Twitter 5 岁了！

SCOTT SIMON, host: Only fitting to introduce our next guest with a series of tweets. The social networking site Twitter is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year – hashtag(井号” #” 标签在twitter中用来标注线索主题) happy birthday, three exclamation points(三个惊叹号). Tweeting, of course, is like blogging, only faster, and more stream of consciousness(意识流)– hashtag Gilbert Gottfried.

Today, the service has over 200 million users who send over 100 million tweets every day. Are we a trending topic yet?

Biz Stone is the co-founder(共同创办人) and the creative director(创意总监) of Twitter. He joins us from the studios of On the Path Productions in San Francisco, where - of course -Twitter is based. Mr. Stone, thanks so much for being with us.

Mr. BIZ STONE (Co-Founder, Creative Director, Twitter): Oh, thank you, Scott, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

SIMON: You know, I sent out a tweet inviting Twitter users to ask any questions. You know what question I got - by far - more than any other?

Mr. STONE: I have no idea.

SIMON: Why 140 characters(字符)?

Mr. STONE: Oh, right.

SIMON: And?

Mr. STONE: I have a good answer for that.

SIMON: OK.

Mr. STONE: Well, from the very beginning, we built Twitter to work over SMS(Short Message Service 手机短信服务), or simple mobile text messaging. And so the limit, internationally, for text messages is 160 characters. So that meant we needed to fit all of our tweets within that limit, but we also needed to reserve room for the name of the author of the tweet. So we decided to standardize on 140 characters. And that way, you can read and write tweets in their entirety, on any mobile phone on the planet.

SIMON: And how, when, why did you get the idea for Twitter?

Mr. STONE: Well, that's an interesting story, because we weren't supposed to be working on Twitter. My co-founder, Evan Williams, and I had left Google together, and we were working on a new start-up(创业). And that start-up was not captivating(迷住某人，迷惑) us as much as it should have been, really, for us to be taking a risk with other people's venture capital money(风险资金).

So my other co-founder, Jack Dorsey, came up with this idea that was actually not too far from something I had already tried twice, unsuccessfully, to launch. And that was very simple way to update other people with a status message (状态消息) over a mobile and specifically, text messaging. And we started talking about it with some others; we started getting excited. And it was actually Evan who said: Why don't you guys just take two weeks and build a prototype(雏形, 蓝本) and we'll see if people like it.

And at first, nobody liked it, really. People - for the first nine months or so -just thought it was not useful, to which I recall Evan Williams saying: Well, neither is ice cream; should we ban ice cream - and all joy? And the answer was no. We were having fun. We were emotionally invested in this because it was something that captivated and held our interest.

SIMON: And how do you get from something that was just fun - like ice cream - to something that has been credited for at least playing a role in revolutions around the world?

Mr. STONE: You know, when I think about it, it really comes down to a very core, basic belief of mine - which is that it really doesn't matter how sophisticated the algorithms(算法) get, or how many machines we add to the network. If Twitter, you know, if it's to be a triumph - and if you want to call it a triumph - then it's not necessarily just a triumph of technology. It's a triumph of humanity.

So how did we get here? We got here because people are basically good; they're basically smart. And when given a simple tool that allows them to express that, they’ll prove it to you every single day.

SIMON: Question from Rav Fox over Twitter: What’s the actual business model for Twitter? I mean, how do you guys make money doing this?

Mr. STONE: Our business model comes from something we are calling our promoted products - and that's promoted tweets, promoted trends, promoted accounts. The reason that these go somewhat unnoticed by people is that they're entirely native to the system. So a promoted tweet is really just like any other tweet. But a company like Starbucks, for example, can pay to have that tweet show up at the top of the other tweets when people search for, you know, coffee-related terms.

We're really just at the beginning of it. This is our revenue model(盈利模式，收入模式) for now, and it's by - sort of invite only, the partners we work with at this point. And we're going to grow that as the year goes on.

SIMON: Let me ask you about whatever role Twitter may have played in a revolution in Egypt, in uprisings in Iran, in Libya - political movements around the world. At the same time, are there people who confuse sending a tweet with actually doing something?

Mr. STONE: No, I don't think there are. I think there are people that are arguing that there are people that are making that confusion. But I don't think anyone is really making that confusion. I think the key thing to remember is that, you know, tools like Twitter are just that - they're tools. They are ways that people can coordinate activities, communicate with one another and in this way, come together as one when it's important to do so.

And I'd be the first to admit that, you know, forwarding an email or sending a text message or writing a tweet isn't exactly the same as true activism. But it's in support of activism, and it helps. You know, when the Berlin Wall came down, I'm sure there were phone calls being made. But no one said that the telephone brought down the Berlin Wall, you know?

SIMON: You mentioned that when you and your partner were beginning Twitter, people asked yeah, but what good is it? And you said: What good is ice cream? Can't you just enjoy it?

(Soundbite of laughter)

SIMON: Can you, at this point in your life, just enjoy tweeting?

Mr. STONE: Yeah, it's interesting. Tweeting, for me, has changed a little bit because what's happened over time is that I've switched from tweeting a lot, to consuming a lot of tweets. And that's based on the idea that you don't have to build a web page to get value out of the Internet. And the same is true for Twitter. You don't need to actually tweet to get value out of Twitter. And I've learned that to be true.

SIMON: Mr. Stone, thanks so much.

Mr. STONE: Oh, thanks so much for having me.

SIMON: Biz Stone - he is the co-founder and creative director of Twitter, as the site marks its fifth anniversary.