Twitter Can Scale Better Than Email, Says CEO Evan Williams

At a recent tech event, Twitter’s CEO, Evan Williams, said that his popular micro-blogging platform is well positioned to handle information overload as it is a “recipient-driven medium”. He claimed that unlike email (which he claims is a basic sender-driven and creates discontent for both senders and recipients) Tweeting (and blogging) caters to both the publisher and the consumer of information because of a better target audience, and this will allow Twitter to scale better in an information overload world.

Williams also commented on Google and predicted on products that will filter information on Twitter. Gigaom reports:

That’s also a contrast to Google, said Williams, which serves more purpose-driven needs versus Twitter’s focus on “an interest-based world.”

“Google is very good at ‘I need to solve a problem, I need to buy something, I need an answer,” he said. “Twitter is more ‘I’m interested in many things, I don’t know what I need to know.’” Where Google is more likely to be gamed by a company like Demand Media, Twitter is a different beast.

However, there’s still the problem of filtering information on Twitter. “What we need to get much better at is scaling that system so you don’t have to pay attention to everything, but you don’t miss the stuff you care about,” Williams said. He said more such products were on the way. Williams also said to expect forthcoming products that would help filter relevant tweets around events, similar to what Twitter is doing with location. This would go beyond the user-developed convention of hashtags, he said, though he didn’t elaborate.

Gigaom: “Ev Williams: Twitter Will Actually Help Information Overload”

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