Biz Stone leaves Twitter: Bye-bye birdie!
Biz Stone, co founder of Twitter, has decided to step away from the micro-blogging giant. Word is that internal turbulence was at the root of his departure. It seems like yet another twist in the growing plot that one article on Fortune says includes “secret board meetings, executive power struggles, a plethora of coaches and consultants, and disgruntled founders.”
The Huffington Post Media Group, now part of AOL Inc., announced that Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, is joining the company to serve as Strategic Adviser for Social Impact. Stone will be advising both Huffington Post and AOL on cause-based initiatives and on developing a platform to facilitate people doing service in their communities. He is also expected to rally other companies to invest in and deploy best corporate practices, as well as create and develop a video series spotlighting leading companies and executives at the forefront of philanthropy and corporate responsibility.
Meanwhile, Huffington Post and AOL’s is intensifying its commitment to give back to the community, starting with encouraging its employees to volunteer in their communities, from preparing food for families and individuals in need at the LA Food Bank to dancing with elderly residents of nursing homes in New York City. As for Arianna Huffington (President of Huffington Post) and Tim Armstrong CEO of AOL), the duo is teaching a class at the Urban Academy of Arts and Letters in Brooklyn. They will also donate $50,000 to provide after-school activities for middle-school children in undeserved communities.
Any efforts like this from organizations that are doing well, is a welcome development. Besides, it seems that anywhere we look at now, including recent developments from all over, is a call for all of us to give back.
It looks as if Biz Stone (aka @Biz) just revealed that Twitter has over 100 million users while presenting some brief stats at Chirp (Twitter’s developers conference) which users can watch live via Justin.TV.
For comparison, Facebook has over 400 million users and MySpace (according to Quancast) has 185 million users.
Twitter also mentioned that 75% of their traffic comes from outside of Twitter (as only 1 in 4 users actually visit and use Twitter.com). This may explain why Twitter decided to acquire Tweetie as well as partner with RIM to launch the Official Twitter Blackberry app (before recanting “its officialness“).
Currently (as I type) Evan Williams (@Ev) is on stage explaining the history, background and culture of Twitter, as well as the overall infrastructure of Twitter (a talk that may appeal more to geeks than to the average blogger).
It’s been a very long time coming, but Twitter could roll out a commercial service before the end of the year, according to founder Biz Stone.
Though precise details haven’t been announced yet, Stone’s interview with the BBC suggested that additional pay-for features could include advanced analytics and information about their accounts and who is visiting them. [Read more…]
Twitter won’t be serving any ads this year, says Biz Stone according to Pocket-lint. We will, however, see premum features.
Those could include analystics tools, Stone said, and are almost certain to also include the “verified account” functionality that the site has already tested with some celebrity-owned accounts. “We wanted to show people that we’re here to stay and here we are making money”, said Stone.
Sounds like a plan.
Twitter just rolled out their new front page, which was known to come. I’m a bit ambivalent about it, mainly because it seems to follow all of the design trends out there at the moment.
Anyway, the new front page features search from the front as well as a selection of trending topics, which is good. The reason for this is, well, I’ll let Biz Stone tell it himself:
However, demonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now through our Search and Trends often awakens a sense of wonder which inevitably leads to a much more compelling question, “How do I get involved?”
So what’s the verdict? [Read more…]
From the official Twitter blog:
A small business like a bakery will send out a tweet that the cookies just came out of the oven and a few dozen local followers will rush over and buy warm cookies. The customers like it and the small businesses owners love it. Big companies are using Twitter in interesting ways too.
You’d love that, wouldn’t you, Biz? If Twitter was used that way, it would be hyperlocal and worth ten times more than any guesstimate out there today.
The featured Best Buy mashup Twelpforce thing is pretty far from what you’re dreaming of above, Biz, but at least it is a step in the right direction.
How did I miss this over the weekend? No one sent me a twit about this. I’m talking about the different worm attacks on Twitter that started Saturday and until Sunday.
Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney, the 17-year-old creator of StalkDaily, has admitted creating the worms that exploited a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the Twitter service to infect user profiles.
“At about 2 a.m. on Saturday, four accounts were created that began spreading a worm on Twitter,” co-founder Biz Stone announced in a blog post. “From 7:30 a.m. until 11 a.m. [Pacific time], our security team worked on eliminating the vectors that could identify this worm. At that time, about 90 accounts were compromised. We identified and secured these accounts.”
The company also said that they would review its coding practices. I suggest that they hire Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney.
There’s a pretty interesting piece on Twitter’s Biz Stone in San Francisco Chronicle. Actually, it hit the web two days ago, and I glanced it, deciding not to cover it here. After all, there really wasn’t anything new there.
Then I read this post by Silicon Alley Insider, built around a bullet list of trivia pulled from the SFC piece, and headlined by the shocking fact that Stone’s first name is Christopher. Granted, the Silicon Alley Insider piece is light-hearted, but come on? Isn’t this what Twitter is for, tweeting links and trivia stuff like this?
Biz Stone writes about how Twitter picks its suggested users. Basically, it’s a search for “potentially interesting Twitter accounts” users and then they pick a few. This has been puzzling people for some time, so there you have it. Naturally, it hit Techmeme…
The most interesting part of the blog post is the last paragraph, however:
So, that’s how we’re doing the list today. We may very well change the way we populate this list or stop using it altogether if there is some other way to get the job done.
Keeping all the doors open, are we?
In other Twitter news, Biz Stone confirms pro accounts, but nothing’s been decided as to how these will work. It is a freemium model, so Twitter will remain free for all.
