The full transcript of NDTV's exclusive interview with Evan Williams, Twitter's Co-Founder at their headquarters in San Francisco.
 
NDTV: It's a word on everybody's lips. You can hardly pick up a newspaper or a magazine without somebody talking about Twitter and we are very pleased to have its CEO Evan Williams join us.
 
Evan, first and foremost, why the name Twitter? In hindsight considering how big it has become it sounds almost flippant.
 
Evan: We chose the name twitter because it means communication between birds, which is why birds are also on our branding and our logo. It started as a very simple way for people to communicate and it seemed like a light and simple term that reflected the nature of the service.
 
NDTV: Light and simple may be how it started but now it is huge, from it's debut at the music festival South by South West where it helped friends coordinate their plans, to helping a revolution take place in Iran. But Twitter isn't making any money yet? The company has no discernible revenue?
 
Evan: Before I get to that I think that it is important to understand what we are trying to do. Twitter is all about fostering open communication and letting as many people exchange information very quickly and letting people find out what is going on about the things they care about. That's what we are trying to do at a global level. That can happen either via businesses or individuals and we are still formulating the business part of it. But there are a lot of opportunities when it comes to helping people find out what is going on and there are definitely commercial opportunities there as well.
 
NDTV: 15 minutes before the New York Times had the story on the crash of the plane into the Hudson on its website, it was on Twitter. Francis from Bangalore has written in on ndtv.com with a question for you. He says: Is Twitter altering conventional journalism trends?
 
Evan: I think it is another element in the ecosystem of media. It does not replace journalism. There is a place for deep thought and investigative journalism and more lengthy pieces. Twitter is limited to 140 characters. But what it does is that it gives people the opportunity to share information with a large number of people as and when they want. So the man standing on the banks of the Hudson was able to post a picture of the plane as it landed and it gives an immediacy and personal touch to it--that the media could not do immediately. But the media then picks it up and it becomes a story. So it makes media more immediate and stories richer.
 
NDTV: And nothing illustrates the need for immediacy and a personal connection than what happened during the Mumbai attacks.  Mumbai was a watershed moment for Twitter, wasn't it?
 
Evan: Yes, it definitely was. It represented a milestone for what Twitter could be. In the US, it was Thanksgiving for us and we have a feature where we can monitor what everybody is talking about and it was all about Thanksgiving and turkey and all. But suddenly we were like Mumbai, what? Why? Almost immediately, as it happened we saw these reports from people on the ground. So someone who has the honesty and perspective does not have to be a journalist to share something interesting and bring real time awareness to a situation that is new and profound.

 
NDTV:  So where does India stand in your plans for Twitter? Do you have a specific plan for India?
 
Evan: We have a lot of plans for India. We are really excited about India right now. From the beginning we sought to create a global information network and you can't even consider that without considering India, not only because it is such a huge domestic market there but also because it is the biggest democracy. There is such a strong youth contingent and it is so vibrant and our hope is that it connects both people in India and India with the world with more immediacy and intimacy.
 
NDTV:  And the fact that the growth of phone users is enormous in India - is that part of your strategy?
 
Evan: That is a huge part of our strategy. We started with SMS so that is why tweets are limited to 140 characters. That's why we have simplicity to tweets. Even though a lot of the growth has come from the web, we have always had this vision that we wanted to spread Twitter to the weakest connection in the world. In India with 500 million phone users we can go from SMS to smart phone and so we think that it is really a big deal.
 
NDTV: But a lot of this growth in phone users in India is from rural areas. How are you going to get around the language barrier?
 
Evan: First of all, people can tweet in any language. And they are all over the world and we want to make it better. We have launched a few interfaces and new languages. Last year we launched many new languages.
 
NDTV: So are we going to get them in Hindi, Malayalam or any other Indian languages?
 
Evan: Yes we want to support all those languages eventually. We also want to use our user base to help translate the site but then there are probably already people tweeting in all those languages. We just want to make it a little easier for them to get started.
 
NDTV: We have a very famous tweeter in India, the Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor. Are you guys paying him, because he is a walking talking advertisement for Twitter in India!
 
