Twitter: Under the leadership of the comedian

Costello says that while he still makes people laugh around, he is now officially out of the comedy world, and his responsibility now is to turn Twitter from a popular web service into a cash-earner.

Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder, said in a speech that the CEO of Twitter is going to tell stories, and that today's CEO, Dick Costolo, will not only tell stories, Dorsey stories, but also a bit of humour and humor, Because he used to be a comedian.

Since its birth, Twitter, which has created a 140-word revolution, has been seen as a new generation of Silicon Valley representatives, along with Facebook, which has opened SNS, and has been repeatedly contrasted. As with Facebook, the search has been a Twitter project, and after Facebook pioneered the IPO, there have been reports that Twitter has set its IPO plan for 2014 years.

But given the bad stock market performance after Facebook's IPO, Twitter's new Costello has to spend more energy convincing Wall Street that Twitter and its share prices will continue to rise.

His audience, Wall Street, Silicon Valley and even the world, waited and watched the next "show" of the former comedian.

Comedian

This May, the film elite gathered at the Debussy Theatre in French Riviera to attend the opening ceremony of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. But before the Golden Palm Award, the CEO of Twitter, the guest of honour, Dick Costro a speech first. His original theme was to explain how Twitter reshaped business, social activities, and so on. But apparently, he was off topic.

"The General Assembly has given me 45 minutes to complete, or should we do some simple self-introduction first?" He motioned to the front row audience, "From here, please stand up and tell everyone where you come from and what kind of animal you want to be if possible." "As a result, it became the subject of his speech at the Cannes Film Festival.

The digression seems to be getting bigger, is it strange? In fact, it's no wonder that Costello was a professional comedian long before the Twitter revolution and his becoming a corporate leader. So, this background makes him even now retains the style of improvisation, but only business-related. He can talk about performance growth and revenue changes as much as a CEO, as well as a professional actor who occasionally jokes and even makes investors angry.

Once a member of the Twitter board, Flipboard's CEO? Mike McCue had a comment about Costello: "At the board meeting, he behaved like a businessman." But once he's out of the boardroom or on the stage, he's a completely different person, and he'll show everyone around him his humorous comedy gift. ”

When it comes to the identity of Costello comedians, it goes back to their college days. Costello, a graduate of the computer department at the University of Michigan, became obsessed with the drama in his sophomore years and rejected a large computer company invitation to pursue a postgraduate degree in drama at the Impromptu place of Chicago. In the meantime, he has been an actor in a comedy club in Chicago. His body was able to convince viewers that any crazy theory could be achieved, such as the singer Morrison Jim Morrison, the true author of Beethoven's many symphonies, or the downfall of Mayan civilization because of the sudden emergence of umbrellas.

Costello said that in the comedy club work day and night, let oneself learn a lot of things, such as impromptu performance taught himself how to keep things from the end. He often tells a story, one time in a big theater in Chicago, "The show has 1 hours, and we just started for 7 minutes, we know something is wrong." "The audience cursed and tried to blow them out," people shouted, ' Roll down! ' But we still endured 53 minutes on stage until the curtain call. There is no safety net (used by circus acrobatics), no magician will suddenly appear to save us, we can only insist. ”

Costello, who was almost obsessed with comedy shows, gave up his love and accepted an offer from a tech company on the eve of graduate school. 1994 Netscape Browser, Costello realized that the internet will be a big event, he began to seriously study technology and a series of successes, founded and sold three companies-the last one is FeedBurner, an RSS news aggregation Service site, 2007 sold to Google at 100 million U.S. dollars. Naturally, Costello also went to Google as product manager. However, Google in the acquisition of FeedBurner and its own advertising business integration is not very smooth, this let Costello heart cast a Shadow, he chose to leave, once again dreamed of starting a new company.

On the days of leaving Google, Evan, the Twitter co-founder and CEO, sent him a letters on Twitter asking if he would like to join. "There are only a handful of internet companies with so much potential on Twitter. It would be foolish of me to do it. "Soon, Costello became a member of Twitter, and in September 2009 he formally joined the company as chief Operating Officer (COO).

Interestingly, after becoming the Twitter chief operating officer, Costello's first message on Twitter was: "Tomorrow is the first day of Twitter coo." Task one: Weaken CEO power and consolidate COO power. "Unexpectedly, a year later in October 2010, Costello really replaced the Evan (resign the CEO, focus on product development), become the company's new CEO."

