Sometimes when you hear executives from Twitter, it is almost as though they are on another planet or just speaking another language to the rest of the corporate world.
Twitter’s users generate 130m tweets a day and the micro blogging site is one of the most talked about technology groups of the last few years. And yet when it comes to discussing financial matters, Twitters’ founders and its new chief executive Dick Costolo seem almost amused to be asked about their business.
Speaking at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the industry’s annual networking marathon, Mr Costolo said that Twitter was making money but he declined to go into detail beyond saying that the social networking site was becoming increasingly important for companies to directly connect with their customers.
Mr Costolo was slightly clearer when he dismissed talk that Google or Facebook might try to buy Twitter for as much as $10bn, as the kind of rumour that circulates all the time.
But much of Mr Costolo’s keynote speech focused on the Twitter experience and philosophy. Twitter needed to be “simple”, “instantly useful” and “always available”, rather like water to its 200m users. It needed to be easy to use across multiple platforms.
He said Twitter needed to do more to help users engage but at the same time realise that some users just wanted to consume the product. Twitter needed to have “tight and loose” integration with partners where appropriate.
Mr Costolo recognised the role that Twitter had played in connecting people in Egypt this month, but at the same time said that the protesters, not the service, had forced change.
There was a hint of the business case when Mr Costolo said that more and more Twitter users now wanted to watch sports events and television shows such as the X-Factor in real time to share the experience with their friends.
At the end of last week’s Super Bowl in the US, Twitter recorded 4,000 tweets a second. On New Year’s Eve in Japan, 6,000 tweets were exchanged a second – a new record for Twitter.
But in a nearly hour long presentation, the only firm announcement Mr Costolo made on Twitter was that it was launching a new crowd-sourced translation centre for Russia, Indonesia and Turkey. A Portuguese translation service will follow later this year.
How those services will make money remains to be seen. Perhaps it just doesn’t matter as long as we all connect.
