CEOInterviews.AITwitter's Biz Stone stops by

I

Interviewer0:00

Good morning, good morning. How are you today? I'm tired. It's nighttime somewhere.

B

Biz Stone0:13

Your business is setting this world on fire right now. In the last hour, I don't know if you've heard, they've been talking about verification and followers and everything. It's caused a lot of controversy but also created a lot of good conversation.

I

Interviewer0:31

Yes, that's what we like. We like good conversation. It's all about it. It's not about technology, it's about people.

B

Biz Stone0:37

That's what it's fundamentally about.

I

Interviewer0:39

So what are you looking forward to talking to Howard about today?

B

Biz Stone0:42

That's a good question. I figured Howard will have all the smart questions and I'll just try to roll with it. I think he's a really smart guy, a really excellent interviewer. One of my favorite things to do is to just try to get into a good conversation and get great smart questions and just try to answer them the best I can. But that being said, I would love to talk about the importance of mobile phones around the world and how important that is for so many people. It's growing really fast. The number of mobile phones far outpaces the number of people who are on the internet itself. And just kind of the future plans for Twitter, what we're working on now, maybe a little bit about how we got started because we have a quirky, interesting history. It's a little more unusual than your basic startup stuff. There's actually a wide variety of stories that opened our eyes over the years and made us realize that Twitter wasn't just a fun little side project, it could actually be a potentially very important, world-changing service. But it took four years before it began to really fully realize, so it's been an interesting story to say the least.

I

Interviewer2:06

Yeah, I think so. I mean, for us anyways, I don't know if it has been for Howard or not, but we'll see. Cool. Well, Howard really believes in your creation, so I'm sure this will be interesting. Cool. How did Twitter get to be such a big deal and how did he come up with the idea?

B

Biz Stone2:23

Well, he didn't actually. I'll talk to Biz Stone into the whole thing. Biz Stone is one of the owners of Twitter. There are three of them.

I

Interviewer2:36

Nice to meet you, Biz. Young guy. All these billionaire types are young guys. Billionaires. Good to see. Where did you... Are you like a Zuckerberg? Did you go to college and somehow develop the idea for Twitter and all that? How did you get involved with Twitter? Because you didn't invent Twitter, did you, Biz?

B

Biz Stone2:53

I did, together with my two co-founders, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams.

I

Interviewer2:58

My understanding of Twitter is that Evan was the creator and you two guys came in later. No?

B

Biz Stone3:05

Okay, so give me the background. So Evan and I worked together at Google. Evan Williams and I were both for now 11 years been working on developing large-scale systems that allow people to express themselves and communicate. We started with blogging platforms. We both ended up at Google. We were working on Blogger at Google.

I

Interviewer3:23

Have you heard of Blogger?

B

Biz Stone3:25

I haven't heard of it, but I understand what you're saying. In other words, you're a hired hand to sit there and write programming?

I

Interviewer3:29

Not more design product than you know, upgrade features and stuff like that.

B

Biz Stone3:35

And how did you know so much about computers? Because you're a young guy. How old are you?

I

Interviewer3:41

I'm 37.

B

Biz Stone3:43

How did you know? Were you one of these kids who was way into computers from an early age?

I

Interviewer3:47

Not really. I was into Apple Macintosh early on, but I ended up becoming an artist. I got a job as a graphic designer. Then I wanted to open my own studio, so I figured I should teach myself web design. As I got into web design, some friends said, 'Hey, let's start a web company in 1999.' So we started our first kind of social networking, web logging company in '99 and then ended up at Google.

B

Biz Stone4:13

Were you one of those guys who was insecure about how to make a living? Because there's so many guys out there making blogs and web designing, you can get lost in that sauce. The idea that you're going to be super successful is probably not even on your horizon.

I

Interviewer4:24

No. When I got started, there weren't blogs yet. So Evan and I are both kind of progenitors of this blogging phenomenon. We got it started and then we worked together.

B

Biz Stone4:34

Was your genius that you were able to make it easy for people to blog? That was the thing?

