If I had one piece of advice to tell an entrepreneur, I always say, 'You have to have emotional investment in what you're working on.' That's what we lacked at Odeo.
— Biz Stone
Doing startups is all about making mistakes.
You can provide a short-format content, and it can grow, and it can spread virally across the entire Twitter system, and it can contain within it a link to something that's much longer, that's a long essay or that's a video.
My personal view about how people should use Twitter is less relevant than our goal to provide the infrastructure for a new kind of communication and then support the creativity that emerges.
We hired a CSR person at Twitter, years before we hired our first sales person, to make sure we had a culture and impact of doing good.
We focus a lot on culture specifically at Twitter because of this spotlight, and of the fact that we don't want to end up like the child actor who found success early and grew up all weird and freaky.
Even though running is physically straining, it's mentally refreshing. Especially when you feel like you've accomplished something.
I'm still kinda old-school. We're twittering, and we're all twitterers. And we write tweets. The only thing I don't love is twits.
If you're thinking of acquiring a company and want to keep it a secret, tell everyone in the company; let them all in on the truth. Say, 'Listen, if this gets out, we'll probably lose the deal, so we're all in this together.'
Everything I've done, I've made up. Some of that might have been right; most of it was probably wrong.
I started out as an artist, and I continue to think of myself as an artist first, and a technologist and entrepreneur after that.
I'm convinced that there's a new way to define capitalism, and that the definition should include three ingredients - that we love our work, that we are building a traditionally successful business, and that we are having some positive impact in the world, whether it's local or global.
The two things I use the most are the MacBook Air and my iPhone. Those are my two most-used gadgets that are dented, scratched and smashed.
You can shut down a service, and yet people will find ways to communicate.
A feeling I got from working at Google was that technology could solve any problem. Yes, it's fantastic, but what I realized later was there's technology, and there's people. Google had its list ordered: Technology. People. And I think the right order is: People. Technology.
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.
The international limit on mobile texting, or SMS, is 160 characters. We wanted Twitter to be entirely readable and writable on every single one of the over five billion mobile phones on this planet, because they all have SMS built in. So we said it has to be within 160 characters, all the tweets.
I still blog, but I do think blogging will become obsolete, as there are more ways of interacting on the Web with low barriers to entry for people to engage and participate.
Balancing family and work is a top priority for me, and I treat it as such. Meaning, I actually put specific family time and events in my calendar so that precious time is dedicated and properly blocked off from any work that may try to sneak its way into my schedule.
In a job where you're on a computer all day, and we cater lunch and we put snacks in the kitchen, well, we all started gaining weight, even though we try to pick healthy stuff, but inevitably you find the cashews.
The reason I really started running was for meditative purposes. I would pick some problem to have in my head while running.
With Twitter, it's as easy to unfollow as it is to follow.
I never even graduated college. I never finished learning, as it were, and I have a psychological need to be in a learning environment at all times.
I haven't been paying attention to politics long enough to have really smart opinions.
I believe that the open exchange of information can have a positive global impact.
Positive culture comes from being mindful, and respecting your coworkers, and being empathetic.
Both my wife and I have a lot of compassion for animals in general.
This idea that the open exchange of information can have a positive global impact is being proven over and over again around the world nearly on a daily basis - and for Secretary Clinton to recognize that, I think, is a huge step.
Obviously, working at Google wasn't a mistake. I used to just walk around. I don't know if I was supposed to, but I'd just open doors and see what people were doing.
Essentially, you become a top tweet because so many people are engaging with that tweet. They're either retweeting it, or they're favoriting it; they're doing one of many things to indicate to us that that tweet is interesting and engaging to users.
I think when people twitter 20 or 30 times per day, that's too much. They are boxing everyone else out, and people stop following them because they need a break.
A personal belief is that if you're not personally invested in what you're working on, you'll fail.
For me, I've learned about what it means to focus on a culture, to build social responsibility, and the idea of a company as a super-organism.
I thought about tennis. But the more I thought about the whole thing - lessons, equipment, going to the courts - I said screw it, I'm just going to go buy a pair of sneakers and go running.
I've seen people twitter in haiku only.
If people are passionate about your product, whether it's because they're hating or loving it, those are both good scenarios.
When I studied graphic design, I learned a valuable lesson: There's no perfect answer to the puzzle, and creativity is a renewable resource.
In any leadership position, you're always going to be disappointing somebody.
The thing that excites me, and the thing that excited me about Twitter, is the idea of a flock of birds moving around an object in flight.
I love Sherlock Holmes, but I love any of these old stories where the writer was paid by the word, so the adventures just continue forever. They are almost like they were meant to be read out loud.
I think it's a really big deal to be able to meet people outside the context of something like a conference room or someplace where everything feels like it's formal talk.
It's important to credit the brave people that take chances to stand up to regimes. They're the star.
