I was kind of showing the art director a thing or two about how to use a Mac. And one day everyone went out to lunch and I jumped on the computer and designed a book jacket and slipped it in the pile to go to the review board in New York.
So I taught myself web design, and then in 1999 some friends of mine decided to start a company called Xanga.com, which was a very early kind of social network slash blogging community.
We didn’t have anything before Twitter that allowed a group of people roaming around a city to communicate instantly, in real time, and in a coordinated way, in a group.
A Twitter update is simple and fast and gets the information and news, and it spreads it very quickly, and it can contain links so you can then link to this whole context of information.
The most rewarding thing for me has been this affirmation for me that people are basically good and smart, and if you give them a simple tool that allows them to exhibit that behavior, they’ll prove it to you every single day.
I think you have something really great with all those stories waiting to be told, but I just don’t know how it shapes up exactly. I don’t think there are going to be a lot of newspaper reporters sitting around not writing.
When you think about Twitter, there are people all around the world reporting twenty-four seven, every second. They’re reporting what they’re seeing and what’s happening around them. So there’s a lot of potential for breaking news.
