Twitter COO Dick Costolo On Ad Sales and the New Twitter.com | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD

A major shift for Twitter – check the link below for a video interview/overview

In Williams’ words: “We’re trying to get people to understand that they don’t have to Tweet if they want to get value out of Twitter”.

Which is another way of saying that Twitter is a media company: It gives you cool stuff to look at, you pay attention to what it shows you, and it rents out some of your attention to advertisers.

And that’s the real parallel with Facebook here. Not that both have inline video in the timeline or other design similarities, but that both companies started out trying to avoid the advertising business, and that both of them have ended up embracing them.

Twitter COO Dick Costolo On Ad Sales and the New Twitter.com | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD