14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter is always in the news and not just tech related pieces as all the media has been giving it a lot of attention. This may seem like a good thing but it may also turn out to be a double-edged sword for the micro-blogging service. Twitter Executive and Co-creator Jack Dorsey wants all the hype to die down as he believes it may turn out to be detrimental to the company in the long run.
"I think Twitter's a success for us when people stop talking about it, when we stop doing these panels and people just use it as a utility, use it like electricity," Dorsey said on Wednesday at the Internet Week, New York. "It fades into the background, something that's just a part of communication. We put it on the same level as any communication device. So, e-mail, SMS, phone. That's where we want to be."
Twitter has been having a lot of success based on the media spotlight and has made the most of it with users growing from 7 million in February to over 30 million now. All this growth can mostly be attributed to the celebrities that have begun using the service. First there was the race between Ashton Kutcher and CNN over who would be first to reach the 1 million followers mark. Kutcher came out as the winner and now has over 2 million followers. The other major boost was when he appeared on Oprah talking about Twitter and then, later, Oprah herself began using it.
From then on no one has stopped talking about Twitter, with even a number of upcoming TV shows based on it. But Dorsey would rather have all the hype die down, as he does not want Twitter to become a fad. He wants it to have a steady growth so that it can evolve in sync with the rising number of users and let them change the way it is currently being used and making money.
"I like that question because it speaks to how Twitter came to be," Dorsey said. Many features of Twitter were "behavior(s) that we did not invent. That was usage that we saw, that we made easier. The hash tags that you're seeing today, same thing. The search engine was something that was outside the company."