[SXSW Notes] Evan Williams Keynote Interview

[EV]: new app platform: “At Anywhere”

[EV]: Integration with sites

[EV]: hover

[EV]: single sign on

[EV]: reduces friction

[EV]: increases discovery

[EV]: gives you a connection to your site’s users

[UH]: Why are you willing to experiment?

[EV]: leads you to creating value

[EV]: best entrepreneur’s fail, learn, and iterate quickly 

[UH]: Twitter creating value — then trying to capture a piece of it and monetize

[EV]: Twitter is an information network that helps people discover what’s going on … and share what’s happening with them

[EV]: Increasing the signal to noise ratio in Twitter

[EV]: If you are sharing stuff, how do you get that info to the people that care

[UH]: Experimentation is about iteration

[EV]: People within the company doing what they think is best

[EV]: Organized people into autonomous teams and focused on a single task / feature

[EV]: How do we scale with the characteristics that we want?

[EV]: Openness is a core value for Twitter — therefore the company should reflect that

[EV]: Like you should not have one massive codebase and should be modular, so should the team

[UH]: If you’re going to experiment, you have to be open.  Trace the arc of openness.

[EV]: Openness or transparency.  A window is transparent, but a door is open.

[EV]: We’d rather have people come in and do what they want with Twitter.  We’ve learned from user-level innovation.

[UH]: Openness is a survival mechanism.

[UH]: Why are you giving away the golden goose?

[EV]: Huge question for Twitter.  We know there’s valuable data buried in twitter. 

[EV]: Doing partner deals with MSFT etc actually helped create value from this data

[UH]: Internal debate about giving away info?

[EV]: Yes.  But it’s good and it’s just scratching the surface.

[UH]: Verticals

[EV]: Focus of 3rd party dev’s actually fill holes in UX — like short links, uploading photos.

[EV]: Hardware devices (that auto-tweet?). Just scratching the surface.

[UH]: Experiments from 3rd party dev’s and users.  Usually want to regulate an ecosystem.  How open are you?

[EV]: We err on the side of openness.  There is some control — we have to control some things.  The openness can be used against you.  It has to be managed.

[EV]: Example: having an open API lets people create spam apps.

[UH]: Inclusiveness.  Really interesting uses of twitter.  Haiti / Chille

[EV]: Reads thank you note from Chilean survivor, appreciative of Twitter in improving communication.

[UH]: Robert Gibbs using Twitter from inside the white house

[EV]: Authenticity from the white house

[EV]: official channel, but using it in a new kind of way

[UH]: Rewiring society.  But what about state control of information?  Is it standing in the way?

[EV]: Yes, in certain regions, definitely.

[EV]: The internet is a tidal wave that’s impossible to keep back.

[EV]: How long can China keep it’s wall up?

[UH]: Those walls will be especially porous if there’s multiple lines of communication, like SMS.

[UH]: “Betterness.”  Twitter can help people be “better off” — customer service complaints on Twitter.

[EV]: There’s more and more you want to follow and search — our goal is not to maximize that.  

[EV]: People have limited time and attention.  

[EV]: We hope we can direct your attention.  

[EV]: We don’t want to increase you time on Twitter — just the opposite.  

[EV]: Make Twitter a tool for you to get things done.

[EV]: Be a force for good.  Open API /services

[EV]: Pay attention (help them pay attention to what matters to them)

[UH]: “Thin vs Thick Value.”  Thin value — making a profit by not offering value.  ”Thick value” is actually providing meaning and value to people

[EV]: Our favorite uses of business twitter — helping people make better decisions

[EV]: Charities are a prime example.  The idea of sending $10 through SMS spread through Twitter.

[EV]: Reduce to friction for people to help each other out

[EV]: When we look at businesses and their use of Twitter, there’s a new communication tool between customers and business.

[EV]: That’s not interesting if you only look at a way for companies to click on links.

[EV]: If the channel in turn helps the business get better — by getting feedback from customers and improving

[UH]: Walmart is innovating.  They had to go back and create a dialog with their stakeholders.  What was crucial was information.  They built an information network.  They had to create new ways for communication to pass-through.

[EV]: If you live on the web, you’re used to having relationships with companies — in the real world, it’s a black box.  

[EV]: The layers of abstraction and dialog, lack of responsibility in the real world with these same companies.

[EV]: The promise of these technologies is to remove this and close the loop.

[UH]: What’s the big picture vision?

[EV]: Fostering the exchange of open information.  Being a force for good.

[EV]: Easy exchange of information is better

[EV]: Share and influence others with minimal work (retweet)

[UH]: If you’re not hoarding data, what’s your advantage?

[EV]: Our advantage will come if everyone wins

[EV]: Any deal where one party wins is ultimately unsustainable

[EV]: There’s lots we could do at Twitter to generate revenue, but it’s not ultimately scalable or sustainable

[UH]: Is the internet commoditizing content?

[EV]: Old species die off if they don’t add value

[EV]: It only works if you embrace the new species and learn to work with it

[EV]: Twitter doesn’t replace TV news — they’re different things

[UH]: Difference between leaders and builders.

[EV]: What drives me is creating things in the world that didn’t exist before.

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I checked out around here.  Listening to Haque interview is … painful.