12-21-2012
BK: Tell us how you became one of the co-creators of Twitter.
DS: In 2006, I worked as Head of Quality for a podcasting company called "Odeo" in San Francisco. As our company struggled to gain users, we held an idea competition, or "hackathon," in an effort to save the team.
I was on the small team with Jack that came up with Twitter, and first pitched it to the group. After the inception, I helped to design the privacy features including "protected" status. Since then I've worked tirelessly to explore the medium and attract great leaders and interesting people from all around the world to our platform.
BK: You are responsible for creating the book ?140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form.? What was your goal in creating this guide?
DS: I was in elementary school when I wrote my first program on an Apple II. I was a teenaged English major when hypertext was born and the Web came to life. I've always had a fascination with the intersection of engineering and the liberal arts at the point of most good to society. As one of Twitter's creators, it's my responsibility to explain how to use it for the most good. My goal with "140 Characters" was to compliment the other time-tested writing guides like "The MLA Handbook" and "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White.
Another goal was to simultaneously publish the physical book and an interactive version available as an iPhone app (see http://j.mp/140-web). This app contains many innovations now being integrated into iBooks and other popular digital book formats.
BK: Tell us about some of your other success stories, specifically your work with the Obama '08 political campaign.
DS: One week after iPhone launched in 2007, six advocates of Open Source brought 400 developers and designers to San Francisco for the first iPhoneDevCamp. The co-author of SSL, the founder of BarCamp, a prominent analyst, a master inventor, a community organizer, and myself held a 48-hour idea competition in the exact spirit of the one that contributed to the formation of Twitter. We used Twitter to build more Twitters.
This community has blossomed into the world's most prolific hackathon, spawning hits like Square, Temple Run, Tapulous (sold to Disney), Small Society (sold to Walmart), FoodSpotting, and my company DollarApp (sold to Chaotic Moon, which also came from a camp co-founder).
Our biggest success was the Official Obama '08 iPhone App?built from napkin sketch to download in 22 days by a team of rock star volunteers from our community using Open Source that we ourselves developed. The app generated over 41,000 phone calls to swing states in the month leading up to the election, and has served as the model for modern political "apptivism."
As usual I was the test engineer and build manager. I sent our work to the campaign staff, managed all feedback, and supported our maintenance releases. A sure sign of approval, our team got a personal phone call from Steve Jobs as we released the app, saying "Thank you."
BK: As you imagine what you were a part of building in Twitter, how do you think radio is utilizing this tool and how can you coach our business to take more advantage of it?
DS: I've studied this in Australia and in the U.S.?radio is not using Twitter as effectively as it could be. There seems to be a kind of apprehension, as if Twitter will somehow eclipse the need for radio. This is baseless?Twitter only enhances the experience of listening and reacting to radio.
Give your Twitter handle out at the beginning and end of every segment. Create hashtags and shortened links for your listeners to use in response to each discussion. Follow up and document the conversation if you can, and take the discussion offline or into other media like email when appropriate.
Focus not on the number of users you have, but measure instead their quality and level of engagement. Follow @thebook for great examples and links to more of this type of advice.
BK: Where do you see the future of social media and radio in the upcoming three to five years? What?s new on the horizon?
DS: On the horizon are more "niche" type social networks like Path, Square, and Reddit. Look for services that simplify the experience of writing, posting, and editing specific types of content.
I'm personally on the lookout for the perfect social network for audio, the evolution of the podcast. Anyone interested in this should reach out to me and my company Chaotic Moon (http://chaoticmoon.com).
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