Interview with Twitter COO, Dick Costolo
Dick Costolo is the founder of Feedburner which was acquired by Google in 2007. He is currently the COO of Twitter. He has also performed in Chicago’s Annoyance Theater and various improv shows and festivals. (via CrunchBase)
TLB: What was so promising about Twitter back in 2007 that made you join 6 others and invest $5 million in it?
Dick: When I first saw Twitter back in 2008 was like many other people, I didn’t get it, I didn’t really understand it and what it was but when more people started using it and my friends got on I realized how many people using it. I remember specifically one time I tweeted that I landed in New York and someone in San Francisco said, “Hey I’m in New York for the week, lets go out to dinner.” This is something that would never happen on any other social networking platform.
TLB: How does Twitter generate revenue to keep on running?
Dick: So I think the short answer is there is many, many ways that Twitter can make money. Paid accounts for businesses, analytics, special profile pages, advertising opportunities with millions of people following them, everything.
TLB: Where do you see the company going in the future?
Dick: So there are a couple different ways to answer that question, our philosophy is all about getting as many people on the service as possible. As openly as possible. For example, the Microsoft and Google deals from earlier this week, you’ll be able to find great, cool tweets just from searching for something on Bing! or Google. We are looking to get Twitter distributed as many ways as possible
We see ourself participating in the mobile way as many ways as possible, the mobile phone is such an easy way to use Twitter. What am I’m doing now, while on the go, not while sitting at my desk.
TLB: Do you ever make fun of Biz Stone because of his name?
Dick: All the time, Biz and I both make fun of each other all the time. We sit next to each other and he tells me that we need to keep the cost down, because of my name (Costolo), when we go to Starbucks to get a coffee and he says his name is biz, I crack up.
TLB: What made you come back to Twitter to become the COO?
Dick: Well, I was planning on starting another company, Ev was getting ready to have a baby and we started talking, I really wanted to start another company. I thought about it realized that you don’t get a chance to work at one of the big social networking companies all the time. The more I thought about it and talked it over with my wife I decided that starting another big company was pretty low and Twitter’s one of those startups that succeed.
Jonah: Whats the new startup?
Dick: I left Google in July and was truly planning on spending the end of Summer and the Fall thinking about what I was going to do next and starting a new startup in the end of the year, so I really didn’t even get a chance to think about it too hard. I was too busy doing other stuff at Google. Needed to take some time off and clear my head.
Jonah: If Twitter was an animal, what animal would it be?
Dick: Oh my gosh, I was never really good at these kinds of question, probably a good analogy is lets say, I’ll use an example, its kind of like a herd of animals, Twitter is a popular web service and all these people together, like a herd. They’re all similar. They all use the web to tweet, tweet from Tweetie for iPhone, Tweetdeck, all around the same core platform. The goal for Twitter is to become a big successful herd, and not a group of smaller herds.
Jonah: Would you rather be still working at Google or as COO of Twitter? Why?
Dick: I loved working at Google. Your not going to find smarter people anywhere. It was an awesome place to work, but my skills are better for a startup like Twitter; putting operations in place, getting things moving where theres no organization, how to set up a working and successful company. I knew that I was going to still go to a startup, and Twitter is still a startup.
Jonah: What’s your favorite Twitter client?
Dick: I use a bunch of different stuff, search.twitter.com, twitter.com, TweetDeck, and my wife uses Tweetie for iPhone.
Thanks for the interview, Dick!
