Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, said instead of thinking of the service as a social tool to connect with friends, he wants Twitter to be seen as a communications and information network for discovering and sharing what is happening right now.
This was part of a discussion at Fortune Brainstorm Tech about the company, perhaps the most talked-about new tech startup over the past year. Stone talked about how the “level of awareness is greater than the level of engagement," for the service, starting with things like Twitter search. The service is growing very quickly - 77 percent of the conference attendees said they were using it - but the company only has 55 employees.
Repeatedly pushed on how the company will make money, Stone said that when you become a tool that is relevant, important, and timely, there's lots of ways to make money. But “we need to focus on value before we optimize for profit, “he said. The plan is to start raising revenue this year..
One step towards doing this is the launching today or tomorrow of “Twitter 101" with use cases, best practices, etc. for small businesses. On the other end of the spectrum, Best Buy is launching a Twitter help service. Stone said there might be room for commercial accounts, with extra features that would make Twitter more valuable to businesses.
He didn't discuss any specifics about the stolen documents that recently appeared on TechCrunch other than to say they weren't specific financial plans, just an indication that the company was thinking big.
