JACK DORSEY (CEO OF TWITTER) ON CHARLIE ROSE

Twitter Chairman and Square founder Jack Dorsey sat down with Charlie Rose last night to talk about Dorsey’s unique position of being responsible for two technology startups based on the idea of simplicity: Twitter and Square. Watching this interview you realize that Dorsey’s accomplishments have little to do with luck, and more with his focus on creating the purest products by throwing away any unnecessary flourishes. “It’s really complex to make something simple,” he tells Rose.


Dorsey describes himself as an “editor” who edits technology and teams “so that we have one cohesive product that we tell the world.” In the clip above (provided by the Charlie Rose Show), Dorsey talks about how he got the idea for Square and how hard it is to make mobile payments no more complicated than swiping a credit card.

Dorsey believes the most powerful technologies are those which disappear, like the iPad disappears:

“When you’re using the iPad, the iPad disappears, it goes away. You’re reading a book. You’re viewing a website, you’re touching a web site. That’s amazing and that’s what SMS is for me. The technology goes away and with Twitter the technology goes away. And the same is true with Square. We want the technology to fade away so that you can focus on enjoying the cappuccino that you just purchased.”

In the clip below, he talks about how he got the idea for Twitter from his obsession with cities and dispatch systems, but how he felt those systems were missing one thing: the people, his friends. Now Twitter is not just about status updates but about pointing to, and carrying via short links, other media on the Web. He boils down the essence of Twitter into this: “Any media that you can imagine it can point to a carry in real-time. And the only other technology I know that’s done that well is the web itself.”

Dorsey also pegs the number of registered Twitter users at 200 million (when I checked with Twitter to confirm this number, I was told it was very close, but not quite there yet—so chalk that up to rounding). Also, asked at the end whether Twitter is making any money, Dorsey said the company has revenues but it didn’t sound like it’s got any profits yet.