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Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wants 'a world where people build into Twitter,' not off of it

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wants 'a world where people build into Twitter,' not off of it

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Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that the company hopes to become a hub for events, becoming a hub for news and information related to sports events like the Olympics, among other things. Costolo told the WSJ that the company would "soon explain further restrictions," and again dropped hints that should sound foreboding for third party app developers and users. He

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In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has reiterated many of the storylines we've been watching from the social network for some time. He pointed out that the company hopes to become a hub for events both large and small, which lines up with previous reports that Twitter plans on centralizing news and information related to sports events like the Olympics. Costolo actually had foreshadowed this aim as early as January, when he elaborated on the space Twitter occupies between technology and media. The changes presumably will help Twitter reach a larger, mass audience — but perhaps an audience that's meant to come to Twitter's own properties, not third party apps.

That latter point has been a contentious one (again) since a June posting from a Twitter developer promised "stricter guidelines" for third party developers. Big changes do indeed seem to be in store in the coming months, changes that are expected to make Twitter more of a wall-garden service than it has been to date. Costolo told the WSJ that the company would "soon explain further restrictions," and again dropped hints that may sound foreboding to third party app developers and users. He said that instead of wanting companies who "build off Twitter," he prefers "a world where people build into Twitter" (emphasis ours).

Exactly what this brave new Twitter "platform" will be is still fairly unclear. What does seem to be the case is that the company hopes it will look more like Facebook — both in terms of size and apps. Whether consumers actually want Twitter to look more like Facebook is an open question, one we may have an answer to soon enough.