I

Interviewer4:38

Yeah, it was super easy. Type in a box, hit a button, you had a web page.

B

Biz Stone4:44

You were thinking like that was an explosion of content for anyone who wanted to publish to the web. What happens when you have an explosion of content like that? Does that put you on the Google map?

I

Interviewer4:54

Basically, yes. I noticed that now I'm an Apple guy, that they make things very easy. You said you were an Apple guy. You said, 'Let me make this easy for people to be able to go on the internet and write to their hearts' content, and listen and read what their friends are saying and react to one another.' It becomes like a feedback loop. It becomes very engaging. You really want to get on there and see what people are saying about you and express your own opinions. So you and Evan are working at Google. You turn to one day and say, 'What let's do?'

B

Biz Stone5:21

We were driving home from work and we had this weird idea that we could maybe democratize audio because iPods were getting popular. We thought we figured out a way that people could record into their web browser or their phone and that would be sent out to iPods. We thought this is really cool. We could just democratize audio like a podcast, but so easy. It was podcasting and the company was called Odeo, a podcasting company. Super easy to do. We started building this. We quit Google.

I

Interviewer5:48

Did people in your family say you're nuts? You got a great job with Google.

B

Biz Stone5:51

Absolutely. Everyone was worried. It was a huge mistake. Even myself for the first year. I was taking out my calculator and saying, 'Oh my God, if I had stayed,' look to my wife, 'Look at this.' And she was like, 'You have to stop doing it.'

I

Interviewer6:04

Stock bonuses? Are you referring to that? Because Google... Well, because I left after two years, so you had two more years to vest. So I left all the stock on the table.

B

Biz Stone6:13

Were you a big player at Google?

I

Interviewer6:15

No, I was just a regular guy. Regular working guy.

B

Biz Stone6:18

All right. So when you leave, everyone thinks you're nuts. But you're smart in a way. We learn from you because if you're going to make your move, make it young. Say, 'Hey, now I don't have that much to lose.' You were married, you didn't have any kids. It was that kind of situation.

I

Interviewer6:29

I went out to California to take a risk. I was at Google for two years. They IPO'd. I suddenly found myself very comfortable. I thought, 'This isn't risky.' So Evan and I quit Google. We started this audio company.

B

Biz Stone6:40

Problem with the Odeo company was, although it was a good idea and we had raised money, raised venture capital to build it, we were not using the product. We were not emotionally invested in that product. If you're going to do a startup and you're going to take that risk, you absolutely have to be emotionally invested.

I

Interviewer6:58

You're right. People say to me, for a while I was looking at a movie to direct, believe it or not. I was going to look for a project. It has to be a movie I'm passionate about. It's got to be a genre that I enjoy myself. You can't go out and say, 'I'm going to make a movie for people who like this kind of movie.' So you invented this thing that essentially you don't even want to use.

B

Biz Stone7:17

Right. So we were doing this and then we realized, 'You know what, this is not good because we're not even interested in this.'

I

Interviewer7:22

Did you have any success with it? Did anyone sign up for this audio?

B

Biz Stone7:25

It wasn't a complete dud. It wasn't lighting the world on fire, which we were used to with blogging and Blogger.

I

Interviewer7:31

How much money had you raised?

B

Biz Stone7:33

We raised about five million bucks because it takes money to put up that infrastructure.

I

Interviewer7:38

That's the thing. With these companies, it's difficult because you've got to offer it free at first so people kind of like the Facebook and all that. You've got to offer it free so people start using it. Leap of faith. And you've got to start building. And it wasn't lighting the world on fire. We weren't thrilled by it. Now what had happened was, during this time, my other co-founder Jack Dorsey and I had become close collaborators and friends. We were starting to talk about what else could we do, maybe besides this, that would be more fun. And Evan, who was our third co-founder, had this great idea where he said, 'You know what, you guys seem to be getting along really well. Why don't you just take a break, take two weeks, and build something just totally different, just something fun.'

