16
Jul
2009
CrunchUp Live: The Real-Time Moment
Today, at our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp conference Erick Schonfeld is sitting down with Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter; Chris Cox of Facebook; and Bret Taylor, co-founder of FriendFeed.
Erick: Jack, tell us why you decided to present the info that’s coming through Twitter as a stream of information and why is it resonating?
JD: It’s the way I’ve always been visualizing information. A stream, imagine a 911 calls a typical center gets, and those calls flowing into a stream that bubbles up makes sense. We developed it over many iterations.
ES: Facebook always had a stream element, but with the latest re-design this has been emphasized in a big way. How’s that going?
CC: Originally the site was just a bunch of profiles, wasn’t real-time. The inspiration for news feed was how you can see this curated, dynamic info around you on Facebook. The newsfeed we had before the redesign didn’t support the real-time use case.
ES: Twitter for me is like a public IM system; earlier Ron Conway was talking about the value of social relationships. To what extent are you trying to create a stream of public information and encourage users to making the stream public to everyone? Are you trying to create a public IM System?
CS: It’s all about offering the user the choice. We’re trying to give people a more granular control over the audience-
ES: FriendFeed is embracing information overload, can you talk about this? Is that the optimal UI?
BT: Once something is shared, having those discussions in real-time does make it seem like an IM conversation. We want our comments to be quick so people feel like they are discussing around a table. All of these systems represent the modern water cooler. You can share reading/watching experience with friends and discuss it. Everyone wants to have a social aspect to all communication.
ES: What type of content/messages do people have the most likes and comments?
BT: Ones that contains media, photos, music.
CC: It’s hard to generalize. Of course when there are major events or shared real world moments like Michael Jackson’s memorial, there is a peak.washingtonpost
