Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Dick Costolo

Twitter Hits 250 Million Tweets Per Day

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:50:14 +0000

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has revealed an interesting milestone. Twitter is now hitting 250 million tweets per day. Twitter has gone from 90 million tweets per day in September 2010 to 100 million at the beginning of the year. Now Twitter is at 250 million, which is a 177% change.

Twitter went from having 30% of its 100 million users active every day in January 2011 to over 50% active daily users. Costolo said “We think that we can be on 2 billion devices around the world, and reach every person on the planet, and the way to do that is through simplifying.”

Photo Of Silicon Valley Tech Titans and President Obama

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:10:06 +0000

The White House has uploaded some images on Flickr of President Barack Obama’s meeting with the tech titans of Silicon Valley. This photo symbolizes how the meeting went. The meeting was about how these executives plan to support entrepreneurship, increase exports, and strengthen the economy. The executives in this picture includes:

-John Doerr, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
-Carol Bartz, president and CEO, Yahoo!
-John Chambers, CEO and chairman, Cisco Systems
-Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter
-Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO, Oracle
-Reed Hastings, CEO, NetFlix
-John Hennessy, president, Stanford University
-Steve Jobs, chairman and CEO, Apple
-Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO, Genentech
-Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google
-Steve Westly, managing partner and founder, Westly Group
-Mark Zuckerberg, founder, president and CEO, Facebook

President Obama Meeting With Major Silicon Valley CEOs Today

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:51:26 +0000

President Barack Obama is making a trip to Silicon Valley today and is meeting with some major tech CEOs. The names of the executives that he is meeting was revealed by the L.A. Times. The meeting will be about supporting entrepreneurship, increasing exports, strengthening the economy, etc. Below is the list of people that he is meeting:

* John Doerr, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
* Carol Bartz, president and CEO, Yahoo!
* John Chambers, CEO and chairman, Cisco Systems
* Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter
* Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO, Oracle
* Reed Hastings, CEO, NetFlix
* John Hennessy, president, Stanford University
* Steve Jobs, chairman and CEO, Apple
* Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO, Genentech
* Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google
* Steve Westly, managing partner and founder, Westly Group
* Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, president and CEO, Facebook

Can Two Tech CEOs Have Breakfast Together Without A Buy-Out Rumor?

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 22:52:19 +0000

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was rumored to have had breakfast together in San Francisco earlier this week as reported by Forbes. “Could this mean Microsoft is interested in doing some sort of deal with, or even buying, Twitter?” said Forbes writer Victoria Barret. Yes, Twitter is the hot property that everybody wants a piece of right now. And yes, Microsoft attempted to buy out Facebook and Yahoo! to grow their web portfolio. Maybe Ballmer was in the area and wanted to talk to Costolo about how their Bing and Twitter partnership is going.

I had a beer with former Digg CEO Jay Adelson last April. Does that mean that Digg wanted to buy out Pulse2.com? No, we just talked about Digg and the tech industry in general. Maybe all Ballmer and Costolo talked about is what is happening in Michigan as both of them have roots there. Ballmer was born in Detroit and went to high school at Detroit Country Day and Costolo went to University of Michigan. Maybe both of them talked about how Rich Rod should be fired instead of an acquisition.

[Forbes]

Dick Costolo: “I Am Currently Trying To Define What Twitter’s Purpose Is In The Long Term.”

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 20:25:22 +0000

Dick Costolo was interviewed in the Telegraph UK where he discussed what his role as the newly appointed Twitter CEO is. When asked what the long term vision of Twitter is, Costolo said “I am working on clarity around that at the moment. I am currently trying to define what Twitter’s purpose is in the long term. We will be able to be more specific on that answer in the near future.”

Twitter was built as a project by co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey. Co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams became the faces of the company as they have been seeking ways to clarify the purpose of Twitter. Twitter has been heavily depending on its community to define what features should be built into the service.

“It is hard to speak about Twitter’s vision without factoring in how much of its purpose has been defined by its users over the years. Users came up with so many parts of the service, such as the ‘hashtag’ [which allows people to link to a subject or an event] as so many people use it in so many different ways,” said Dorsey. “Twitter needs to continue being a good listener and recognize that the service has been redefined by lots of people, tweet by tweet, but also come up with its own priorities.”

[Telegraph UK]

Dick Costolo Becomes New Twitter CEO

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:53:50 +0000

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams has asked Dick Costolo to become CEO of the company. This way Williams can focus more on the product. Currently Twitter has 300 employees. There was about 20 employees two years ago when Williams took the CEO job at Twitter.

Back then about 1.25 million tweets were created per day and now 90 million tweets are being sent out per day. Two years ago when Williams joined as CEO, there was about 3 million users and now there are 160 million users.

In the past, Costolo founded Feedburner, an RSS feed analytics company that Google acquired for $100 million. He quit Google in July 2009.

[Twitter Blog]

Promoted Tweets Being Sold For $100,000 Each

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 02:51:00 +0000

Twitter is selling promoted tweets for $100,000 each and higher. However marketing companies are pondering whether the investment has been worth it. Currently advertising on Twitter is considered as an “experiment.” Best Buy and Pepsi tested out the ads already, but have not bought ads again and about 80% of the companies that bought an ad have not bought any more.

Marketers want more targeting options and wants better analytics. Marketers also believe that it is more effective to set up a Twitter account to talk to customers for free. Twitter COO Dick Costolo said that 5% of people that see Twitter ads actually interact with them

[WSJ]

Twitter Hires Adam Bain As President of Revenue

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:06:33 +0000

Micro-blogging company Twitter has hired Adam Bain to be the head of their revenues department. Adam Bain will be reporting to Twitter COO Dick Costolo.

Before joining Twitter, Bain reported to Jon Miller, the President of the Fox Audience Network. The Fox Audience Network is essentially a parent company of MySpace, IGN, and News Corporation’s other online properties.

As the head of revenue, Bain will most likely be working with Google and Microsoft on search deals that have already been established.

[TechCrunch]

Twitter To Make Money From Contextual Ads

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:12:25 +0000

Twitter now has a revenue model. Aside from the real-time search deals that Twitter has with Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), the company will soon start to integrate contextual ads within their stream. The contextual ads are part of a program called Promoted Tweets. Ads will appear in streams where they are expected to be relevant. Some of the companies on board include Best Buy, Virgin America, Starbucks and Bravo.

“The idea behind Promoted Tweets is that we want to enhance the communications that companies are already having with customers on Twitter,” stated Twitter COO Dick Costolo. Twitter received 22.3 million unique visitors this past March. In March of the year before, the company hit 524,000 uniques. Twitter will measure the ads placed in the stream using the number of people that saw the post, number of people that replied to the post, and the number of people that clicked the links. [NYT]

Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo Stepping Down From Google To Pursue New venture

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:19:49 +0000

Dick Costolo is the founder of Feedburner. After he graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Computer Science, he went three-for-three in co-founding start ups and selling them off.

The companies he found and sold off included Burning Door Networked Media which sold to DKA LLC. And then he co-founded Spyonit.com which sold to 724 Solutions. Finally he co-founded Feedburner which sold to Google for $100 million. Perhaps Costolo wants to go for a fourth.

Feedburner was based in Chicago when it first started out. After being acquired, the employees of Feedburner worked on several other projects within Google such as advertisements. The Feedburner service and user base was rolled into Google’s own RSS system. When working at Google, Costolo reported to Neal Mohan.

[via TechCrunch]