LeWeb10 Jason Goldman Twitter

Jason Goldman, VP of Product, Twitter
Q&A with MG Siegler, Writer, TechCrunch

LIVEBLOGGED -some paraphrasing..some bits missed. Video at bottom of post

Photo from Adam Tinworth

MG: you’ve just launched some new integrations?
JG: yes, Instagram, full music, lots of other things

MG: do you see the right pane as a new platform for people to build upon?
JB: we are taking a measured approach. it will be a place for innovation, to build new things. We are getting initial frameworks in place, technical and deal and moving on from that

MG: So how is this effecting developers?
JG: we are building the best experience we can for the users on many platforms. But I still use apps and I think they will have a role in the ecosystem, and want to increase opportuntities. Eg promoted tweets in timeline with Hootsuite. All those clients, we try and support on business opps. We do need to look for new opps, eg verticals, eg sport. There is a lot of innovation about relevance and finding content and we’ll see this

MG: but is there things down the road that devs are working on but you’re not sure yet?
JG: we don’t know…it was resource constraint issue, most resources are still there, but we do have opp to extend, build great clients etc

MG: what is the biggest mistake you’ve made?
JB: any of the UI I designed myself..when we get too complicated. eg when we had IM as an interface. Only worked well with Jabber…idea was clever but made it impossible for users to know where they would get the tweets. We learnt not to get too complicated, to keep it simple. We should not introduce too many options.

MG: You worked at Google – they had lots of testing etc. what do you think about their social elements?
JG: we don’t know the answer yet, cannot judge at the moment. sure it wil be interesting.

MG: why haven’t they done social?
JG: search and ads are their primary business, hard to prioritise the other stuff. getting people with right DNA interested in that problem, that is harder for a big company. It’s a difference of problem and person

MG: so what’s next?
JG: Twitter needs to create a better consumption experience. we have something for everyone..you can get timelines created for your stuff. so how can we create a system that allows you to follow your interest, there is so much more to do in these terms

MG: how has product management evolved?
JG:I started at Obvious…Director of Product Strategy. one of first decisions was just Twitter or other things. moved to product management for Twitter. Had different roles, over time. Have just announced I’m leaving Twitter at end of month. Staying on as an advisor over next few years…we’ve had a lot of changes recently, new CEO, we talked about how we do things. Came to decision to step down.

MG: so has Evan moving to product has something to do with this?
JG: no, worked with Ev doing vision for a long time.

MG: twitter does not know yet? (who’s replacing him)
JG: no, we will be looking. Not sure where I’m going yet…not off to start something yet. Don’t need a long rest, bit it is a chance to take a rest.

MG: what are you leaving ..what are you most proud of? after 8 years
JG: we have an amazing product and design team, proud of team we hired. The new version of twitter launch was big and complicated…the most important thing i did was hire Kevin Change who managed this. Getting stuff out the way to allow creative people to do their stuff. I like some of the smaller things, updated status blogs…writing various company blog posts. But the building of a company is the thing I’m most proud of. We had hopes but did not expect where we are.Finding all the people that wanted towork on the same things, work together. that is what I am proud of