Biz Stone Quotes - Page 2

Embrace your constraints. They are provocative. They are challenging. They wake you up. They make you more creative. They make you better.

We didn't have anything before Twitter that allowed a group of people roaming around a city to communicate instantly, in real time, and in a coordinated way, in a group.

The determination that led me to create a new sports team taught me an important lesson: opportunity is manufactured.

Even though running is physically straining, it's mentally refreshing. Especially when you feel like you've accomplished something.

I got an idea: people like news why don't we write the news down on a piece of paper, and we'll gas them up and drive them to everyone's house. I mean, if you were going to say that now, it doesn't sound like a great idea, because there are other ways you can distribute the news.

You curate information that you want to receive. It's a lot different because I'm not asking you if it's okay, I'm just saying I'm following your updates. That's why I don't think of Twitter as a social network.

Investors are employees you can never hire. We made sure to pick investors that thought like us.

When a plane lands in the Hudson and there's a Twitter user on the ferry taking a picture of it, Boom. That's it. The water is still splashing. Here's the photo of the thing.

The two things I use the most are the MacBook Air and my iPhone. Those are my two most-used gadgets that are dented, scratched and smashed.

People first. Technology second.

I'm curious about writing in the age of online publishing. Because nobody cares about good writing online.

A Twitter update is simple and fast and gets the information and news, and it spreads it very quickly, and it can contain links so you can then link to this whole context of information.

I started as an artist and I had a side job moving some heavy boxes for a publishing company. They had just gotten a Mac for their art department, the department that creates the book covers. I was kind of showing the art director a thing or two about how to use a Mac. And one day everyone went out to lunch and I jumped on the computer and designed a book jacket and slipped it in the pile to go to the review board in New York. They picked my jacket and when the art director got back to Boston, he wanted to know who designed it and I said, "Me." He was like, "The box guy?"

We actually created Twitter and Odeo at the same time. When we realized we didn't really want to be running Odeo anymore we looked around for anyone who wanted to buy Odeo, but not acquire us as a technology. But people aren't as interested in that.

I knew Mac pretty well. I'd used them when I was younger.

We realized we weren't really using Odeo, we weren't investing our own time creating podcasts. We were building a tool that was a great idea for some other people. That's a dangerous way to go because if you don't actually use it yourself and love it, then you aren't going to be as fully invested in it from the start. That's what leads you to doing side projects.

I'd dropped out of college to start design thing.

We can break news really fast. When an earthquake happens, there are people Twittering about it.

People are watching TV, they're watching some clips on their iPhone. I mean, some folks are sitting there on the iPhone, watching the Colbert Report, and meanwhile there's a huge plasma TV right in front of them that they could be watching it on.

I was writing and developing software for alumnae to be able to connect and communicate.

When you think about Twitter, there are people all around the world reporting twenty-four seven, every second. They're reporting what they're seeing and what's happening around them. So there's a lot of potential for breaking news.

I think we definitely want to focus on the simplicity aspect because it's something that's built into the culture even here at Twitter. Constraints inspire creativity.

I started designing book jackets, which was great because I was good at it. And then from there I decided to become a freelance graphic designer and I needed to expand beyond book jackets, so I taught myself web design, and then in 1999 some friends of mine decided to start a company called Xanga.com, which was a very early kind of social network slash blogging community.

You have to think for an email. What's the subject? What's it about? It takes two seconds to think about that. So you have to think, Is this a work thing or a social thing? Which? Then you get into a situation that you don't want to be in, because then people are thinking about it too much.

There's a lot of social input when you put these things out there. People's ideas cross with other people's thoughts.