Yes, Twitter is talking to big Internet companies about forming partnerships with them. No, it is not looking to sell itself.
That is the latest from Fred Wilson, the Union Square Ventures partner who was an early investor in Twitter, the microblogging start-up, and is on its board.
Speculation over Twitter’s possible relationships with various partners began earlier this month, after TechCrunch claimed that Google was discussing a purchase of Twitter. After that report was discredited, a new flurry of rumors began about the start-up’s flirtations with various big Internet and media companies, including Google, Microsoft, the News Corporation and NBC Universal.
In a blog post titled “Sometimes We Talk,” a Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, set off a new round of speculation when he vaguely said: “It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects.”
In the interview with me, Mr. Wilson shed more light on the discussions.
“Twitter has now reached a scale that most of the larger media companies — whether traditional or Internet media companies — are starting to think, ‘We need to have a Twitter strategy,’” he said. “All the people you’ve heard of and more are coming to Twitter saying, ‘We want to do something with you.’”
Meanwhile, Twitter is becoming more useful to more people in various fields. “There are lots of conversations going on and Twitter is struggling to figure out what to do with whom, when and how,” Mr. Wilson said.
So far, the conversations have been about distribution partnerships, he said. Twitter is currently seeking a director of strategic partnerships to work on these types of deals.
Most Web sites seek page views because they sell ads based on page views. Twitter does not sell ads and does not prioritize views to its Web site, Mr. Wilson said. Instead, it measures “tweet views,” the number of tweets viewed times the number of people who viewed them. To Twitter, it does not matter whether a tweet is viewed on Twitter’s Web site or on Facebook, a Twitter application or a phone. From Day 1, distribution of tweets has been “singularly the most important thing” for Twitter, Mr. Wilson said.
Some people set their tweets to upload automatically to their Facebook pages, for example. If someone reads a tweet on Facebook, is that a good thing for Twitter? Mr. Wilson said it is.
So, a partnership with Google or Microsoft, for example, could increase Twitter’s tweet views while also providing the bigger companies with a real-time stream of messages relevant to their audiences.
It is similar to Google’s approach in its early days, when it joined with companies like AOL and Yahoo, added Brad Burnham, another Union Square Ventures partner.
The vast amount of attention Twitter is receiving has been difficult for the company, Mr. Wilson said, because it is still so small. The San Francisco company has about 30 employees and only one, Anamitra Banerji, has been hired to investigate revenue plans. Twitter is actively hiring. The director of strategic partnership position is advertised as “the first business development role in our mostly product- and engineering-oriented company.”
Mr. Wilson could not rule out an acquisition, conceding that “money has a powerful impact on people” and that despite the Twitter co-founders’ desire to build a big company, they also have to answer to investors and employees.
Still, he reiterated that Twitter wants to remain independent for now and has a lot more that it wants to achieve on its own. That was the reason Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, gave for turning down Facebook in November and the one that Twitter’s co-founders have repeated since then.
An advertising partnership with a big Web or media company is also less likely to happen soon, Mr. Wilson said. “We’re encouraging them to work on reach and worry less about monetization.”
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