Twitter's Jack Dorsey Answers Twitter Questions From Twitter

Hi, my name is Jack Dorsey

and I'm one of the co-founders of Twitter.

And this is Twitter Support.

@babysseoks, my English teacher just told me

the Twitter bird's name is Larry?

Well our co-founder Biz is from Boston.

And when we decided that the bird was going to be our logo

he naturally went to the most famous bird for him,

maybe the most famous bird in the world, Larry Bird.

I will say though, if you follow bird watching on Twitter,

no tweets about Larry Bird.

@madikreates, why does Twitter have a character limit still?

I'm tired of sacrificing my grammar

for the good of the tweet, unhappy face.

So some history on the character limit.

We originally started with 140 characters

so we could fit in one text message

which is what the whole service was based on

in the early days.

But we also believe that the constraint was really useful

'cause it inspired a lot of creativity.

And this resonated with comedians.

It resonated with journalists.

It resonated with poets and hip-hop artists

and creatives of all type.

Figure out ways not to sacrifice your grammar

but to actually make it work.

But we thought, it might be good to increase the limit

just a little bit.

And we decided to do it twice the amount

which seems enough for most people.

And if that's not enough, we have threads.

You can link all the tweets together.

So we have a 280 character limit

but you can link as many tweets as you want.

So it's really limitless.

@mywifeisjoanie asks how can I identify a Twitter bot?

I have suspicions over one or two I see,

but cannot prove it, @TwitterSupport.

Well I'm from Missouri which is the Show Me State.

We're all skeptics.

And I would always recommend that we be skeptical

of everything that we see.

If you have suspicions, go through our reporting flow,

but you don't necessarilly have to assume

that everyone is a bot.

Some people just haven't updated their profile picture.

And some folks haven't chosen their own at name.

So if you see something that is suspicious

we have a reporting flow and you can send it over to us

and we'll look for it.

Always be skeptical.

@peteralstone asks when will Twitter, Facebook, and Google

be regulated like the public utilities they are?

The information economy moves fast, maybe soon?

We believe fundamentally, that the job of a regulator

is to protect the individual

and level the playing field for everyone.

And our job is to help educate regulators around

smart paths forward.

So we're always having conversations around the world

with regulators about what technology makes possible

and how Twitter fits into that.

We welcome smart regulation

and we want to help guide it as well.

@tasisydorres asks ayo @Twitter, can we get that

edit button in 2020?

The answer is no.

The reason there's no edit button,

there hasn't been an edit button traditionally

is we started as an SMS text messaging service.

So as you all know, when you send a text,

you can't really take it back.

We wanted to preserve that vibe and that feeling

in the early days.

But now we have an app and a lot of people

are using us on the web,

and there's some issues with edit that we can solve.

One is you might send a tweet and then

someone might re-tweet that and then an hour later

you completely change the content of that tweet

and that person that re-tweeted the original tweet

is now re-tweeting and re-broadcasting

something completely different.

So that's something to watch out for.

A lot of people want it because they want to fix

a quick spelling error or a broken link or what not.

And that's great, we've considered a one minute window

or a 30 second window to correct something,

but that also means that we have to delay

sending that tweet out.

'Cause once it's out, people see it.

So these are all the considerations, it's just work

but we'll probably never do it.

Okay, @southernkeeks, instead of an edit feature

Twitter should allow users to see how many times

a tweet link has been copied.

Because we all send tweets with a

did you see this one? message.

You know, just to liven things up, smiley face.

I agree that's a pretty good idea.

We'll look at that one.

@alanlampeauthor, hey Twitter god, can you please

activate spell check?

I can't believe there are so many trending

misspelled hashtags, especially from writers.

At least trend the properly spelled hashtags first.

#writingcommmunity #Writingcommunity spelled wrong

#writingcommuity once again, spelled wrong.

Our algorithms would actually notice if these three hashtags

were trending and group them together.

So we don't do the spell check and we don't edit your tweet

but we will group them appropriately in the right way

so that everyone can find your content

even though you might have misspelled it.

@andre3xk, @Twitter why don't you follow your boss @Jack?

Twitter was following me for a while

and then we decided to do something much, much cooler.

We put a bunch of people on billboards

and their tweets on billboards

all over New York and San Francisco

and we follow them now.

And now we can DM them as well.

So I don't really mind.

Okay so @GaryWaites asks question to photographers, artists,

illustrators and creative types,

have you read the new terms for Twitter?

Does this mean Twitter can do what they like

with our content?

And if you look at the first screenshot it says

you retain your rights to any content you submit,

post or display on or throughout the services.