B

Biz Stone8:16

When someone says that to you, you can build it because you know how to program. You know how to write the script.

I

Interviewer8:21

Yeah. So Jack and I went, we built the prototype, and we took two weeks. We built a working early model of Twitter and we showed the rest of the team and we said, 'What do you guys think?' And people were pretty much underwhelmed.

B

Biz Stone8:35

But the original idea was 142 characters?

I

Interviewer8:40

The original idea was this: what could we build on top of this newly in the U.S., anyways, newly popular emerging mobile texting, SMS? We said, 'This is something that is big in Europe. It's built into every single mobile phone on the planet, of which there are over five billion registered mobile phones. There's only two billion people on the internet. What if we build a system on top of SMS?' And the SMS international limit is 160 characters. That's why we have a 140 character limit for the name plus the...

B

Biz Stone9:12

I was always wondering why you picked that amount.

I

Interviewer9:15

Yeah, that makes sense. The idea was read it and write it in its entirety on any mobile phone on the planet or the web. You never have to continue to go somewhere else to read more.

B

Biz Stone9:24

It is nice because when I read it, I don't want to sit there and read a book. People just drone on. It forces you. It wouldn't work for me. Facebook doesn't work for me. I need that question whenever I go over the limit. It says, 'Hey, you have to be more creative and come up with a shorter...'

I

Interviewer9:41

That's right. You always find you can. I think that constraint inspires creativity. It forces people to be concise. In two sentences, what's your thought? Get it down to two sentences.

B

Biz Stone9:54

Were you intimidated by the success of Facebook? In the sense that you say, 'Gee, these guys are so successful.' Because Twitter's only been around what, five years?

I

Interviewer10:01

Yeah. We founded the company in 2007, so we're celebrating our fifth birthday from the day of the code being activated on the prototype. Twitter has not been around that long and yet it is part of our genes, almost our genetics at this point. Everybody's using it. Ronnie's using it.

B

Biz Stone10:18

Ronnie the limo driver is using it. So it's successful.

I

Interviewer10:23

So what you're saying is, if I was me, I'd say, 'I'm not going to develop this thing because Facebook after all is so popular. It can be compared. People can communicate.' Did everyone say to you, even your investors, 'I'm not putting money into this. You guys are crazy. You're never going to be big.'

B

Biz Stone10:38

No. You know, we started it in 2006 and Facebook at that point was still just for college kids. Our model was absolutely fundamentally different. It wasn't a social network. You follow those sources of information which you want. You didn't need to know someone to follow them. I didn't need to ask Howard Stern if he would be my friend. I would just follow Howard Stern.

I

Interviewer11:00

That's what I think I like about Twitter. That's what appeals to me. I can follow. I'm into these Apple computers. I follow people who write about Apple computers. I like that all of a sudden I get some information.

B

Biz Stone11:11

Yeah, it's become following your interests.

I

Interviewer11:15

Is the goal to beat Facebook and make them obsolete?

B

Biz Stone11:18

No, I think the goal is to be another one of these great internet companies. I think there's room for more than a few.

I

Interviewer11:25

Why make it so difficult? Why not integrate the picture posting theme? Why do you allow Twitpic to make a picture? Why not allow everyone to just post pictures and take over that function?

B

Biz Stone11:39

Well, we have started making it a lot easier. If you use the iPhone, there's a little camera icon right there. You just share it and it goes along with your tweet. We want to make that easier and easier.

I

Interviewer11:55

Why are you anti- when people retweet? Why don't you set it up so it says 'RT' and retweet? You seem to be against the retweet function.

B

Biz Stone12:05

No, we actually built a button called the retweet button.

I

Interviewer12:09

Yes, but that doesn't allow you to respond to the thing. Why not? That's a missing feature. People want to add a comment to why they retweet it. I retweeted this because I disagree with it, not because I like it. That's the main function that I use it for.

