The side feature bears a Company

Twitter's Evan Williams got top marks for an early-morning presentation today. Simple. Short. Fun. Memorable. Come to think of it, many of the same principles he applied to Twitter.

The essence is simple. Pull out features, leave only what you absolutely need. But, as the Scobleizer asked, how do you know when to stop taking out features?


"Don't know when," Evan Williams answered, "but carefully and slowly." When they felt they needed them, the users themselves returned more features (the Hash/tags, the @/link, Twitterific, etc).

The interesting part of the features is the idea that each one can be turned not only into a separate product, but into a separate company. Twitter started from the "status" line of instant message clients. Feedburner is another example - and now a $100 M company.

(photo: the main conference hall before it filled up this morning)