What once began as a "big, empty box to type into and post on the Internet," one few could understand the meaning behind, gave rise to millions of blogs and the force behind a continually expanding self-publishing industry. Similarly, "When we did Twitter," said company co-founder Biz Stone to Bloomberg TV's Margaret Brennan at the 2010 World Business Forum, where ExecuNet exclusively reported, "we said, 'Here is a smaller box, and you can type into it and put it on the Internet.' People will find their own reason to use it. Everyone will find their own path to it."

That path has led to 65 million Tweets per day from 200 million unique visitors per month. Despite widespread categorization of Twitter as a social network, Stone said the service functions more like an information network or news network. "You can follow CNN, Bloomberg or three of your friends. Whatever you want to pay attention to in the world."

In developing the service since its inception, Twitter has taken careful notice of user patterns, as they were largely influenced by much of the functionality. And users have initiated many of the innovations that are now a regular part of the service. "When people publicly replied, they used @Biz. Users invented re-tweeting, and we followed with a feature. Hashtags are another thing users developed, and we turned it into a feature," said Stone.

Stone says that from the very beginning, Twitter was premised on creating something of value that would have a positive global impact. Whether it's a customer telling a baking company their cookies are coming out well or Tweeting about political events, Twitter is about communicating events around the world. And he doesn't even mind service clones because "more communication is always a good thing."

Taking quality signals from users and maintaining transparency within the organization are critical elements in keeping the company focused and grounded. "Twitter is a 3-year-old company and we have an intense spotlight on us. We're like a child actor, and we want to become like Ron Howard," said Stone. "Everyone is talking about us, so we must be smart, but there are smarter people outside than there are inside."

Robyn Greenspan
Robyn Greenspan is the Editor-in-Chief at ExecuNet, where she is responsible for setting and driving the editorial content engagement strategy across the private business network's publications and expert-led programming. She is also a Huffington Post blogger. You can follow her on Twitter @RobynGreenspan

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