B

Biz Stone12:22

Yeah, so we need to see. The reason why a button is key is because if you have a retweet button, then you can track all the retweets that your tweet has got. You can see the spread, you can see how viral it went, you can trace the information, and you can find out how much it's spread. But it disturbs me that it requires some kind... We do need to add the ability for people to... I use the official Twitter apparatus, but other people go to other platforms.

I

Interviewer12:53

Like TweetDeck and all that. Does it bother you that there are other services making their name off of your thing?

B

Biz Stone12:58

It doesn't bother us that there are people making their name. What happens? Well, now we have official applications for iPhone, for BlackBerry, for iPad, for you name it. We have official applications we've developed in-house. The key thing for us was that before we made those official applications, people were getting very confused. They would go to the Apple iTunes App Store and say, 'Okay, I want to download the Twitter application.' They would get a hundred applications that weren't called Twitter and they would just pick one and think, 'Okay, maybe this is the Twitter one.' Then they would say, 'I don't know how to create an account on this.' They didn't know they had to go back to the website. Not only that, but we were looking at our numbers and we were saying, 'Why are so few people on the iPhone using Twitter? This can't be right. iPhone's hugely popular. Twitter's popular. There should be way more people on here.' So we created the official Twitter for iPhone, put our logo on it, made it free. Everything shoots up like crazy. People are happy. People are using it. It makes a lot more sense for everybody.

I

Interviewer14:06

The three original partners: you, Evan, and the other guy, Jack. What is it now? Like Evan left the company for a while, Jack comes back in, Evan leaves. I don't know what I'm saying. I'm stuck here the whole time. You're just like a revolving door going in and out. Do you guys push these guys out or do you want them to leave? What is going on here? Why can't the three partners just all be... I would be hyper-focused on this thing. It's going somewhere. There's money to be made. There's a lot of people involved. You got a whole board of directors. You got a bunch of people.

B

Biz Stone14:35

I think the key thing is that the way I think about it is Twitter's been this ever since the beginning. User input has been big. A lot of the things we didn't even invent, like @replies weren't even our idea, hashtags weren't even our idea. People just started doing them. We embrace them, we turn them into features. The way I think about it is Twitter as a service has almost become like this living, breathing thing that needs what it needs when it needs it and needs who it needs when it needs it. So we've recognized, 'Okay, you need to step down, you need to step up, you need to come back, you need to go away.'

I

Interviewer15:10

So is it kind of the thing where you can turn to your partners and say, 'Look, right now I think the company needs me to run it. You guys need to back off. This is my strength.' And then when you start to see things go a little bit wrong, the other guy comes in and says, 'Okay, I'm going to run this thing for a while.' It's almost like Steve Jobs. You guys trade off on who runs things?

B

Biz Stone15:29

That's what's been happening. I think it's a testament to the egolessness of my two co-founders that they're willing to say, 'Okay, look, let's do it that way.'

I

Interviewer15:37

But are they able to really step away from it and let you run things for a while?

B

Biz Stone15:41

Well, I'm not running things. We actually chose a new CEO, Dick Costolo, who is older than us and he's actually doing a great job as a CEO.

I

Interviewer15:53

So who owns the company? It's still private?

B

Biz Stone15:56

Yeah.

I

Interviewer15:57

And you own the company and your two partners?

B

Biz Stone15:59

Does the CEO get a piece of the action?

I

Interviewer16:01

Well, yes. First of all, everyone who works at Twitter owns a part of the company. Everyone who comes on gets equity. The three founders own percentages of the company. The venture capitalists own percentages of the company.

B

Biz Stone16:13

I would assume that venture capitalists own the majority of the company. They put up the money for it.

I

Interviewer16:18

That's not necessarily true. We got into a really good position because we didn't take money until we had started growing very rapidly. At that point, we had our pick of the venture capitalists who we liked the most and we thought of them as employees we could never fire.

B

Biz Stone16:35

When Facebook came to you, Mark Zuckerberg, when he came to you and offered you $500 million, I don't know how many years ago. He offered it to you. It was '08, I think. He says to you, '$500 million, I want to acquire Twitter.' I think he saw it as a nice adjunct to his business and maybe even saw it as a threat because he sees what it represents. Why did you know to turn that down? That's a very tempting thing. You could have been set for life. You and your wife could have gone off into the sunset and done your thing. Who makes the decision not to accept his money?