What's yours is yours, you own your content

and your incorporated audio, photos, and videos

are considered part of the content.

So what that means is you own it,

you can take it down at any point.

You want me to read all the terms of service

that he links to as well?

@PeterKimFrank, is this article satire?

Among other things, it claims that @jack

regularly meditates two hours each day,

spends 52 minutes each day doing sauna plus ice bath,

eats just five meals per week.

Some of it's real.

I try to meditate two hours every single day.

I definitely do not do a sauna and ice bath every day.

And I eat seven meals every week, just dinner.

@Logmey92, how does one acquire the illustrious

check mark on Twitter?

There's a guy named Kayvon

and he handles all the verification

which is the blue check mark.

So if you either DM him, or mention him,

you have a high probability of getting a blue check mark.

So it's @K-A-Y-V-Z.

Verification, he's the verification god.

So just go to him and he'll get you sorted.

Okay I have a question from AdaptToReality.

Question, why is Jack going to Africa?

I am going to Africa because it's a pretty incredible

collection of entrepreneurs and folks that

I think we all need to learn from.

But I want to make sure that I had a good understanding

of what's happening on the continent

and how folks are thinking about technology.

And anything that we can do to help support.

@Vaempyre, spelled V-A-E-M-P-Y-R-E.

Does Twitter sell my data immediately?

I like a few posts and I immediately get ads about it.

No we don't sell your data.

We try to match whatever we think you might be interested in

with an advertiser that is selling or offering a service

that match those interests.

@iFlopstr8s, @twitter, when will there be a dislike button?

We've never actually thought of that.

So let's, I'll get that to the team and we'll get on it.

@BaldSavant, so apparently we can now

follow topics on Twitter,

but we can't user generate those topics.

Wouldn't it have been 1000 times easier, better

to just let us follow hashtags?

Well so this is, one step for us.

We're trying to determine what the most interesting topics

are to start.

And this is all based on our machine learning

and deep learning algorithms.

We bubble those up so that you can follow them.

I recommend following bird watching, it's incredible.

The other good one is weather.

But there's over a thousand right now.

And we'll get better and better so you should see

more and more topics.

But eventually you might be able to follow a hashtag.

But what's interesting about this approach

is that even if a hashtag is not mentioned

you'll still see relevant tweet about birdwatching.

@GHMonberg asks @jack, what is your favorite feature

on Twitter?

Well right now it's the ability to follow topics.

I think it's incredible, it's awesome.

And it works really, really well.

I'm finding so many accounts that I end up following

and so many tweets that I would not have otherwise seen.

For sports, for weather, and of course for bird watching.

@robschn asks @twitter can you just give us the ability

to use regex on muted tweets?

They never work right.

So that's a very Unix technical term.

That's a regular expression.

It's a pattern matching tool

for a lot of computer scientists.

We thought that might be a little out of reach

for most people, but it's a good suggestion

and our engineers back at the company would love it.

So it's probably going to be done tomorrow.

@_daaniaal with two As and two As.

Twitter should have a close friend list too aight?

@twitter.

Who would you put on your close friend list?

We'll look into that.

But you can actually create a list

with all your close friends and put them right at the top

of your timeline and switch quickly to them at any point.

So we kind of already have that.

Aineninell, how does one trend on Twitter?

I've been trying to figure that out for quite some time.

Who do you sell your soul to?

Not interested in trending but am looking to get into

the soul business.

[chuckling] You know I think if you spread this tweet around

this one will probably trend.

@dasariprapulla, @twitter can we get translation option

for any tweet?

This already exists.

You can translate any tweet that you see.

You just tap into it and you hit translate tweet.

@thefriarswife, how do you think or hope

decentralizing Twitter will transform

the user experience?

Well the most amazing thing is I have no idea.

And that's what makes it so exciting.

We believe that Twitter is best served

by having the largest corpus of conversations

by having different perspectives on how people consume

those conversations and interact with those conversations.

I think generally it's just gonna create

a ton more invention for us and innovation for the community

using Twitter every single day.

@cojahaski, @twittersupport is it possible to claim

an abandoned Twitter handle that has zero followers,

only one tweet, and has been inactive since 2014?

You can reach out to support directly with the account

and we'll see what we can do.

Thank you this has been Twitter Support.

I'm Jack Dorsey and I would really love to wish you all

a great, oh I ran out of my characters.

Oh we have 280!

Have a great day.

Have an amazing day.

I hope that was helpful.

If not, mention me on Twitter and I'll see what I can do.