Twitter Founder: No Selling, No News

Twitter has the confidence and determination to operate independently, as said by Twitter's founder; Twitter wants to do news, also as said by the founder, but it doesn't count.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt once stated that Twitter is a "company with huge potential," and ever since those words were spoken, rumors of Google possibly acquiring Twitter have never ceased. However, now this story can be put on hold for a moment: Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, recently expressed that Twitter has no plans for sale, and even if offered 5 billion US dollars, Twitter remains a non-sale item. Stone said that Twitter is just getting started and still hopes to develop autonomously into a large enterprise.

Admirable Courage

It's admirable that Twitter does not cash out through selling, because Evan Williams, another father of Twitter, and current CEO Dick Costolo both once sold their start-up companies to Google, so they know that doing so can extract a large amount of cash. But this time, Twitter may have seen the possibility of operating independently and achieving greater success.

Twitter will not do news

Regarding Stone's idea about "building a news network," Sean Garret, a spokesperson for Twitter, clearly gave a negative answer: recently indicating that the company has no plan to build a news network at present, and relevant reports are merely speculations. Stone's idea is to treat Twitter as a news wire service all over the world, fully utilizing the tens of thousands of microblog posts published daily by Twitter users to establish a news network system. However, this news network might not necessarily be operated independently by Twitter, but could collaborate with other news agencies to create an open platform. Stone believes that many news agencies have already begun using Twitter to report news, which is based on the real-time nature and efficient publishing features of Twitter: such as the global major events like the Iranian election crisis and the Haiti earthquake that made Twitter famous.

However, the official stance of Twitter is: "This idea is imaginative, but it does not conform to Twitter's current plan." Another spokesperson for Twitter, Matt Graves, also said, "We are not considering creating a Twitter news service. This service already exists, its name is Twitter." Currently, Twitter has cooperated with large websites including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, selling them news tips.