"Costello is the best candidate to take over Twitter because the company's next goal is to make a profit," he told Mr Williams when he handed over the reins. In fact, Costello did not disappoint Williams, though Twitter has not yet reached the height of Facebook's billions of valuations, but it has not been a classic case of business school failure. Now, the VC-inspired Twitter has become a company worth nearly tens of billions of dollars, with nearly 200 million users across the globe. Although Twitter has not published its own revenue, it expects to win 350 million of billions of dollars this year, according to industry estimates. "We have an entire quarter ahead of our target," he said. A Twitter executive said.

Saudi Prince Alvalide Ben Talar (Alwaleed bin Talal) and all of its kingdom holding companies (Kingdom LC Company) said in a statement recently that it had just injected 300 million of billions of dollars of strategic investment into Twitter after months of negotiations.

Deviant

"For the image of a company leader or CEO, there is a platonic imagination in people's minds, and those rules are really something I can't follow." I had racked my brains to think about it, but I finally came to the conclusion that I didn't care. ”

Now Costello also extends the performance of the comedian to the CEO's, and in the speech he talks about Twitter with a torrent of banter. At the company, he often shows a deviant side.

To a certain extent, what kind of boss, there will be what kind of employees, Silicon Valley enterprises at the helm of personal personality will gradually influence the company's corporate culture. Just as Facebook's employees are geeks like Zuckerberg's, Apple is gathering a fashionable designer who is as focused as Steve Jobs. Compared to them, Twitter employees may be more like the class of wacky students, like Costello.

Every summer, global media and technology heavyweights gather in Idaho State Sun Valley for the Allen & Company Media Summit, and Costello was invited to attend this July. One afternoon, a company executive patted Costello on the shoulder and showed him a YouTube video of a group of Twitter employees dancing wildly in a corporate restaurant, the background music being Justin Bieber's Baby. If the other CEO saw such a video, it must be embarrassing, but Costello said, "This is great!" said, still do not forget to twist waist, like the video employees dancing up. In fact, he not only approves of this action, but also often participates in it. In the company's Weekly "Tea Party" event, even when the staff to poke fun, he also can laugh, and sometimes he will personally play the host, with his own comedy talent to win the laughter.

The Costello of a comedian is not destined to be a well-behaved CEO. Sometimes he makes some decisions that may not be good for the company and offends investors, but he thinks he has no faults.

In the past two years, when Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and even Facebook giants have been sued over patent issues, Costello a patent. This year, Twitter launched a program called the "Innovator Patent Agreement", which decided to hand over patents to Twitter engineers and designers (not Twitter itself). In this way, Twitter cannot use these patents to initiate lawsuits without the consent of the employee with patent ownership.

In terms of privacy policy, Twitter is a different way of doing things. This May, in Costello, Twitter launched a feature that tracks user behavior to provide attention to users, but at the same time, Twitter also offers a "Track" option that allows users to protect themselves from being monitored. This is a bold move that, while being applauded by users, will obviously offend the interests of some advertisers. You know, until now, most of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising. Before that, Twitter had defied New York court orders to protect the Occupy Wall Street protesters, and Twitter had turned its face when the Justice Department tried to get information from WikiLeaks supporters.

CEO in Flipboard? McCue, Twitter and its CEO are breaking the traditional limits of media companies, Twitter is neither a technology company nor a media company, "Twitter is a brand new thing", "Twitter has its own insistence and dick is sticking to the decision to make it." "he said.

Now, Costello, who has been looking at Apple as an idol, seems to be trying to make Twitter more closed. He began to shift Twitter from a flow channel to a platform that imposed restrictions on Third-party applications, and some applications were ruthlessly banished. The move has also provoked a lot of complaints, as it is thought to be "XIEMOSHALV" for developers who have helped Twitter grow. But the Costello have ignored these complaints, and few have been able to change his decision, at least since earlier this year, to save time by simply dismissing an old employee by telephone. Since his tenure as CEO, several shareholders have been driven away from the board.

In addition to acting vigorously, the 49-year-old, middle-aged bald man also advocated minimalist style. He has been pushing to make Twitter pages more concise so that users can use them more quickly. With the popularity of smartphones, Costello also pay more attention to the development of mobile clients, and at the top of the page also vacated advertising position. "We've come up with a business model and the advertising model is working, and we just need to scale it up." "But what the new business model is, he didn't say much.

Costello said he had heard countless jokes about Twitter's impossibility of making money, but his responsibility was to turn Twitter from a popular web service into a cash-generating money earner; Costello said he had officially withdrawn from the comedy world, although he still made people laugh around.