GOSO President, Adam Boalt, is at Realtime CrunchUp asking poignant questions to key players in the social media industry.
Twitter COO Dick Costolo opened up the CrunchUp event. As we all know, Twitter is one of the hottest social networks and the site has fallen under a bit of controversy of late due to its $1 billion valuation.
Adam started the first Q&A session of the event by asking Dick Costolo about Twitter revenue. First he asked, is the current revenue $4 million? And, of equal importance, where does this revenue come from?
Costolo vaguely responded by stating, “It’s not $4 million, it’s higher. From a variety of sources.” He did not continue to list any specific areas as to where the money may come from.
The suggested users list that appears when a new account is created has been said to generate revenue for Twitter. But, when Adam asked if the suggested users feature generates dollars, Costolo explicitly said no. He said, “The suggested user list is totally non-financial. It’s a super-primitive mechanism.”
In another session, “Filtering The Stream Roundtable,” Adam was able to speak with key players such as, Facebook, VP of Product, Chris Cox, Microsoft, GM of FUSE Labs, Lili Cheng, Facebook, VP of Platform, Bret Taylor, Google, Google Fellow, Amit Singhal, Seesmic, CEO Loic Le Meur, and MySpace, Chief Product Officer, Jason Hirschhorn.
As GOSO works with the APIs of these networks, Adam’s interest was in how the networks will work together. So, he inquired about the terms of use. He asked, how do the networks plan on having a consolidated real-time data stream if all of the terms of use are different.
He went on to ask, “How do the social networks align in that respect? A standardization of rules? Like Facebook’s new rules. What if something on Twitter goes over to Facebook and it’s against terms of service?”
Bret Taylor spoke for Facebook by saying that over time, specifically the next year, that there will be a big effort in simplifying terms of use. He stated, “I expect simplification to be huge for all of us.” He went on to explain that the networks will not have the same terms, but they will be better. He contended that Facebook’s terms are in place to stop automated spam.
Other panelists did not seem to pose finite answers to the question. Simple shrugs and “I don’t knows” were vaguely offered.
