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It's all change at the top in Twitter-land. Co-founder Evan Williams has stepped aside as CEO, promoting former-COO Dick Costolo to the position. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers expect Dick to show them the money.
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention Coded Smorgasbord...
Charles Arthur reports:
Williams, who founded the social networking site with Biz Stone, indicates that Costolo's promotion is part of a second phase of Twitter's development ... to a company that can make substantial amounts of money. ... Williams says he will personally focus on product strategy.
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Twitter has been making money ... by a number of methods since late last year. First in October it offered search access to its ... millions of "tweets" to the search engines Google and Bing. ... Then in April it began offering "promoted tweets". ... It also has a scheme for promoting products paid for by advertisers and promoted accounts. ... Together, those are reckoned to bring in substantial revenues.
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams macroblogs:
There are 300 people working at Twitter todaycompared to about 20 ... two years ago. Back then, people were creating about 1.25 million tweets a daycompared to 90 million today ... we grew from 3 million registered users to more than 165 million today.
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I am most satisfied while pushing product direction ... and Ive never been more excited or optimistic about what we have to build. ... [So I've] asked our COO, Dick Costolo, to become Twitters CEO. Starting today, Ill be completely focused on product strategy. ... I couldnt be more excited.
Dan Frommer sees the writing on the wall:
Twitter is at a clear pivot point. ... Now it's time to use Twitter's hit product and huge audience to print cash. ... It's clearly Dick Costolo's job now to turn Twitter into a real business ... And it's obvious that he's a better man for that job than Williams is.
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Twitter doesn't want to sell out to the likes of Google, and wants to remain independent. ... It's even more important ... to become a really, really successful business. And that's why it's important for Costolo to be in charge.
Twitter investor Chris Sacca responds to allegations that he lied about plans for Costolo's ascendancy:
Turns out, the most creative/visionary people I know don't like meetings and budgets. ... Unfortunately, a CEO has to spend a great deal of their time working with that stuff.
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Ev came to the realization that he could trust his company with a guy who had proven himself.
Meanwhile, Twitter's other remaining co-founder, Biz Stone, keeps it under 140:
Our #newtwitter was designed to be easier, faster, and richer but our #newtwitterceo is faster, older, and balder!
Isaac Hepworth makes reference to the incremental release of the new Twitter web UI:
They're rolling him out gradually across the employees.
Last word goes to the new guy himself:
So that's what you have to do to get more followers.
Richi Jenningsis an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itbw@richij.com.