Evan: No, we are not paying Mr Tharoor or any user to use Twitter. We are very pleased that he is. We are excited that he is. We are very pleased when politicians and people who have unique perspectives are sharing that with the world and removing barriers between people in power and their constituents. I think that is a very powerful idea.
 
NDTV: You've introduced the concept of showing local trends. When will it be available for India/Indian cities?
 
Evan: We are working on that right now but I don't have a date for it. We just launched the local trends last week so that's why it may take a little time but I think it will be soon. The local trend is based on volume. They require a certain amount of volume in the market in order to generate the trend since they are statistically generated and I think our user base in India is growing very healthily and so when it generates volume I think it will catch on.
 
NDTV: Twitter recently changed the way you represent "suggested users" but still there are only 2 Indians on it. One is Shashi Tharoor and the other I think is Vir Sanghvi. When are you going to add some more and what about NDTV?
 
Evan: I cannot promise anything directly because our suggested users are algorithmically based. Another way we want to improve the experience in India is to have local suggested users and to have local trends. If there is somebody who has a broad, large following then we want to inform more people about them, but it is not purely editorial.
 
NDTV:  And most start-ups have a lot of Indians. Is that also the case at Twitter too?
 
Evan: Absolutely.  We have a significant contingent of Indian Twitter employees and they have all been really enthusiastic to help our efforts in India, which have just been getting started, but it has been more enthusiastic than other countries that we have been expanding to.
 
NDTV: So why is India interesting a place to use Twitter? What is the potential?
 
Evan: There are all sorts of uses for Twitter in India similar to the rest of the world, but we know of specific uses like cricket scores that are shared over Twitter and a number of users subscribe to that. Knowing when trains are on time or delayed I am told would work well in India. That's happening here, and I am told this could be a killer application in India. People working with humanitarian aid say that in the villages where it is hard to get access to information, it can be sent out through Twitter via SMS or a phone. Our goal in expanding globally is to grow not just where there is the most people but also where we can really change lives.
 
NDTV:  Being updated on late trains is definitely something we can use in India. You also had Mallika Sherawat here in this office.
 
Evan: Yes, Mallika has been an active and interactive user of Twitter for a while now and she dropped by our office a few months ago. It was quite fun. She taught us how to do some dancing and showed us a clip of her upcoming movie. I think everybody really enjoyed it.
 
NDTV: Yes, it does look like a fun place to work. All right, a lot of our viewers wrote in on NDTV.com with questions for you.  One of them asks: what would you like to see Twitter used for most?
 
Evan: Well, we try to be pretty agnostic about the specific uses of Twitter. One of the beauties of Twitter is that it can be used for anything. People bring their own needs and wants to Twitter and it can fill all roles. Our mission really is to foster open communication in a way that can change people's lives. Not just for chatting with people all over the world but in ways that makes their lives better. It could be a simple thing like where to get lunch today as you could get a daily lunch special tweet from your favorite restaurant to getting information about a global event--going back to Mumbai. Hopefully, it is all of the above.
 
NDTV: But when you started Twitter, you envisioned it for use on mobiles - that's why the 140 character limit. But now with many people going on Twitter on their computers at office, does that become redundant?
 
Evan: We did start on mobile. Specifically SMS. One of the things we did not necessarily plan but has become a big success for Twitter is the Application Programming Interface (API) where third party developers have written hundreds of applications and ways to develop them on the desk top and the mobile and that has been a big driver of our success. But mobile is clearly the future in terms of reaching the most people and being the most use to people in their daily lives. So we have never strayed from that vision, but have always held the view that it should be ubiquitous and available however people want it.
 
NDTV:  When you say ubiquitous and available the obvious question that comes to mind is China and the problems Goggle is having in China. Where does Twitter stand on this issue?
 
Evan: We are still figuring that out. We have users in China, we have users who use Twitter in Chinese, but so far we do not have an office in China or a service in China so they have to decide how the internet works in their country. We are generally in favor of the open exchange of global information. We think that that has a positive global impact. We do not like impediments to that, whether technical or legal,
 
NDTV: But Twitter's big moment was the Iran election, when in the face of a media crackdown, the average man on the streets of Iran had Twitter. What began as online chitchat for college kids, after Iran, started being taken more seriously.  So surely you have considered how to deal with his problem in the future?
 
