Acquired Twitter (with Dick Costolo)
27 snips
Oct 28, 2020 Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter, discusses the platform's unique societal impact and its fight for profitability. He shares intriguing alternate histories of social media, including Twitter's missed opportunities with Instagram and Vine. The conversation dives into Twitter's advertising challenges and user experience dynamics amidst competition. Costolo also highlights key moments from Twitter's IPO and navigates the complexities of content moderation during politically charged times, emphasizing the balance between neutrality and social responsibility.
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Pioneering Native Ads
- Twitter's first revenue came from data deals with Google and Microsoft.
- They pioneered the native feed-based ad format, later adopted by Facebook and others, due to Twitter's distributed content nature.
Medvedev's Tweet
- When Russian President Medvedev visited Twitter HQ to send a historic tweet, the site crashed.
- An engineer faked the tweet's backend, manually inserting it into the database, creating a misleading New York Times headline.
Own User Experience
- Own the user experience, especially when building an advertising business.
- Allowing third parties to control user experience can lead to being held hostage and losing revenue.
