>> from pier three in san francisco, welcome to "the best of bloomberg west." innovation, tech, and the future of business. i'm emily chang. we bring you the best of west, the top interviews with the power players. t-mobile and ceo john leger are making good on their promise to shake up the mobile phone industry.

the "uncarrier" added subscribers, more than verizon and at&t. t-mobile is using cheaper plans and promotions to lower customers -- to lure customers. the company posted a loss of $151 million. all this is coming as sprint is preparing for t-mobile takeover bid. i spoke with the president and started by asking about the boom in start up growth and how this happened. >> we added not only 2.4 million customers this quarter, but 6 million in the last year. 1.3 million postpaid net adds in 3.5 million in the year. as you said, we added 12 times as many phone net adds as our nearest competitor. the only reason is that the other two competitors, the calculation is infinity. even smart people like you can't out that math. it is a vindication that the on

on -- the uncarrier movement is the right one. it has plenty of runway to go. once you have our numbers, the wireless industry grew in q1. all the growth went to t-mobile, so it is a good start. >> how long can you sustain this? how many customers are really that unhappy with their service that they will cut bait and switch to you? >> just approaching 50 million customers. last time i checked, the duopoly has 100 million. we have a long way to go. we are focusing on changes consumers appreciate. at&t and verizon have been making changes to respond to us. they are temporary. they're the same kind of bureaucratic, short-term trickery. it is just not working. i don't care what they do. i am just focused on making the

changes that solve consumer paying points. as you know, there is plenty more. i don't see any reason why we can't continue this momentum. color me unimpressed as relates to verizon and at&t. >> i was in the car with an uber driver. he said it's a lot cheaper, but coverage didn't compare. he wished he could switch back. what about those customers? >> was your driver cory? he's an uber driver now, isn't he? as you noticed, yesterday we got an approval for the 700 and acquisition from verizon. which we will be building out. our network improvement over the

past year from zero pops of lte, with the deployment of the 700 megahertz band which will be focused mostly on in building penetration and rural edge coverage, there is line of sight to it. i would tell you that the improvements in the network were directly correlated to why we had record churn, at one point five percent. which is part of why moving from 11% share, that suggests that these network improvements are working. we will continue to invest. hopefully, if you send me the name of the driver, we will find out exactly what his issues were. we will solve them. that is what i do every minute of the day on twitter and iphone. i work on individual people's issues. that is working. that is working. >> you are still losing money,

more money than people thought you would be losing at this point. how long are you willing to continue to do that? >> let's put that in perspective. when people say we are losing money, more than people expected, we have shifted our own guidance from what was a range of 5.7 to 6 billion, we changed it from 5.6-5.8. that's because in q1, the volume of business coming in was huge. by the way, that is a trade off anybody would make, any shareholder would make. it is not sacrificing profitability. this is an acquisition game. the cost per customer acquisition that we have is wonderful. we just front end loaded a huge amount. we took ebitda down, but our medium-term cash flow is completely intact. especially with the metro merger going way ahead of schedule on all fronts. >> bloomberg is reporting that

sprint is planning a formal bid sometime this summer. you're the leading candidate to run a combined company. when i tweeted this yesterday, you tweeted back at me, and my? -- am i? smiley face. what does that mean? >> it took approximately seven minutes to get to this. this is seven minutes more than i thought it would very when you same bloomberg reported the story, i think it was actually you. if i could have caught you directly, it would've been other smiley face. consolidation is one path forward for this company. i'm not going to comment on any individual talks, but with the growth that we have got in the options we have, consolidation is one good option. our shareholders and owners would consider any opportunity. i'm not privy to any of what you learned.

