My life has been a series of well-orchestrated accidents; I've always suffered from hallucinogenic optimism.
I like to think of the world as a sort of a casino, except the house doesn't have the advantage. If you're smart, you have an advantage. It behooves you to place a lot of bets.
The things that keep nagging at you are the ones worth exploring.
Every major communication tool on the Internet has spam and abuse problems. All email services, blogging services and social networks have to dedicate a significant amount of resources and time to fighting abuse and protecting their users.
Google started out when the dot-com boom was happening. It grew under the radar of big companies that were competing in but basically ignoring search. Then they were able to really invest during the bust for a long time.
Twitter was designed to be this system that you just scan for information that's important or useful to you and then walk away, and if you wanna take a break you take a break.
Traditional news is often full of mistakes, but I think that people are getting more sophisticated in knowing what to trust and what not to trust.
When I meet with the founders of a new company, my advice is almost always, 'Do fewer things.' It's true of partnerships, marketing opportunities, anything that's taking up your time. The vast majority of things are distractions, and very few really matter to your success.
I've done a lot of stupid things, but in most cases I can't complain about the outcomes.
I think there's few cases in history where the C.E.O. steps down and is also the founder and reports to someone and that works.
I subscribe to about 200 blogs. I look for insights and good writing, and I look to get smarter.
While GeoCities isn't cool, it isn't a bad thing. It did a great thing - enabled great people to instantly publish to the Web.
I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee.
People are fans of Dunkin' Donuts. They have a relationship with the company, they go there every day. Dunkin' Donuts is using Twitter to communicate with those people. There are people who are finding value in that. There's thousands of people, I don't know how many thousands now, following Dunkin' Donuts.
Anything I've done that really worked happened because, either by sheer will or a lack of options, I was incredibly focused on one problem.
I tried to be a ski bum when I stepped away from Twitter, and I wasn't a very good skier.
I suspect there's a lot of validity to the premise that big companies aren't going to attract entrepreneurial talent.
I'm not a big-company guy. I need freedom and control.
The promoted tweet is a real tweet that a company may have sent out that they want more distribution for. They will buy key words for it. If people are looking for something related, it will show up.
Twitter isn't a social network, it's an information network.