I

Interviewer17:07

It was actually Evan and I that went down and talked with Mark. To be perfectly honest, we really had no intention of even selling it. We figured, 'Why not go meet the great Mark Zuckerberg? You gotta have the conversation. You gotta go meet the great Mark Zuckerberg.'

B

Biz Stone17:23

Were you impressed?

I

Interviewer17:25

It was really funny. It was fun but it was also awkward. We went into a room together. Mark went in first and sat down on a chair, leaving just a loveseat for Evan and I. It was a very small room. Then Evan came in third and he said, 'Should I leave the door open or should I close it?' And Mark said, 'Yes.'

B

Biz Stone17:52

What does that mean?

I

Interviewer17:55

I said, 'I'll just close it this much.' And that's how it started. Is he socially awkward? Is that your point?

B

Biz Stone18:05

No, he just seemed... When I got the impression when talking to him, I was talking to... It was weird. It was like he was one guy but it almost seemed like he had 12 people in his head. He had already kind of gone through every possible scenario that we could talk. I was making all these jokes and everything and they just were dying.

I

Interviewer18:27

Did he try to act like Twitter wasn't really that important even though he's going to offer you $500 million? Like, 'It seems okay, almost not that interested.'

B

Biz Stone18:36

To tell you the truth, the whole story is I got into work one day and my friend Jason Goldman says, 'Go back downstairs. Evan's waiting for you in his car.' I said, 'Why is he waiting for me in his car?' He said, 'Just go downstairs.' So I go downstairs, I get in the car, and Evan's in his car. I said, 'Where are we going?' He says, 'We're going to Palo Alto.' I said, 'We're going to Palo Alto? Oh, is today the day we're supposed to do that thing at Google?' He's like, 'No, stop interrupting me.' He drives him crazy. He finally says, 'We're going to Facebook.' I said, 'Why are we going to Facebook?' He said, 'We're going to see Mark Zuckerberg.' I was like, 'Oh, cool. Why are we going to see Mark Zuckerberg?' He said, 'They're interested in a partnership, acquiring.' I said, 'Oh, really? How much?' He says, 'I don't know. What do you think's a good number?' I said, 'I don't know. 500.' It was kind of like a joke. He's like, 'Okay, that sounds good.' So when we went in there, we were kidding, we're talking, we're doing this awkward stuff. Finally, Mark says, 'I don't like to talk about numbers. It's not my thing.' We were like, 'Well, we don't like to either. It's nobody's to discuss.' He says, 'But if you tell me a number, I'll tell you yes or no.' So Evan said, '500.' And Mark said, 'That's a big number.' And I said, 'You said you'd say yes or no.' Then he said, 'Okay, how about some lunch?' So he never said yes or no. We just had to go. Later that afternoon, Evan wrote a really nice note saying, 'Thank you for the visit, but we really have no intention of selling this company. We're just getting started. We're growing around the world. We're proving that people are finding value in this service: small businesses, individuals, big businesses, etc. That part is going strong. We need to build a business on this and we think we can. We think we can also have a positive global impact in the world and we want to carry this through.' That is the motivation for turning down a lot of money. We actually think there's even more potential than that.

Well, you're right. You're young guys too. It's not like you're at the end of your career. You want to do something with your... You're either done, you're about to be sued to death, you're about to be crushed by the competition, or you just act out of fear a lot of times. None of that was true for us.

I

Interviewer21:10

So now I don't understand the plan. After so, Zuckerberg really what you're saying is never really offered you $500 million. You never got to hear if he would have.

B

Biz Stone21:18

There was an offer. It was a mix of cash and stock and it didn't appeal to us. But we wrote a nice note. We said, 'Thank you so much.' We kept it very cordial.

I

Interviewer21:27

You've had other bigger offers. Somebody offered you $500 million just to take a small piece of the company. Wasn't that Goldman Sachs or somebody like that?

