Interesting developments at Twitter

Is the social media company gaining momentum?

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has just announced his return to Twitter.

“My top focus will be to guide the company culture, that energy, that feeling,” Stone wrote in a Medium post.

It’s important that everyone understands the whole story of Twitter and each of our roles in that story. I’ll shape the experience internally so it’s also felt outside the company.

While Twitter “has woven itself into the fabric of our global society” — as Stone explains in his post — the company has until recently struggled to acquire more users.

But Twitter added 9 million users last quarter and co-founder and chief executive officer Jack Dorsey is now betting on live video to attract new users — he recently announced partnerships with Major League Baseball and Bloomberg news.

In an interview with NBC’s Willie Geist, Dorsey stressed the added value of Twitter in the live streaming programming: the conversation that Twitter is able to create and nurture.

“Not only what is breaking, but also what people think about it,” he said.

In an interview with Steven Levy here on Medium, Dorsey admitted:

Could we encourage better usage of Twitter through changing the product? Absolutely.

He added: “We are always going to be looking for opportunities to make it easier, but also to show what matters faster. We moved from a completely time-ordered, reverse-chronological timeline to actually bubbling up what you should be seeing and what matters according to our understanding of what you’re interested in — and potentially showing the other side of what you’re interested in, as well. One of the values Twitter espouses is that it can show every side of a debate.”

The conversation that forms on Twitter is what makes the social media tool so great. But it also adds layers of problems, including trolls, fake profiles, and harassment. And the progress the company is making on those fronts is slow.

Growing for Twitter is now, but nurturing its current users is important as well… And that is where Biz Stone might help: reinvigorating, re-energizing its user base while attracting new users.

In his interview, Levy asked: “Despite the results you cite, Twitter is very much on the spot. Are you feeling the pressure?”

Dorsey replied: “Good pressure. It’s always good pressure. Look, this company is so important — not only to me, but to the world. It plays a really critical role in the world. A more open exchange of information is our purpose, and it’s a noble one. I want to make sure I’m doing whatever it takes to make sure that we serve that purpose.”

Indeed, the company is gaining new momentum. And, personally, I hope to maybe see co-founder Ev Williams going back to Twitter in an active role and help the company evolve and mature.