Quotes from Evan Williams at TED, did my best Evan spoke fast like tweets. There is no news in the talk but Evan was very inspiring in the way he said Twitter was a side project in Odeo which was not taking off. That should remind anybody to always let enough space for creativity and side projects. Imagine if Evan’s board and direct professional entourage were telling him constantly stop playing with that Twitter thing and concentrate on saving Odeo. Odeo would have probably still not grow while the huge Twitter success would have never happened. We should always keep our ideas open, it is not what your initial idea of a business is that matters, it is where you take it and how fast you can adapt to a new side project getting traction. Let’s all have fun little things on the side like Twitter!
“4 years ago I announced on the TED stage the launch of Odeo” @ev #ted
“@jack came with the idea of twitter as a side project. It is hard to do a side project while we were focusing on Odeo” @ev #ted
“I learn to launch projects even when they have nothing to do with the company” @ev #ted
“people lets share people moments of their lives. By sharing these moments as they happen people feel more connected. Primary use” @ev #ted
“we had no idea Twitter would be so big to cover events” @ev #ted
“President Obama is our #1 Twitter user but he kind of lets us down a little recently” @ev #ted 11 minutes ago from twhirl
“we built an API. 2000 pieces of software are capable of sending updates. Summize was the most important one” @ev #ted
“search has changed the way we view twitter. New use cases like a gas shortage in Atlanta. People tweeted the price of gas to help others”
“raising money for homeless people. for family in crisis. people raised lots of money in a matter of day” @ev #ted
“when you give people better ways to share information great things happen” @ev #ted
“I have no idea where Twitter will go” @ev #ted
@TEDchris joked “Evan Williams is just DYING on stage here at #TED. Worst talk ever.”