Twitter CEO: Google has all the data they need

At the D:Dive Into Media conference, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told Peter Kafka that Google has all the data it needs to present Twitter data in its search results right alongside Google+ results. That has been the latest public response from Twitter after Google recently began pushing its own social network in search results while keeping out Facebook and Twitter.

“Google crawls us at a rate of 1300 hits per second… They’ve indexed 3 billion of our pages,” Costolo said. “They have all the data they need.”

Costolo went on to say that the dispute between Google and Twitter was never about money, as it’s been reported previously. Instead, he said that the disagreement between the two companies wasn’t limited to the financial disagreement. “Both of us wanted a value exchange where it wasn’t just about money,” he said.

Other interesting info from the keynote:

On the company’s decision to allow country-by-country takedowns of tweets, Costolo said: “We want to be able to leave the content up for as many people around the world as possible,” while operating within the boundaries of laws in the countries in which it operates.
On Twitter’s reasons for not participating in the SOPA/PIPA blackouts, Costolo said, “When you’ve got a voice like Twitter, you don’t take the batteries out of the microphone,” he said.
On whether or not Twitter is a media company, Costolo said it is in the media business. Specifically, he said that Twitter is a distributor of traffic to other media companies. “We’re one of the largest drivers of traffic to all sorts of other media companies,” Costolo said.
“One of the reasons we’ve got so many [celebrities]… is that they can interact directly with fans,” he said.
Costolo said that Twitter was tremendously valuable for television, as it has become the focal point for television conversation and also extends the conversation about TV shows. “I think it will be commonplace to use Twitter as the focal point on the second screen,” he said.
“Maybe 10 years from now, people will look back at my tenure and say, ‘Gee, what a moron.’”
“I don’t think about how can I extract as much value out of this platform as possible… It’s about how can I create more value,” he said.
Costolo doesn’t appear to see much value in second-screen social apps, repeating again the thought that Twitter would be the focal point for TV viewing in the future.
About 40 percent of Twitter users don’t actually tweet, they just consume. But Costolo was quick to note that more than 99 percent of TV viewers don’t create TV shows.
On Twitter founder Jack Dorsey: “The fascinating thing about Jack is, he’s got all of these people in the world telling him, ‘You’re the next Steve Jobs.’ …but… “It’s pretty amazing to be as open-minded and humble about the product as he is.”
When it comes to mobile, Costolo said Twitter had yet to create a good feature-phone experience. “There are lots of places in the world where feature phones are the majority of devices. We need to be on those devices so that when those people upgrade, they’re already active Twitter uses,” he said.
Costolo downplayed the “palace intrigue” associated with major changes in his company’s board that were reported earlier Monday. He said some people would like to ascribe the changes to “some crazy ninja move” … but he said “the reality is a lot less interesting than that.”