To set the record straight, there’s been a lot of confusion around what Twitter may or may not be doing, stemming from an interview Reuters did with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.
Stone originally appeared to indicate that the company was considering partnering with news organizations on some kind of new Twitter news service. Since then, the company’s communications team has assured us that the company has no plans to do so.
Twitter’s Matt Graves went so far as to say, "We’re not thinking about creating a Twitter news service. It already exists — it’s called ‘Twitter.’"
Twitter’s Sean Garrett says Stone simply "pondered how news orgs could do this on their own (or together). Perhaps w/ direct access to Twitter data. all hypothetical."
Another tweet from Garrett said, "Ask @biz a "can you imagine Twitter doing…" Q, & he’s going to get creative and imagine. Related: No plans for a ‘Twitter news network’".
That does not mean however, that news organizations can’t use Twitter in different ways like an AP-like newswire service. For more on this concept, see my original (yet updated) article on the concept, which includes the embedded Reuters video interview and actual quotes from Stone. Here’s the video again:
The bottom line is that the company has no plans to create its own news service, and already considers Twitter itself such a service. When all is said and done, Twitter is an important source of news, and news organizations will likely continue to look for new and ineresting ways to present this news.
Ben Parr at Mashable suggests that Twitter release some kind of news-based Firehose for news organizations to tap into. Twitter has made no indication that it plans to do this. In the meantime, all that public Twitter data is there to be consumed and distributed. It’s all in the curation of that data, and Twitter’s existing lists can aid this cause greatly.
Interesting that it took two days for Twitter to clear all of this up though, since the Reuters story was published Monday. And no clarification from @biz himself yet.