BEIJING, November 20 (Xinhuanet) -- Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has dismissed Rupert Murdoch's plan to remove itself from Google as a bad idea saying it was likely to "fail fast". Speaking at an event in London on Thursday this week, Stone said that instead of trying to ˇ°put the genie back in the bottleˇ± and revert to an even more ˇ°ridiculously closedˇ± model, Murdoch ought to be thinking about how to make up lost revenue by embracing a radically new and open strategy.
Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of the business social networking site LinkedIn, has also joined the debate with similar sentiments. "I am sure that during the transition from horses to automobiles there were some people bemoaning the loss of horse transport," Hoffman said.
In recent weeks Murdoch has launched a vitriolic attack on Google and other web companies, accusing them of "stealing" content created by his titles. Management at News International is working on plans to introduce an online paywall next spring and prevent stories from being linked to by sites such as Google News. However, Twitter's Biz Stone warned that Murdoch "should be looking at it as an opportunity to do something radically different and find out how to make a ton of money out of being radically open rather than some money by being ridiculously closed".
Stone and Hoffman were both speaking at an event organised by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) in London. Twitter has already changed the face of news gathering, even if so far it has made Stone little if any money. More than 500 messages per second are posted to the social networking site which has become an invaluable tool to journalists and news media. The service is increasingly being used by news organisations as a way of discovering breaking news.
"I don't know what the future of traditional media is," said Stone. "But from my perspective and Twitter's perspective I think there is a wonderful co-operative alliance there in terms of the wisdom of crowds, and as we add things to Twitterˇ maybe we can help." Twitter, which was valued at more than 1 billion U.S. dollars just over a month ago, is looking to drive revenues and eventually start making a profit.
It also plans to introduce some new features over the coming months. Stone, who set up the company just two years ago, said that by the end of the year it would have begun to offer its corporate users a suite of new analytical tools to help them use Twitter to keep in touch with customers and keep an eye on their brands. An increasing number of corporations, from mobile phone companies to airlines, have added Twitter as a means by which customers can get in touch. In some countries Twitter still has some difficulties in establishing itself. The site is currently blocked in China and Iran, and language barriers also create a hurdle in other regions.
Twitter is also considering giving its users reputation scores, which would help traditional news organisations using the social networking service to spot breaking news stories. Twitter recently announced search deals with both Google and Microsoft's Bing and the deals added fuel to recent speculation that the micro-blogging site might be a takeover target for either business. However Stone has dismissed any possibility of a sale. "That was never something we were interested in talking about," he said. He said the company was more interested in kindling more partnerships as recently seen with LinkedIn. "We are seeking to ... share our data and form partnerships that are long standing... Twitter wants to work with social networks, with mobile networks, with TV networks with search enginesˇ we want to put a little Twitter in everything," Stone said.
(Agencies)
