but we can't worry about that. Focus is a really big deal. Even Google stumbles on the focus issue. It's not as important as search and advertising. Innovator's dilemma works against bigger companies." - Evan Williams, Twitter

"People really want to do stuff in real-time and they [Twitter] have done a great job about it... We will do a good job of things now we have these examples," - Larry Page, Google

"We want to bring search in a lot more. Make it a lot more evident. It's sort of hiding out in its own little subdomain. We want to bring it to everyone's attention." - Biz Stone Twitter

"It's not tough for us because we have a lot of money in the bank and patient investors [and a] patient board. We want to focus on this before profit. If we focus on profit, then we take people away from focusing on features." - Biz Stone, Twitter

"There is a presumption that somehow you cannot have multiple solutions that co-exist "There is all sorts of stuff we can do. We do not have to buy everybody to work with them "The whole principle of the Web is, people can talk to each other." - Larry Page, Google

"Suddenly, it seems as though all the world's a-twitter." - Biz Stone, Twitter

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