the individual speculation about me, you know my own opinion of myself. it would be easy for me to comment on that. >> i do give credit to our deal team for breaking the story. i merely tweeted it. i will say, from the competition perspective, the industry has changed since at&t tried to buy t-mobile. you're making t-mobile stronger. doesn't that undermine the argument that at&t and verizon are unstoppable dupolists? >> what we're seeing right now is a glimpse. of competition. these guys are nervous and restless and trying to figure out what to do. consumers are celebrating the ability to pit people against each other. competition is great for america and great for the industry. in order to keep that

competition, which is a big goal of the chairman of the fcc, a lot of things have to happen. you have to make sure that the duopolists do not make inappropriate use of their economic rows. -- inappropriately use their economic prowess. consolidation is usually thought of as one way. back when at&t was a possibility, that was a different game. people were looking at consolidation purely to aggregate spectrum. right now, t-mobile is a thriving, fun entity with a great path forward. when people look at t-mobile, we look at our path forward. it is how to take this maverick approach, how to take this on carrier revolution and keep it going. one way to do that is scale and spectrum. this is just one possible theoretical way forward. it is a very different time and environment. >> #sprintlikehell...

those are things you said. what would you do differently? >> one of the things i would do differently with these companies is run them. focus on consumers. i would stop all the idiocy of looking at each other and focus in a very humble way on serving customers and solving their needs. kidding aside, what you just did with some of the #'s that were used, and i know you are quite avid, social media is nothing more than another way of touching individual customers, listening to them. the difference with me is i listen to them and then i walk in and use that as the strategic input as to how i run my company. it is not mckinsey, it is not bain, it is individual customers telling me were to do, creating

the uncarrier. i would do that in any of these big companies. frankly, i don't know if those companies are ready to change. whether it is sprint or at&t, or any company, this is what we do. it is not just me, it is all of my employees and management team. that is all we are about very we are having a ball doing it. >> t-mobile ceo and president john leger. facebook -- the company's days of moving fast and breaking things are over. we will bring all the highlights from facebook's developers conference next. ♪

>> move past with stabile "infra" -- facebook is trying to become an even bigger player in

mobile. among the announcements, an anonymous login feature to let users try apps without giving their information away. take a listen to ceo mark zuckerberg describe why this feature is so important. >> if people don't have the tools they need to feel comfortable using your apps, that is bad for them and bad for you. it will prevent people from having good personalized experiences and trying out new things. it also might hurt you and prevent you from getting new potential customers. we need to do everything we can to put people first and give people the tools they need to sign in and trust your apps. >> zuckerberg announced plans to make facebook the cross platforms by form. the company also unveiled an audience network to help developers make more money. i spoke with our senior west coast correspondent jon erlichman.

i started by asking david who also went to f8 who benefits from all these new products. >> in a way, they're trying to make themselves more boring. he talked about this idea of a stable, mobile platform. it is a very unsexy idea, but one that developers will really welcome. there were scattered cheers for things that ordinary people might've thought, why would anyone cheer for that? developers want to get customers, they want to make money for their apps and they want to make it easier to build their apps. facebook focused on building, growing, and monetizing apps. they had separate sections for apps.

it was a step forward toward maturity for facebook. >> adam, what does this mean for advertisers? does this mean you guys get less information? >> probably not. what it means is that users can feel more comfortable logging into apps. while they may trust they spoke, they spoke -- facebook, they may not trust every app that they login with. that doesn't mean facebook doesn't still have information about that person that they can then aggregate and target across those apps are still using facebook. from an advertiser perspective, it doesn't have the big impact, except for the fact that facebook now will have people feeling more comfortable across more apps and logging and more often. >> he mentioned scattered cheers. what's your assessment -- how do developers feel about all of this? >> to be clear, there is a difference in an audience at an event such as this versus some ipo roadshow or an investor conference.

i think there would have been some cheers from the wall street community for the business of facebook. the reality is that with facebook, they have had so much success with these highly targeted ads that come through your feed when you're on your phone. they are able to generate a lot of advertising money from those ads. a lot of those are ads that get you to download another app. they hate when people complain about having too many ads in that experience. this day is about reaching out to those developers who also have ads in their apps and say they want to partner with you and help make more money. it is important part of the growth strategy of facebook. if that means giving up some of the information they've got to facebook login to cover more territory, so be it very it it -- so be it. they're looking at this to really grow their revenue. >> this gives facebook even more power as a gatekeeper.

