Twitter's co-founder responds to the rumors

May 26, 2009 07:37 GMT  ·  By

There is no Twitter TV show. Well, there is no official Twitter show but there is at least one show in early production that will focus on Twitter. The news spread yesterday that Twitter was working on a TV show starting from an article in Variety. Everyone picked it up but the majority of views were at least skeptical if not outright against the idea.

Twitter is currently the wonder child of the social media and has gained huge mainstream success in the last couple of months. And with everyone trying to get in on the game either for cash or for fame, the idea of a Twitter TV show didn't seem that outrageous.

Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, posted a response on the official blog, commenting on the Twitter TV news. He confirmed that there was a contract with production company Reveille and Brillstein but that this contract was non-exclusive and other companies were also working on shows related to Twitter. What they had in mind was basically a reality show putting “ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format.”

“There is no official Twitter TV show—although if there were it would be fun to cast! In dealing with networks and production companies we sometimes have simple agreements. Regarding the Reveille and Brillstein project reported today, we have a lightweight, non-exclusive, agreement with the producers which helps them move forward more freely,” he wrote.

This strategy of not getting too involved in these projects makes sense for Twitter and in fact it is in keeping with the company’s strategy as a whole. It tries to be as open as possible on the premise that there is no such thing as 'bad publicity'. Any show that is based on Twitter will only put it more in the eyes of the consumers and drive the user numbers up. But this approach also serves another goal. If these shows turn up to be garbage, Twitter can easily step away claiming it had no direct implication in them.