Why isn't Evan Williams confident about Twitter?

As talked about in my previous posting I've been a big Twitter fan for most of 2008. The PR and craze about microblogging has been amazing, and who would have thought a single textbox (allowing 140 characters) would have investors and sponsors falling all over themselves, all wanting a piece of the action.

In a recent article published by NY Times, Evan Williams (the creator of Blogger and Twitter) talks about his dealings with Facebook and his thoughts about the competition. As I read the article I actually found myself being ok with Evan's rejection of Facebook's stock offer for $500M (wow), but was taken aback with his concerns with technology behemoths like Yahoo and Microsoft "stealing" the Twitter concept.

Like most of us I am happy about the contributions Microsoft has made to the technology industry. With the success of Windows and Office it would seem that they "print their own money" and now have their hands in most segments of the computer industry. However, I was reminded in a recent Paul Graham essay that Microsoft's original business idea was to design and sell platforms for programming applications (and languages). Many of the current business models adopted by the company were presented to Microsoft by IBM, almost 5 years after the company's inception.

My point is that big companies (like small ones) have the ability to decide on which technologies to invest in. Startup companies actually have an advantage over large companies because they can experiment with different business models and can keep changing things until they "get it right".

Other "disruptive" technologies (like the iPhone, Google, TiVO) have been introduced into the market that have clearly blown Microsoft out of the water. Microsoft has produced some competing products to match these industry leaders. Others, like the iPhone have no Microsoft counterpart.

Microsoft was known as being an extremely large company that could change strategies very quickly. Now that Web 2.0, Social Media and cloud computing dominate the landscape it would seem that even they have a lot of catch up to do.

My advice to those at Twitter would be to continue doing a great job by focusing on customer needs and don't worry about the potential competition.

When you start thinking about what your competitors it zaps your own creativity and ultimately impacts morale. A great book that supports this approach is "Tuned In" by Craig Stull.