10 Questions: Jack Dorsey on Square, Twitter on 9/11 & Social Media ‘Experts’ Without Souls

 
Last Friday I was fortunate to spend 30 minutes talking with Jack Dorsey, who in addition to co-founding Twitter recently launched a product & service called Square. As an electronic device, Square is a mobile credit card reader that plugs into the audio port of compatible smart phones and laptops. As a service, Square is a downloadable application that verifies sellers and provides buyers a measure of security about the transaction itself. From small businesses to political campaigns, the potential applications for Square are virtually unlimited.

A few highlights and then the interview after the jump. Also strongly recommended: Friday Coffee with Square on Ustream

1. Why we were better off without Twitter on September 11th 2001: “One thing I was really inspired by after 9/11, especially in NYC is how people gathered and really sought each other out face to face…. My concern with relying on the technology would be that it would potentially abstract some of that humanness, and make it a little bit easier not to go out in the streets and not to go out meet your neighbors and really support each other.”

2. What Wired.com Got Wrong: No PayPal v. Square Deathmatch: “We want to be completely payment network agnostic, so if you're really comfortable using PayPal and you want to pay (or receive) with it… but you still want the Square front end experience, that is something we would be interested in implementing and maintaining."
   
   
3. Top Politicos on Twitter: Barham Salih,  Cory Booker,  Mike Bloomberg,  Francis Slay.

4. Why ‘Social Media Experts’ using Auto-Follow Services Have No Souls: While Jack was more diplomatic in his phrasing, if you're doing something against the "fundamental spirit of the technology,” for me, that is red flag. That is not to say paid advertising of an organizations account is a bad idea, but the whole idea of paying for followers / friends is somewhat repugnant: “I think any sort of automation or any sort of aspect like that really takes away from the spirit of the technology which is to really share what you think, what your experiencing, what is happening around you. I think there is a lot of people in the social media space that are trying to consult against that, and I am fully supportive or that.”

5. Advice for Entrepreneurs: Communicate, Build Something People Need:  In response to a question about production delays and software issues, Jack said his biggest challenge since starting Square has been: “Communicating in the right way what is actually out there today, what works and what still needs some work” In regards to supply problems with Square, I asked Jack if he had considered domestic supplies  “The only reason we picked China is because we could not find anyone in the U.S. to do it…”

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Jack Dorsey Debuts @Square Mobile Payment Device in D.C.

On Tuesday evening Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey attended a fundraising reception for Missouri Congressional Candidate Tommy Sowers to officially debut his latest invention, Square which currently allows anyone with an Iphone, Android or laptop to send or accept payments for just about anything. Mobile credit card readers are not new. However what sets Square apart from the competition is:

1. Compact size- About the size of your thumb, or 1.5” long, 1” deep and 3.5” tall   
2. Electronic Receipts with Location. After a purchase you immediately get an email receipt for what you bought and where you bought it.
3. Square is free. No additional hardware, applications or monthly service fees.
4. Low transaction cost. Square charges 2.75% + 15¢ for swiped transactions. (Paypal is 2.9% +.30 cents for transactions under $3,000.)

In terms of Jack’s inspiration for Square, (as well as Twitter) I highly recommend watching his June 2nd speech to the 99% Conference . A few highlights:

• “Payments, and the exchange of money is inherently social, it is another form of communication- So why isn’t it designed and treated as such. That was one of the reasons we started Square.”
• The financial crisis created the opening for Square: “The situation allowed us to quickly seek out all the people we needed to talk to, at the banks, at the government, the card brands.  Everyone in the financial world was suddenly in survival mode, looking for innovation, looking for new things, looking for new business models.”
• “90% of the country paying with plastic card of some sort, but only 2% of the country can accept payments with those cards. So what if we turn on the other side, what happens and what does that interface look like”
• For Twitter: The @ symbol, ‘RT’ for re-tweets, # for hash tags and even the word ‘tweet’ were developed by the Twitter community, and initially resisted by Twitter.

In terms of the politics of the event, although announcing and presenting Square at last week’s Personal Democracy Forum would have been a larger, bi-partisan audience, when I asked Jack why he chose the Sowers event, his reply was essentially that while the Sowers fundraiser was a partisan event, that Square as a device and Twitter as a platform are available to the same degree to all sides equally. Secondly and more importantly though, he was impressed with the Sower’s campaign utilization of social media tools and that they were the first ones to reach out and ask for his help on the event. Also, being from St. Louis, he has a personal interest in Missouri’s representation. Furthermore,  not only does just about every senior staffer on the Sowers campaign maintain and use Twitter accounts , as far as I can recall I have never seen a political email written in Twitter speak that explicitly asks the reader:

Even if you can't make it, can you help make noise about this on twitter?  We want all of DC talking about this for weeks to come.

If you could tweet something like: "Please RT: @sowers and @jack at #sqdc TONIGHT, this is not an event to miss! http://bt.io/FN4u"

Be sure to use the event hashtag #sqdc.

More pictures bellow the jump:

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Charity Water: A Great Use of Online Video

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Charity: Water is a great organization, and as an online communicator I’m constantly impressed with the innovative ways they have built a movement in support of clean drinking water for everyone.

In particular, non-profits and charities should pay close attention to their web videos, which are the gold standard in my opinion.  After you watch the video above, it is hard not to be left with an overwhelming desire to walk through a wall for Charity:Water.  Lots of people make great videos, but what makes this one so special is that it almost compels you to take action.

The Power of Chat Roulette

Chat Roulette is a fascinating and bizarre new website that enables visitors to randomly chat with strangers around the world via webcam.  The concept for the site is dead simple – you visit the homepage, click Play, and all of sudden you are dumped into a one on one conversation with a random stranger.  If you are horrified by or bored with your chat partner, you simply click Stop and move on to the next person.

Recently, Chat Roulette has hit the big time, with usage skyrocketing and mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post devoting ink to the site, which launched in November.  I’ve used Chat Roulette a few times now myself, mostly as an experiment, and like everyone else I’m equal parts fascinated and horrified.  While Chat Roulette supposedly bans pornography, you will undoubtedly come across some nudity if you use the site long enough.  You’ll also run into some fringe societal elements, and have great conversations with some interesting people you would never come across otherwise.

The power here is in the randomness of it, and in the connections you can make.  Every time you switch to a new chat partner it is like opening a present.  It may be a horrible present, but it’s still fun to open and see what is there.  In a world where sites like Facebook and LinkedIn force us to build networks and define our relationships, there is a real power in a site like Chat Roulette that allows you to experience life outside your sphere.

I also think it is inevitable that the chat roulette concept will be appropriated.  Why not start a Chat Roulette that connects people around common interests instead of being entirely random?  Maybe cat lovers?   Why not build functionality into your website that allows visitors to enter into random chats with other people visiting the same site at the same time?  There seem to be lots of possibilities to me, and it seems like the concept, if not the Chat Roulette site itself, could be one of the Internet’s next big things.

I could be wrong.  Chat Roulette could be a one hit wonder that fades away after the novelty wears off.  But to me it looks like the creators have happened on a very powerful and useful way for people to connect with each other, which is ultimately what the Internet is all about.

Google Earth Unveils Technology to Prevent Deforestation

During  the UN Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen this week, Google unveiled an advanced Google Earth prototype that allows  satellite imagery to show and measure the progression of deforestation in regions around the world.  Google teamed up with software experts Greg Asner, from Carnegie Institution for Science, and Carlos Souza, from  Imazon (both institutions with forest data programs used in Latin America)  and created a “cloud-based computing” technology  that gathers all satellite imagery data for a region and displays them in a user-friendly format.

Google offers before and after stills of the technology on their blog:

This technology will enable organizations and researchers monitoring deforestation to gather data in a matter of seconds, as opposed to the days of weeks it would originally take.

As stated on the Google blog:

“On a top-of-the-line desktop computer, it can take days or weeks to analyze deforestation over the Amazon. Using our cloud-based computing power, we can reduce that time to seconds. Being able to detect illegal logging activities faster can help support local law enforcement and prevent further deforestation from happening.”

Google hopes to release this technology to the public during the coming year.

If you’d like to learn more about how current Google Earth technologies can promote environmental awareness, please take a look at the video Bivings produced for Wild Australia.  Using Google Earth video and b-roll footage, we created a short video showcasing the ecology of the Southwest Marine region of Australia.