B

Biz Stone21:35

I don't even remember who it was. I forget who I read.

I

Interviewer21:38

No, I mean we've taken investment over the years. You rejected numerous offers from Google and Facebook. Another rumor claimed JPMorgan Chase offered to buy a 10% stake in Twitter for $450 million, which would have put the value of the company at $4.5 billion. Any truth to that?

B

Biz Stone21:56

We weren't actually in talks with them.

I

Interviewer21:59

You were not?

B

Biz Stone22:00

No.

I

Interviewer22:01

So how do you create a value here? I was reading about the advertising dollars. You have to be careful. You can't clog this thing up with ads. People will get turned off. You know that. Yet you do have to make money. When I was reading the figures on what Twitter actually makes in terms of money, there was probably more people making money off of Twitter just using it than you guys made. It wasn't that mind-blowing to me. Your advertising was around $250 million maybe this year or something like that.

B

Biz Stone22:32

We're actually right now our advertising is like invite-only with partners. We're taking a really slow and thoughtful approach. It's frustrating.

I

Interviewer22:41

What does that mean, 'invite-only with partners'?

B

Biz Stone22:43

It means we hand-select a group of companies like Starbucks and some movie studios and so forth. We say, 'Look, we have these innovative promoted suite of products: promoted trends, promoted tweets, and promoted accounts. We're not 100% sure if they're going to work really well. They're native to the system, which makes them different from other ads. Would you be willing to work with us to see if they work for you?' We're experiencing more than 5% engagement rate on these ad products. If you follow online advertising, it's just astronomical. The partners are super happy. But we just don't have the infrastructure in place to do open self-serve ads.

I

Interviewer23:22

So are you really a billionaire at this point? On paper, you could say the company's worth $4.5 billion. But how do you make money on a daily basis? You personally, do you have a salary?

B

Biz Stone23:32

Yeah, I take a salary.

I

Interviewer23:33

Do you take millions of dollars in salary?

B

Biz Stone23:35

No, I take a regular salary like anyone else at the company.

I

Interviewer23:38

But you don't list that salary anywhere. No one knows. It's a private company.

B

Biz Stone23:42

It's a salary. It's not an hour. It's the same salary that anyone would... a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

I

Interviewer23:50

So meanwhile, you're an owner of Twitter and your personal wealth aside from what it could potentially be... Do you live in a mansion or are you just a modest guy? Does your wife ever say to you, 'What the f*** is going on here? You have Twitter. Why don't you guys make some money? Why am I still working?' So you're just a salaried guy in a sense.

B

Biz Stone24:09

Yeah. And when they say the company's worth $4.5 billion, we don't know. Are you planning on taking it public so there can be a stock so people can get involved in this?

I

Interviewer24:18

We don't have a plan to do that yet because we really feel like it's too early. We need to show that we can not just have a positive global impact in the world but make a real business on this and have a lot of fun doing it. This business aspect is growing and throughout the next year or two, we're really going to try to show that we can do this.

B

Biz Stone24:38

So are you a millionaire? What are you? I mean, we don't know how to look at you. I don't know how to evaluate what you are. What do I look like?

I

Interviewer24:47

You look like a filthy hippie. But seriously, you look like a kid, quite frankly. How does this translate into you becoming this super wealthy guy? I can't even tell if Robin should date you and you should leave your wife.

B

Biz Stone25:05

It's all based on potential. The only money that you've made is your salary.

I

Interviewer25:11

I make a perfectly good salary. You've not taken any money out of the company.

B

Biz Stone25:17

Simply because I have a mortgage on a 2,000 square foot house. Maybe I should just give you some money. You give me some pieces of the company. Maybe that's the way to do it.

I

Interviewer25:31

You're serious? You have not taken any money out of this company?

B

Biz Stone25:36

Is there a temptation to sell just so you could have money in the bank and say, 'For God's sakes, let's cash in a little bit'?

I

Interviewer25:42

Yeah, I guess there is.

