I don’t own Twitter stock right now.
Jack Dorsey – their CEO – is out on the interview trail. I think this interview with the Rolling Stone was a good one. I learned a lot about how Jack is thinking and about the product itself.
How did it all connect to Twitter for you?
One of the joys of Twitter, actually, unlike most of my programming, was that I wrote a line of code, and it made Biz [Stone’s] phone buzz. It was physical. That was my one joy within Twitter in the first two weeks. I was programming something that made an object move. I would tweet something, and Biz’s pocket would buzz. Then he would be thinking of me. That made it really tangible. That’s when I was really hooked on this balance between the physical and the software world. Programming is an amazing field. I like painting, I like drawing and I like programming, because those are the arts where you literally start from absolutely nothing and suddenly something can emerge.
What did you initially respond to in punk?
The fact that you would have these bands of three people get up onstage who were absolutely terrible. They would get booed. People would throw things at them. They would keep playing. Then they came back in two weeks, and they were a little bit better. Then they came back in two weeks, and they were much better. Then they came back in four weeks, and they were amazing.
I’m fascinated by this concept of working in public and allowing people to see you get better and better as time goes on. To me, it’s what the world needs. To me, that’s one of the greatest benefits Twitter provides. Elon does it so well. He works in public. He thinks in public. He ideates in public. I got that from punk. Hip-hop has a little bit of it as well. Kanye, Life of Pablo, was that in the streaming age. “I’m gonna fix ‘Wolves.’ ”
How do you define your spirituality?
Not to any particular religion. Anything that builds self-awareness feels spiritual to me. I guess I feel a sense of spirituality when I feel a connection to, like, global consciousness. What I love about walking around New York is it just feels so electric and I feel connected to everything. Even though I’m not talking to anyone, it feels like I’m in a moment that’s super-dense and very, very connected. I think Twitter has some of that potential to show at least the closest thing we have to a global consciousness. Being able to tap into what people think. What the vibe is around whatever’s happening in the world. That’s how I wanna be able to use it. It’s like, what do people think about what I just did? And that’s where I think text matters over video, over images. Text is so quick to the neurons. It’s just so quick to consume. It’s so much more raw in terms of expression, where it makes you feel the feeling in it.
When I started Stocktwits, a lot of what Jack is talking about in this paragraph rings true. I wanted people to be able to tap into what people think about the markets or a stock. I also believe that text matters over video and images. A human ticker is something I thought would be unique and I believe it remains unique even today.