david, what do think apple thinks about this? what you think google things about this? >> mark mentioned that apple and google are never going to do some of the things that they announced today because a lot of what they did today was oriented towards interoperability for people who have an android phone but use an ipad. for developers on a variety of platforms. what happened was, in the web days, there were some basic things that everybody could count on, html, websites work the same no matter what platform you use to them on. the web platform is completely different. -- the mobile web is completely different. there are barriers and barricades all over the place. facebook was essentially trying to say, we're going to break down those barriers. ultimately, apple and google would prefer a lot of those barriers remain in place. they're probably not totally thrilled by it. they would never have done it themselves. >> what about this audience network, this ad exchange, adam. how to put this in context of

the biggest player in the room, which is google? when it comes to ads. >> i would say facebook is definitely out innovating google right now when it comes to add products, particularly in the mobile realm. >> what about twitter? >> scale and audience -- facebook is by combining both. rapid innovation with the massive reach. they're becoming a juggernaut in the advertising space right now. >> that was john erlichman, adam burke, and david kirkpatrick. up next, twitter ceo dick costolo will answer the question if twitter will ever go mainstream. dick costolo already thinks it is. ♪

>> welcome back to "the best of bloomberg west." i'm emily chang. twitter's future is bright, according to twitter. it is a different story with investors and analysts. after the first quarter earnings report, shares plunged this week. user growth slowed year-over-year. a lot of people are asking the question if twitter can ever be mainstream. i spoke with their ceo, who thinks twitter is already mainstream. i asked him why. >> a lot of people think of twitter as a product or just a website. the reality is, twitter is in front of people around the world every day, and it is all over tv. the new nba commissioner had tweets on air during his press conference the whole time. just a couple days after the oscars, over 3 billion views of

tweets just about the oscars on twitter, but all across the web. in print, on air, on the web, in mobile, it is already embedded into the fabric of the culture, not just united states, but the world. in that sense, i already think of it as a mainstream platform. a durable and lasting platform upon which we can build a great business. >> the revenue story is up. revenue per user is up. investors are zeroing in on user growth, which did slow down. but it reaccelerated sequentially. why do you think there is this disconnect between what ucs the promise of twitter and wall street? >> two things. in answer to your first comment, ultimately, we're going to be judged on our financial results.

we are delighted in our financial results. when we talked about ipo, i told you we have a lot of work to do. we know we need to do in service to taking that mainstream understanding of twitter as part of the culture of the world and helping those people understand the value of logging in to and getting that additional benefit. we have a lot of work to do that we started on. i love the early progress we have made that started to show great results in q1, but needs to continue the rest of the year, building on the things we have done to make it easier to use, to bridge that gap between awareness and engagement. >> is there something specific about twitter? do you think the response would

be different if you took the name off the earnings report? >> the results are strong. why do think you're focusing on this one number? >> it is incumbent on me, the ceo, to help the rest of the world understand the value of the broader platform. we have billions of views about an event in just 48 hours. we look at other mainstream platforms, you can pick youtube as an example, the bigger content networks on you to get billions of views over the course of a month. if you are an advertiser today and you come to twitter's ad exchange, we can get your advertisement in front of over one billion ios and android users today. thousands of mobile applications. if you have a cell phone in your pocket or a smart phone in your pocket, fire up one of the apps today and you will see a twitter ad. it is incumbent on us to articulate the story of just how big the broader platform is good and that it is so much bigger than the website or the application.

