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Twitter CEO: Why he turned down Facebook

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Twitter CEO Evan Williams explains to Federated Media CEO John Battelle his rationale for turning down Facebook in October of 2008. He says, "he didn't see a reason to sell…the point is really what we can build."

>> Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night like with cold sweats saying I should have taken the check from Facebook?

>> I never have no.

>> Ok laughter you're a better man than me. So what was it that went through your mind that made you sort of decide I'm going to be on this one I mean you sold Blogger to Google, on this one I'm going to just go all the way I'm gonna go for it we're gonna see if we can make this company really big and because obviously when someone puts in money to billion dollar evaluation its gotta get that's big already it's gotta get really big. What is it is it Twitter or is it where you are as an entrepreneur or is it both?

>> I think it's both. It's both. I'm not a visionary in terms of I didn't see with Twitter that it's gonna be the biggest thing ever when we started Twitter. I took the CEO job in fact almost exactly a year ago and that's around the time I realized well you know this is really, really big. That was also the time when we had a few conversations with our friends in Palo Alto and ultimately I just didn't see a reason to sell if that opportunity would have presented itself because it's not the point. The point is really to see what we can build. We believe very strongly in the that Twitter and enabling the open exchange of information is a good thing for the world. We see glimpses of this on a daily basis with Twitter. It's what I've been working on for a decade now. We just celebrated the 10th anniversary of Blogger and that really inspires me and it inspires the team and so the goal has never been can we exit? Can we get a big payoff for the founders and investors? That is always a goal but it's enabling. In fact I've always been inspired about something Tim said when I worked for him that business is a context for doing interesting things and the number of interesting things we can do with Twitter is just endless, it blows my mind and that doesn't get more interesting by making it part of a bigger company.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====