Summit Notebook

from MediaFile:

Twitter’s Costolo: not quite footloose and fancy free

You'd think fast-racing Twitter would keep one eye firmly fixed on the rearview and side mirrors.

With the Internet landscape littered with also-rans -- from pets.com to AskJeeves.com to a Facebook-steamrolled MySpace -- you'd imagine the one thing overnight Internet microblogging phenomenon Twitter would fear the most would be to get displaced by an up-and-comer with the same alarming speed.

Not so. Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo insists no one at the company he has worked at for less than a year worries about two theoretical guys in a garage dreaming up the next social networking sensation.

"That's a fun question. The way I think about that is the only thing to prevent us from being successful is us," said the co-founder and CEO of FeedBurner, a digital content syndication platform that was acquired by Google in the summer of 2007. "This stuff that's out of my control -- I've got no hair and I'm too stressed out as is," said the bespectacled, balding executive who joined Twitter in September.

"We all kind of make it our job to understand what the landscape looks like but we make it a point to reinforce to each other that we're the people that are going to make Twitter successful, not the success or failure of the competition."

That's not to say Costolo and his company are luxuriating in a carefree existence. With more than $100 million raised from the likes of T. Rowe Price, Benchmark Capital and other investment names -- granting the four-year old firm an eye-popping $1 billion valuation -- tons of hype and the attendant hopes, Costolo is well aware of the need to meet some of those lofty expectations.

"We've got things to prove before we get there," admitted Costolo, an amateur stage performer. "I constantly, constantly, constantly worry about what we need to do to be a self-sustaining business."

from MediaFile:

Tech execs, where would you put a million dollars?

Most top technology executives are used to juggling businesses worth hundred of millions of dollars, yen or euros. But this week at the Reuters Technology Summit, we asked: if we gave you $1 million to invest anywhere -- but not in your own company -- where would you spend it?

INTERNET / STARTUPS

If you want the quick answer, I would invest it in Twitter.  I'm sorry that we weren't in it. I don't know where it's going and it would be a fun ride.

-- Tim Draper, managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

I would love to work more with some of these interesting startups like kiva.org that are developing interesting and innovative ways to create micro-lending programs for folks around the world.

I've a couple of friends and I would like to invest in their companies, little start-ups. One of them is called Trazzler and the other is called Fluther. One is an innovative travel startup and the other is a service that helps people get answers to questions they need.

I'm not a real big stock guy. Maybe a little Apple, a little Google -- companies I use every single day so why not invest in them?

-- Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone

It's stuff in our industry. The most vibrant industry is ours. We're complaining but the reality is we're making money. I would literally go after a couple of smaller companies that are up and coming. (Such as) Lala. It's iTunes without having to download the client. It's a really neat job. Check it out. You take music on the go. It's a really nice design.

from MediaFile:

It’s not easy being Biz

In the adrenalin-fueled world of Internet start-ups, where "Biz" is usually followed by "Dev," where did Twitter co-founder Biz Stone get his nickname?

After talking to the Reuters Technology Summit of growth rates and future revenue possibilities, the Twitter co-founder chatted with the Reuters San Francisco bureau about his unusual moniker and why it can pose traveling hiccups.

Christopher Isaac Stone said his parents first began calling him Biz when he mispronounced Christopher, saying "Biz-ah-bah" instead.

The name stuck, and by the third grade everyone knew him as Biz.

"I don't even answer to Christopher anymore," said the software engineer, who also goes by Isaac.

Stone's full name appears on his passport, so accidental plane ticket bookings under the name Biz have led to some problems with air travel.

Getting through airports can be like a "social engineering" experiment, with success a matter of seeking out a friendly check-in person, he said.

from MediaFile:

Counting Twitter users with Wolfram Alpha

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Monday that unless Twitter's growth rate slowed, by the end of the year its user base would exceed the population of Planet Earth.

Break out those calculators, nerds!

Let's put Biz's admittedly tongue-in-cheek statement to the test, using some back-of-the envelope math and the much-hyped, newly launched online knowledge compendium Wolfram Alpha.

Estimates of Twitter's user base vary widely. Let's take the frequently cited figure of 10 million, and double it to 20 million, since we're feeling generous and Oprah is involved.

Biz cited a week-by-week compound growth rate that would exceed the Earth's population by the end of the year.

We're in week 21 of 2009 -- that leaves 31 more weeks. We plugged the compound growth formula into Wolfram Alpha, and voila!

Twitter would have to grow its users by an astounding 20.5 percent a week to exceed Earth's population by the end of the year.