>> you have made a lot of product changes. i am actually really liking it, the ability -- i was a little apprehensive when you change the product. you're always worried about how people will respond. used to using it one awy. i am liking it. what else can you do? you have done so much, what else can you do? >> the kind of things you described, making twitter more visually engaging, helping people see the most valuable content on the page, are exactly the kinds of things you described about the profile page. bringing that to the rest of the product, making it more visually engaging, bringing the content forward and pushing the scaffolding of twitter and the language of twitter that is opaque for the new users who come to it, pushing that to the background. allowing users to mark tweets as highly significant. like pin tweets on the profile pages. the kinds of changes we're making that are showing great

results, we need to thread those into the entirety of the product and then hopefully we will see continued great results. >> how much experimentation are you doing at a daily basis? i hear google say they're doing thousands of experiments on any given day. how much do you play around with stuff? >> in our latest apps, there are well over 100 experiments running in each of those apps. so hundreds. the beauty of that framework that we have worked on over the past 18-24 months now is the speed with which it allows us to run more and more experiments and get data from those that we can compare to a control group and see if the experiment is working or not. the faster we can move on those things, the faster we can change the product and service user. >> dick costolo. in part two of our interview, i asked him about the recent poaching of a ceo. ♪ >> you're watching the best of

"bloomberg west." this is the second part of my interview with twitter ceo dick costolo. take a listen. >> daniel will be working with me on consumer products. he was the director of products for google maps. has a great consumer product scale on both the ios and

android platform. he has been ceo of a startup. i love the entrepreneurial spirit he will be able to amplify that already exists in our consumer product group. what you will see is daniel will come in and work with ali and i. bring that entrepreneurial spirit to the team. he will come up with his own ideas that we will let him run with. >> you talk about getting users engaged. to be fully engaged with twitter, you really have to tweet. >> the majority of users on twitter tweet. there've been some third strange party reports that have gotten it wrong. the majority of users of twitter tweet. as we scale it and continue to grow, we have 14 million new users in the first quarter, it will likely be the case that more of those users will come to the platform and be just

consumers. and that is fine. we made no distinction as to whether someone does or does not have to be a tweeter. our marketers want to reach active users and it does not matter if their consumers and producers. -- if they are consumers, or consumers and producers. >> i read you call this the global town square. you called the companion expressed to what is happening in your world. others have said it is like a democratized newswire. does it matter? >> i am glad you asked that question. the thing i like about the companion experience as to what is happening in your world is it crisply let you know what to build for the product and in service to our users. i love the metaphor of the global town square.

i don't think it is as good as informing the product and design team what they should build for the users. the companion experience to what is happening in your world is a more crisp definition. >> messaging apps are hot. you've mentioned you want to enhance the ability to between public and private messaging. i would like to never have one ever again in my life. what do you mean by that? what would it look like? >> when i talk about direct messaging in twitter, i am talking about public conversations on twitter. twitter is entirely public real-time conversation. there are frequently public conversations that you would like to grab hold of and take in to whisper mode with a friend. look at what these people are talking about.

being able to move fluidly between that public conversation and a private conversation is something we will make simpler. >> in terms of the bigger picture, we know that the class of 2013 tech stocks are being reevaluated. some of them radically. the nasdaq is down. how much do you pay attention to what is going on in the market environment? how much pressure do you feel? >> the environment is always in my periphery. we have a very specific way of thinking about the long-term plan for the company. this is about balancing growth and operating leverage and efficiency. we need to make sure that we are improving margins and increasing profitability and improving margins against reinvesting in growth. that combination of growth and leverage is how we will build the business and build a company while paying attention to the market.

>> facebook's conference is happening today. they are launching a mobile ad network. they're getting into video ads. how does this compare to twitter? >> our mobile ad exchange, the difference is we are already in the market with thousands of mobile apps over one billion ios and android users of those apps. if you're an advertiser and you want to reach people on their smart phones today, you can come to us and we can get your ad in front of over one really in users today. >> more of my interview with dick costolo is coming up. we will talk about their tv efforts coming up. ♪

>> welcome back to the best of "bloomberg west." i'm emily chang. tv is a major part of twitter's strategy. recently, the head of nbc research said that social media isn't driving up tv viewership. he told this to the "financial times." i asked dick costolo how he makes sense of that. >> when we developed our tv strategy, we had a variety of data that we saw and experienced ourselves that help us understand that there was a complementary two-way relationship between twitter and tv. i mean that not only did twitter drive tune-ins, but also it was complementary to twitter and drove attention to twitter.

