Twitter Is A Technology Company

SUN VALLEY, ID - JULY 10: Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter founder and CEO of Square, arrives for the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 10, 2012 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have been invited to attend the conference which begins Tuesday. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Is Twitter a Media or Technology Company?

Twitter is some variation of both. “I think of the company is a technology company that is in the media business,” Mr. Costolo told a room full of editors and reporters. “Our business is an advertising business, we don’t sell technology.” .... the company does not have any reporters or a newsroom, and almost half of its 1,300 employees are engineers, focused on building the technology that runs Twitter and inventing new features for the service. .... “I don’t need to be or want to be in the content business.” ...... Twitter employees who work with celebrities, politicians, athletes and media outlets to hone the best use of the service. “We call them V.I.T.’s internally, Very Important Tweeters .... Costolo still sees the company as a communication platform above all else.

Twitter pours almost all its resources into engineering. And so it is a technology company. Twitter users produce content. True. But Twitter Inc. does not.

But that answer is true only when you ask to pick. If you don't bother asking if Twitter is a technology company or a media company, then you realize those demarcations are perhaps not that relevant. It is both. For Twitter Inc. it is a technology company. For the hundreds of millions of Twitter users it is a media company. It is a communication company. Twitter does many things that a telephone days, only better.

To ask if Twitter is a technology or a media company is a false question.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Is Twitter a pillar?

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Two Upheavals Already

I have not even formally launched my company yet, but my startup team has already gone through two upheavals. And I think that is a good thing. With each upheaval the vision has become much more polished. And I make no bones about the fact that my life is not a democracy, my company is not a democracy. I have a vision, and the company is going to carry it out.

Ageism And Entrepreneurship

I believe you can start a company at any age. I believe you can join a startup team at any age. I don't believe a startup has to do with coding and coding alone. There is always room for startups in every industry, in every sector of the economy.

Biggest Open Source Company: Oracle, Google Or Red Hat?

Image via CrunchBase

There is a similar thing going on with blogging. Blogging started as a thing far flung individuals do. By now most of the top blogs are all corporate. Open source seems to share the story. So which do you think it might be? Which is the biggest open source company out there? Oracle, or Google?

We are all open-source companies now. Which also means that none of us are. Open source is simply a way that we enable some aspect of our businesses, whether we're Red Hat or Microsoft or Google or Facebook.

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• What Might We Be Using, If Not For Stupid Patent Trolls (lockergnome.com)
• What Is Novell Worth? $2 Billion, Apparently (gigaom.com)
• Hedge Fund Serves Up $2 Billion Offer For Novell (ostatic.com)
• Red Hat and Google share the CIO love (news.cnet.com)
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Indra Nooyi: Power Woman

She is a woman, she is also Indian. That is a double whammy, as far as I am concerned.

She has been on the list for a few years now, but now she is number one. That is amazing.



I thought the least I could do to celebrate was put out a blog post. How about that?

She is an inspiration. I have heard her name before, but today is the first time I am reading up on her.

In The News

50 Most Powerful Women in Business Fortune .... 1 Indra Nooyi PepsiCo

Indra Nooyi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Indra Nooyi - The 2008 TIME 100 - TIME sharp strategic mind, tremendous market insight ....... PepsiCo's international business grew 22% last year, and she is showing the way for American companies trying to do well overseas. (These days, that's everybody.) Indra, 52, was also way ahead of her competitors in moving the company toward healthier products. ....... She welcomes hearing from people who disagree with her, but she is single-minded about following the path she believes is best for her company and its shareholders.

50 Most Powerful Women in Business 2006: Indra Nooyi | FORTUNE
#5 Indra K. Nooyi - Forbes.com
America's Best Leaders: Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO - US News and ...
Indra Nooyi's Graduation Remarks
Two Lessons From Indra Nooyi's Success - Sepia Mutiny you can get ahead in the American corporate environment without sacrificing who you are culturally. ....... the difficulty some women face in dating and/or marrying men who are less powerful or successful than they are ........ Have you had your snack? Ok, go play. Momma has to go acquire a multinational or two and pacify the Indian media regarding the recent pesticide allegations. ...... you don’t have to sell yourself out and tell everyone your name is “Bob” if it’s really Balwinder ...... getting her first job in the U.S. after completing her Master’s at Yale ....... determined girl, who while studying in Connecticut, worked as a receptionist from midnight to sunrise to earn money and struggled to put together US$50 to buy herself a western suit for her first job interview out of Yale ....... She lives with her husband and two daughters in Fairfax county, Connecticut ..... Nooyi attends PepsiCo board meetings in a sari ..... There’s no reason to be defensive about being a vegetarian, or preferring mango lassi to martinis, or cricket to baseball… and on and on.
Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO on Mentors, Meritocracy and Maternity ... some work/life balance issues and the hard realities women face when they reduce time spent in the office ....... “If women don’t help other women then who will?” asked Indra
Duke varsity to honour Indra Nooyi, Oprah Winfrey

Google's Corporate Transparency

It's all right there, online. Too bad they don't have this one webpage that links to all the stuff. Instead there are separate starting points.



They did not have an easy start either. Earnly stage investors were not easy coming by.

Their corporate culture to me is as fascinating as their technology. The two feed on each other.

These people, they are just starting out. They are growing to grow, grow, grow. They invent challenges for themselves. They realize their competition is with themselves.

"Despite the dotcom fever of the day, they had little interest in building a company of their own around the technology they had developed."