Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is a man of his word — at least that’s what he’s trying to prove to Wall Street.
Costolo, who spoke onstage Thursday at Re/code’s annual Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., said his mission for Twitter hasn’t changed despite a poor earnings report last month and a slumping stock price. The company is still trying to build its audience by showing tweets to people outside of Twitter, on TV or other platforms like Flipboard.
People are on board with this plan, Costolo said, and it’s time to prove that that plan can deliver actual growth and, more importantly, revenue.
“People believe the strategy,” he said. “They buy it. But we have to show that, ‘It’s great you reached a billion people on and off your site — help me understand how you’re going to monetize that. Show me how you’re going to monetize that.’ Those are things we know and we need to show them how we do it.”
Costolo and Twitter have spent the past year dealing with growth issues, and there was speculation that Twitter had entertained potential buyers ahead of a less-then-stellar earnings report in April. Costolo said flat out that he’s not shopping his company around.
“We have every intention of being an independent [public] company,” he added. “Those things you read about in the press are simply rumors, not facts.”
Costolo was joined onstage by Periscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour, who runs the livestreaming startup that Twitter just bought in January.
Periscope found itself at the center of a new, intriguing debate earlier this month regardinglivestreaming and the potential issues it poses to U.S. copyright laws.
The technology is still fairly new — new enough that broadcasters and sports leagues are still trying to determine how to handle scenarios like the one that took place earlier this month when Periscope users broadcasted the pay-per-view boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.
In that instance, Twitter pulled down dozens of streams that were broadcasting the fight illegally, but the incident shed light on just how difficult it will be for the company to monitor thousands of live video feeds at one time. Beykpour said there’s no simple way to solve the issue, and existing tools, like YouTube’s Content ID, that automatically identify copyrighted materials don’t work so well with live content.
“There’s a lot of innovation to be had,” he said. “It needs to be different than the tools that exist. [YouTube’s] Content ID works in a world where prerecorded content was the thing, and I think in a world where you have [live broadcast] the tool needs to be different.”
Periscope is still growing, Beykpour added, noting that he doesn’t believe the service is just a flash in the pan. People are watching the equivalent of 10 years’ worth of video every day.