as we have invested in that strategy, there has been a drumbeat of independent third-party research that is reinforced and validated that complementary two-way relationship. the nielsens that he said that there were three things: relating with tv ratings. that reinforcement that we have seen in the market from third parties and from the investment from our broadcast partners like nbc have told us the we are on the right path. >> the buzz is more than buzz. >> we think so. >> you are seeing the facebook and google buy robot companies. drone companies.

virtual reality. what bets are you making on the future? what is the big vision the gets people excited about working for twitter? >> we are focused on strengthening our core. we're extremely focused. most of the acquisitions we have made are about strengthening the core. most of the work we are doing is about the core. that will keep us focused. >> i have to ask you about being in san francisco. gentrification. there is a lot of heat in the inequality debate that is aimed at twitter. how much are you thinking about that? what can twitter do from a philanthropic perspective given the uniqueness of the platform? >> twitter started in the city. we have been in the city. so many of our employees live in the city. it is important to us.

we focus on it significantly and we spend a lot of time as a company talking about it. we have some explicit direct connections with the community groups in the neighborhoods in which we operate. we have some exciting announcements coming up about those relationships with these specific community groups that we are working directly in the neighborhood in which we work and live. i'm looking forward to being able to talk about those in the immediate future. >> my interview with twitter ceo dick costolo. disney has announced the cast of the new "star wars" movie. episode vii. we have all of those details next on "bloomberg west." ♪

>> welcome back. i am emily chang. disney has announced the cast for the new "star wars" movie. adam driver, oscar isaac, max von sydow. they will join old cast members like harrison ford, mark hamill, and carrie fisher. in addition to growing the blockbuster franchise, they are looking for international expansion. we sat down with bob iger in los angeles and asked him about the investment in china. take a listen. >> i am very invested in not just disney today, but disney long-term. well beyond my tenure as ceo. one of the things that any ceo needs to do is not just manage a business successfully in the moment or for the quarter or the year. they should manage the business for success long-term. among the decisions that we have

made collectively as a management team, we wanted to invest in china and plant seeds and big trees that will fuel enormous growth for the company long-term beyond my tenure. it means a lot to me because when i think about carrying on my responsibilities and my legacy, shanghai disneyland looms large. china looms large. >> i know you talked about that park, things that are unique to china. what are examples of that? >> my charge to the imagineers is to make it authentically disney but distinctly chinese. those words. we are bringing a disneyland park to china.

our strong instinct and the research that we have done supports this. people want a disney experience. we also know that there are cultural interests and tastes and pride that is essential for the park in order for it to succeed to reflect the tastes and culture of china. there are numerous elements in the park that will do that. we have not been specific about them. other than mentioning a couple of the attractions, we have said very little about what will be in the park. i will give you one example. there is a significant amount of entertainment in all of our parks. that is in the form of shows that take place indoors or under fireworks. the creators of the shows for shanghai disneyland, those are not just conceiving the shows coreographing and directing them, are largely chinese. the performers will be mostly chinese. there'll be a very strong

chinese element throughout the entertainment in these parks. that is one example. another example is the use of language. it is one thing to say everything will be in mandarin. we are starting in mandarin. chinese element throughout the entertainment in these parks. that is one example. another example is the use of language. it is one thing to say everything will be in mandarin. we are starting in mandarin. all the storytelling, all of the menus will start in mandarin and translated into english instead of starting in english and translated into mandarin. that is just another example of our approach. >> you've been busy with shanghai. you acquired a company called maker studios. tell us about that purchase. why did disney want to acquire it? >> 70% of their traffic comes from outside the united states. we have a need as a company to continue to grow outside the united states. we have been extremely aware of and impressed with huge growth in media digitally, especially

and impressed with huge growth in media digitally, especially short form media. maker is the number one supplier of short form video to youtube. they identify creators of short form video and distribute it effectively. they use algorithms and data to enhance distribution and consumption. they bring that expertise to our company when the world is changing so rapidly right before our eyes in terms of media creation and distribution and consumption, we thought that was very interesting and attractive. >> bob iger with our own jon erlichman. clippers owner donald sterling has been banned for life from the nba. after making racist remarks. we will be talking to a longtime sports executive about what it means for the team next on "bloomberg west."