B

Biz Stone25:44

Are you financially set for life?

I

Interviewer25:48

I feel like I'm going to be fine.

B

Biz Stone25:50

You don't worry about it?

I

Interviewer25:52

I have complete faith that Twitter is going to be 10 times bigger than it is today.

B

Biz Stone25:57

And your partners aren't pressuring you to do something?

I

Interviewer26:00

Everyone feels like we're real. We've worked our way into the global consciousness. But do you understand why I don't understand this? At some point, you want to live the American dream. You've invented something that's unique, that's part of our culture now, and it's going to be an important part of our culture in the future.

B

Biz Stone26:19

I feel like I already am living the American dream. The stuff that people have done with Twitter all around the world has been...

I

Interviewer26:28

Do you believe that Twitter overthrew the Egyptian government?

B

Biz Stone26:31

No, I think people did that.

I

Interviewer26:33

But don't you think Twitter facilitated that?

B

Biz Stone26:36

Yeah. And I think the telephone helped bring down the Berlin Wall. But I don't think they said the telephone brought down the Berlin Wall.

I

Interviewer26:44

You remind me of a sort of a hippie attitude. We were talking earlier on the air that a lot of our guys want to be verified. That's a real big thing to them. Gary was talking in the green room and said, 'This one wants to be verified.' You even said it's such a loose operation that your verification stuff is down right now. If you wanted to verify Ronnie the limo driver, you couldn't even do it right now. You wouldn't even know who to call. Is that correct?

B

Biz Stone27:08

I know who to call. It's just that last night they pushed some updates to the site and the one thing that it took down was the verification.

I

Interviewer27:16

Good excuse. So when someone calls up and says, 'Look, my name is being screwed with. I want to be verified,' you don't have money, you don't have a team, you don't have an organization that sits there like the verification board and says, 'We have to get this done.'

B

Biz Stone27:30

I do have some people that help. The reason we created verification in the first place was because we had celebrities joining the service and they were saying, 'Look, we're having a problem with imposters.' We couldn't constantly chase down every single imposter because we suspend one and another one pops up. So we just said, 'Let's just verify the real one. That way there can be a hundred fake ones and you can look for the check mark for the real one.'

I

Interviewer27:52

Who decides who gets verified? Because this is becoming very important in my situation. Who is the person or is it a board of people?

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Biz Stone28:00

I know people in our support team. They look at a bunch of different things. Ultimately, we'd like to have that much more automated. Right now, we're verifying our partners, like our advertising partners, and we're verifying people like politicians and celebrities who are very likely to be impersonated.

I

Interviewer28:19

JD says he's impersonated all the time.

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Biz Stone28:22

We'll have to get JD verified.

I

Interviewer28:25

We'll see about that. We'll play a little game with that verification thing in a second. But it seems to me that this has become very important to be verified.

B

Biz Stone28:35

Well, I think it makes you the cool kid in school. You can verify people. You're verifying their existence. Anytime you add a little check mark or you add a number next to the followers or something, people want the check mark and people want the number to go up.

I

Interviewer28:50

Do you purposely keep the check mark a special thing so it keeps people interested? It becomes a big thing like a guy getting inducted into the mafia?

B

Biz Stone28:58

We didn't design it on purpose to be that big of a deal. We thought it was just going to be an easy fix. Then everyone... We have this Bronx Zoo snake now asking us to be verified.

I

Interviewer29:10

I know the Bronx Zoo snake is on Twitter. How aware are you? It's got to be good for Twitter when a celebrity starts tweeting because it adds to the content and makes it exciting and vibrant. They have their own set of followers who then want to follow them on Twitter, so more people sign up. How aware are you of when I decided to start tweeting? How do you get alerted?

B

Biz Stone29:33

I think when certain people join, like when you join and there's a lot of fans in the office, an email goes out and there's whispering that Howard's joining. Other celebrities, maybe people in the office aren't as... We find out maybe the next day through the news. There's not like a red phone that rings when Charlie Sheen joins.

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