Evan: The Iran election was a big deal for Twitter in terms of a major event where this type of communication was useful. We were very happy that people were able to use it and get out critical information at that time. But we were blocked and we don't have a lot that we can do in that particular situation, but we hope that in the long term some of these impediments to open communication will go away either through technical means or legal or political means.
 
NDTV: Well, the State Dept is not usually concerned with dotcom start-ups. But during the Iran elections they reached out to you and asked you delay your maintenance upgrade so as to not disrupt service to Iranians, which you did.  Did you ever think that Twitter would be a part of US foreign policy?
 
Evan: To be clear we did not change our maintenance schedule simply because the State Department contacted us. A lot of people contacted us. It was critical that we need to take the site down for a scheduled maintenance and with a lot of peoples input we decided that we could move that maintenance window--with some difficulty-- in order to help communication flow more freely in Iran. The Obama administration or the State Department does not have direct influence over what we do but I think that what they have indicated--through their own use of Twitter and support for other start ups--that they think that technology is good for American and the rest of the world to foster communication. That is an ideal that they can get behind.
 
NDTV: The State Department also used Twitter to raise money for Haiti?
 
Evan: Raising money on Twitter is one of a number of things that we have seen that can happen when people have a very easy way to express themselves. One of our beliefs is that more good things can happen. People want to do good things, they just need a prod sometimes, and what Twitter and other technologies that connect people are showing us is that if you make it a little easier for people then you will enable them to do what they want to-do, to help people out, to form groups and do good. In the best case what people will say about Twitter is that it is not a triumph of technology but a triumph of humanity.
 
NDTV:  So why is Twitter the medium of the moment?  Why does it seem like the time is right for Twitter or that Twitter is right for the times we live in?
 
Evan: I think Twitter is popular and growing because it serves some basic human needs. From the basic, this is valuable information that helps one make choices and keeps one informed, to the desire to express oneself and reach other people and have influence. These are things that people have always wanted to do. They are innate and universal. Biz (Stone and I have been working on this for over a decade--tools that allow people to do this. So it's sort of a natural evolution. It's getting easier, more widespread and more global.
 
NDTV: But it is not all laurels for Twitter. In the US, there was a controversy over a woman who tweeted after her son died. Is micro bogging being overused or do you welcome all sorts of tweets?
 
Evan: We certainly welcome all sorts of tweets and everybody has to decide what they are comfortable sharing. Collectively, society is learning new norms about what to share and what not too. Because Twitter taps into some basic human needs--the desire to connect, people are going to have different standards for that. So a woman tweeting after her sons death is obviously a tragic situation and she was probably look for what all people look for-- a connection and empathy, and that is perfectly understandable. We do not place any judgments on that. It goes back to our belief that sharing information in general has a positive effect.
 
NDTV: But considering that we are not really talking to people we know many say this is just a platform for self-promotion. Is that also a basic human need?
 
Evan: It is partially that for some people. Again, people bring their own needs and wants to twitter. Part of the beauty of Twitter is that you can say things and those who want can tune in and you are not obligated because you know someone you have to listen to what they have to say and vice versa. It is part of the way we set it up. So it really is a meritocracy where the information hopefully gets to whoever is interested in it. Connections are formed sometimes based on real world scenarios and sometimes based on just some one who shares the same interest as you, and it does not have to be self promotional.
 
NDTV:  All right, Evan. Lets try go back to the piece of information that everybody wants from you, how does a company like Twitter run. Where does the money come from?
 
Evan: All right, there are a few ways that we plan to make some money. We are making money right now through deals that we have done. We have not rolled out our real long-term revenue generating services but the thesis is pretty simple. First of all, there is a lot of commercial activity on Twitter today. When you take the concept of immediate information and communication tool it is natural that it is used for businesses and people are tuning in. There are major brands that are using it from Coca Cola, Comcast to Jet Blue to other major airlines who are sharing information with their customers, to other local smaller businesses who for the first time are getting a communication channel to people who come to their flower shop or restaurant for example. It is a two-way communication. That is vital. It is not just advertising but it is a way to get feedback and information from your customer base, which you were not able to do before. So thousands of businesses are doing that and finding value in it. The customers are finding value in it because the nature of Twitter is that if people are not opting in to see what you have to say then you are not reaching any body. That is happening organically with the tools. It has happened almost from day one. If we are able to create that value then there is definitely a business there for us. So it is definitely an evolution. We are building better tools for those businesses. We are also building a way to get information back to you. A lot of the information you are interested in is commercial in nature. The way Google does it that I do a search for some thing and it shows up and it happens to be an ad that some one paid for. We are trying to do the same for Twitter because I am explicitly saying that I am interested in this because I am searching for it so there is clear value there and clear intentions and so there are ways to make money
 
