Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo said the company’s recently announced online content policy was meant to be a transparent way to handle government requests for the removal of certain content and did not mean it is actively monitoring Tweets.
“There’s been no change in our stance … in respect to content on Twitter,” Costolo said at the “Dive Into Media” conference hosted by the website AllThingsD
Costolo said Twitter would only block Tweets locally at a government’s request and would leave the Tweet up for the rest of the world.
And, he said “Twitter is not a media company,”
“We’re in the media business, but we’re not necessarily a media company,” Costolo explained. “We don’t create our own content; we’re a distributor of content and traffic. We’re one of the largest drivers of traffic to other media properties, to other online web properties, even to films.”
Costolo likewise skirted questions about whether Twitter would have its first profitable year in 2012 — “We don’t discuss financials,” he said