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>> welcome back to the best of "bloomberg west." i'm emily chang. adam silver has banned l.a. clippers owner donald sterling from the league for life. >> effective immediately, i am banning mr. sterling for life from any association with the clippers organization or the nba. >> the ban follows a phone call captured on tape between sterling and his girlfriend where he makes racist comments. silver said sterling confirmed it was his voice of a tape. listen to what he said. >> if you want to broadcast you are associating with black people. >> you associate with black people.

>> i am not you and you are not me. you are supposed to be a delicate latina girl. >> cory johnson and i spoke with former golden state warriors president. i started by asking, what does he think of the response as well as the nba? >> i give them a gold medal. gold for silver. adam coalesced a number of different forces to craft a response to this stupidity that is going to take the league in a more positive direction. that is not easily done in a short period of time. >> how do you see him forcing the sale of the team playing out? he is the longest-tenured player -- >> we would like to see a phone call to mr. sterling's lawyer and find out what they have been talking about today. what his advisers are telling him. i think that is the next act here. >> he is going to urge a group or subgroup of team owners to make this recommendation.

the other team owners have the power to make the sale happen. >> a lifetime ban is as long as you can get. in the context of sports ownership, this may be a bit pushy. he is a dead man walking in the nba. >> we have not heard from sterling himself. are we going to hear from? >> the last time you heard for him may be the last time you heard from him. this is really bad. what is he going to say? what can he possibly say with a tear-filled apology? how does he redeem himself? >> you mentioned that marge schott and the cincinnati reds. she was fascinated with nazis and so on. the fans are going to come back and read for anything. -- root for anything. this is a great team the clippers have put together.

in an era where we have so much social media that draws these things up, does this change what it means to be a sports owner? will we see something like this once a year? >> it changes the constituency. this all happened in three days. if this did that happen during the playoffs or the off-season, i am not sure this would have blown up the way that it has. social media shows that words can be much more dangerous than any kind of weapon. >> would this have happened 10 years ago? this response? >> look at what many of the questions were during the press conference. look at his history. why did they not make a move earlier? i would posit that no, it would not have happened. social media has put everything in hyperspeed today. not just for the nba but for all kinds of statements the people make. there is no place to hide anymore.

>> i couldn't believe it, there were a handful of reporters who have sat in a room with adam silver in the past. they are still covering the nba and they have knowledge of that situation. do you think adam silver always identified the clippers ownership as a problem that he would have to someday confront. so that when this happened, he knew what to do? >> i don't know about that. he took charge of the steering wheel and looked in the front view and not in the rearview. he took the windshield approach. i am not talking about the past. the guy is out. he is cut off. he is banned for life. >> game five is tonight. what is going to happen? >> there is going to be a game played with a lot of great players. i happen to think -- don't we

all want to project what happens in sports? there has been a major body blow to the clippers and all of this. i think the warriors are going to take advantage. the reason people love sports is because we don't know what the heck we are talking about until it happens. >> i wonder if other things are at play here. it has been discussed as if this could be a billion dollar franchise. the milwaukee franchise sold for more than people thought. does this change the value of the franchise in any way? does that clipper name and jersey just as valuable today as it is tomorrow? >> you are buying tens of millions of eyeballs that are to directly connected to credit cards. i think the value goes up. you have incredible disposable income that is going to distance themselves with this sad chapter of the clippers.

they will buy something that they can do wonderful stuff. >> will this re-energize the fan base in a way? once they move beyond this, if the sale happens, that is good for the team. >> they have a guy that jumped over a kia who is a good player. they have chris paul running the point. this is why think adam silver and the nba family of players association and fans and sponsors and everybody reached a positive part today. this is not going to go away overnight. with a lifetime ban on such a strong position taken, they are themselves in a strong place. >> former president of the golden state warriors with my partner cory johnson. that does it for the best of "bloomberg west." you can watch us monday through friday. we will see you then.

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>> from the united states gol