NDTV:  So are you considering embracing Twitter ads?
 
Evan: We are definitely looking at ads and we are trying to do so in a way that is very organic to Twitter and adds user value.
 
NDTV: And these big companies you mentioned, are they paying for this service?
 
Evan: They are not paying for it today, no. We have plans to make a better product for them. To try and make what they do easier and more efficient and transient and also gives them feedback.  Because if you get feedback from your customers it's a signal, so there are analytics in that.  So if they are adding value to users there is a product for that, and they will definitely pay for that.
 
NDTV: All right, you are clearly keeping your cards close to your chest on that one. OK so Twitter is growing so fast that short outages are not unusual.  What do you say to Venture capital firms and your users who raise this issue?
 
Evan: We are making progress. We are not where we should be. Our goal is to make a very reliable product, a communication service that you know is always there and we have not reached that goal yet. We started out as a very small startup. As you said it grew very fast and the big challenge is to make it work at scale and that is something that we will get to. The charts have shown that we have gotten better over time. Soon, we think it will not be a question any more.
 
NDTV:  Ok, lets go back to a question our readers of ndtv.com had. Kunal asks what do you feel about the role Twitter is playing in news gathering and news creation?
 
Evan: I think it adds to news gathering and news creation. Not just does it add to what already going on. It also gives a better form for certain types of information like cricket scores being sent to on twitter. It's a great format for that because it is very short and it is very immediate. It is some thing that you can get throughout the day and you don't need a paper for that
 
NDTV: But how do you verify the authenticity of Tweets. How can it be a part of news gathering if it is impossible to authenticate sources?
 
Evan: Part of it is that people are able to opt in to whatever information they trust. There is no way to guarantee authenticity across the board one-way or the other. 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. My strong belief-- in being in blogging before Twitter-- is that in trying to create more information out there, in trying to create the democratization of media in general, is that the more voices there are out there then the likelihood is that the truth bubbles up to the top. Because if you only have a few voices, even if they are not corrupt, if they are wrong, which happens on occasion you have fewer people to correct them. So in general while there is a lot of misinformation out there the forces of democratization help truth find the light.
 
NDTV: But Twitter has become an important marketing tool for celebrities and politicians. It gives you a level of intimacy with these stars that was never possible before but that's also why there are so many impersonators out there. How does the reader know that when SRK says he enjoyed ringing the bell at the NASDAQ it is really him?
 
Evan: Impersonation is against our terms of service. We have a "verification of accounts" process that we do, where we get in contact with a person behind the account - If it is a famous person - and we verify whom they are and we take down other impersonations accounts when we are made aware of them. So look out for the blue check mark on the persons account. We cannot do it for everyone but we are looking at ways to scale that.  But trust also builds up over time just like it does in the real world. If you are talking to someone who you just met on the street for the first time you will have a trust filter as compared to some one which you know very well. The same thing happens on Twitter. You have different levels of trust for every tweet that you see based on the context and whom it has come from.
 
NDTV:  Twitter forced an undisclosed number of users to change their passwords this week after it was hacked. How do you tackle that problem?
 
Evan: That is definitely one of the unfortunate aspects of systems like Twitter. It is not unique to Twitter. 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. That is nature of the business. We have a significant team at Twitter - called the trust and safety team -  which works on fighting both manual and technical abuse.
 
NDTV:  So one of our readers on ndtv.com Priya asks--how powerful a force is Twitter in terms of shaping the way the Internet is used today?
 
Evan: It is hard to say how powerful it is. It has definitely influenced a lot of companies and tools and is being built into a lot of other tools and services. The Internet is a very big ecosystem where a lot of things influence everything else. A part of the beauty and complexity of all these services is that they can talk to each other now so I would say we all influence each other.
 
NDTV: Tanmay from Dubai asks what is the most surprising step in Twitter's evolution for you?
 
Evan: There have been many surprising steps. Twitter really evolved since what we thought about it from the beginning. Early on we thought it was mostly a social communication system for sharing SMS's and status updates from people you know. Since then many milestones have been passed. Users and developers have taught us new uses for it. From Mumbai, to raising money in Haiti. South by SouthWest was a big milestone early on--a music and technology conference where a critical mass of people were sharing information about the event as it was going on. Whether or not you know the person, if you were interested in the event or were part of the event then these tweets were interesting to you. That taught us that sharing information real time has information beyond the social context. There have been many other milestones. Eventually we brought another company called Summize- a real time Twitter search engine that we have since built into the product and that led us to all sorts of new scenarios. For example there was a gas shortage in Atlanta and people were using Twitter to inform others of where gas was available using a hashtag (#atlgas).  A hashtag is again one of the things that users invented. So we had complete strangers helping each other. Things like that have happened over and over that we would have never thought of and we see them every day.
 
NDTV: What do you say to criticism that Twitter is dumbing things down and shortening already short attention spans. How does one say anything meaningful in 140 characters?
 
Evan: We don't take that lightly. Our goal at twitter is to improve people's attention and place attention on the right things. There is definitely a lot of potential with technologies like Twitter. With the incredible amount of media we are exposed to we get a little bit caught up with what is the new thing, what's the new info. That is not what we are into. We hope that we can build technology and better filtering that will allow people to really focus on what matters to them. That is really the long term product and technology pattern for Twitter getting better and better at harnessing this information, not just to put more stuff in front of people. So there is constantly something new but what out of this morass is really valuable to me? What is the meaning that is coming out of all this information?
 
NDTV: The Internet has been nominated for the '2010 Nobel Peace Prize'.  Do you think this is a legitimate entry?
 
Evan: It seems strange because the Internet is really people. The world is the Internet. It is a living-breathing organism. It goes back to what I was saying that Twitter is going to be a triumph of humanity rather than of technology. To say that the internet is the prize winner would be put technology before the people who make it what it is so that does not make that much sense to me.
 
NDTV: Twitter now is three years old.  In dog years and the life cycle of startup is quite a long time. What's next for Twitter?
 
Evan: In so many ways we feel like we are just getting started. We have had three amazing years. We have built a substantial user base and a substantial team-- although we are still just over 120 people working on Twitter, which is huge compared to how big we were a year ago, but tiny compared to the size of other companies that are trying to have a similar impact.  So our long term plan is to build a sustaining company of enduring value. It will probably be a large company because the potential is so big and because the needs of things to build and the users to support are so large. We are just getting started with the technology itself. We started with a very simple idea of sending these short messages but now that we have a bunch of people sending information there is so much more that we can build out of that. We have a billion ideas. We are just trying to do them one step at a time.
 
NDTV: Finally how good of a tweeter are you and how many followers do you have?
  
Evan: I have just over a million followers but I could be better. There are much better people than me.
 
NDTV: How does one get better? How can be witty consistently in 140 characters?
 
Evan: It should just be natural. I encourage people to not put too much thought into and just really share what is on your mind. If you start thinking about it too much or worrying if it is a good tweet then you lose the spontaneity and the authenticity of the medium, which is really what makes it shine.
 
NDTV: And who do you follow? Any recommendations?
 
Evan: Gosh, I hate to recommend any one in particular. I follow friends, family, industry people, Mallika Sherawat, and Bollywood people, Indian people, a wide variety.
 
NDTV: All right, lets end with a question from one of our viewers. Nishant asks do you ever feel that you're living out the script of the ultimate start-up company story?
 
Evan: Well, we definitely feel that we are very fortunate. I don't know if there is an ultimate start up story. A lot of people here have had amazing rides. But Twitter really has had a trajectory that we would not have predicted and we definitely think that we are just getting started.
 
NDTV: Evan Williams Thank you and all the best for you chapter in India.
 
Evan: Thank you, we are very much looking forward to expanding in India.