>> rose: welcome to our program, tonight, the tucson tragedy with brian williams. >> we're a hundred yards away from what is probably the epicenter of sadness in america, by the way, a perfectly ordinary middle-class shopping center, two anchor stores, a walgreens and a safeway. those of us who live in suburban america all have one of these within five miles of home. what led his life going on as an independent or to intersect all of these lives so violently and perhaps-- perhaps-- change our national conversation. >> rose: we continue our nversationbout the tgedy in tucson and the implications of it with jon meacham and ezra

klein. >> you have to be willing to acknowledge that both sides are not... that there is almost always common ground. there's not always common ground. and the middle way is not always the right way. but sometimes it is. and what's become very, very difficult is for any person seeking votes to make that point in a competitive race. because the bases of both parties have become increasingly ideologically pure. >> one of the difficulties we're having is a lot of our representatives and a lot of our leaders no feel like it's their role to be the adult in the room, to say "listen, we may not like this bill, we may disagree with it but it is not the end of the world. it is not the be all; end all. we can modify it, we can change it. instead everything gets amped up to a high level of pressure. >> rose: we conclude this evening with a conversation with jack dorsey. he is the founder of twitter and

also squar >> i thinkthemportant thing for twitter is that it works on any technology. and the mobile phone itself, like anyone in the middle of... we have a short code in iraq, for instance. twitter has a short code in iraq. 60% of the population of baghdad have a cell phone in their hands and they can use it and send a tweet for free to the short code in the middle of baghdad and then also receive these tweets in realtime. that is amazing. i mean, that is just unheard of and that's why i'm so excited about this technology because it speaks to the lowest common denominator. >> rose: looking for answers in a national tragedy and looking for the future through technology when we continue.

maybe you want school kids to have more exposure to the arts. maybe you want to prove mealfor the needy. or maybe you want to help when the unexpected happens. whatever you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer, or donate for the causes you believe in at membersproject.com. take charge of making a difference. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

>> rose: we begin tonight with the shootings in tucson, arizona. congresswoman gabrielle giffords remains in intensive care but continues to respond to simple commands. speaking earlier today, dr. michael le mole, chief of neurosurgery at university medical center expressed caution optimism. >> at this stage in the game, no change is good. that is to say there's no change. she's still following basic commands. on top of that, the c.a.t. scans are showing there's no progression of that swelling. we're not out of the woods yet. that swell canning sometimes take three days or five days to maximize. but everyday that goes by and we don't see an increase we're slightly more optimistic. >> rose: at 11:00 this morning, president obama and first lady michelle obama led the nation in the moment of silence. the president spoke out about the shootings after meeting with french president sarkozy in the white house. >> in the coming days we're

going to have a lot of time to reflect. right now the main thing we're doing is to offer our thoughts and prayers to those who've been impacted, making sure that we're joining together and pulling together as a country. and as president of the united states but also as a father obviously i'm spending a lot of time just thinking about the families and reaching out to them. >> rose: also today, the accused gunman, jared lee loughner, appeared in a phoenix court to face federal charges. he did not enter a plea and is expected to be formally arraigned later this month. joining me from tucson is brian williams, anchor and managing editor of the "nbc nightly news". with me in the studio jon meacham. i am pleased to have both of them here and to talk to brian williams who is on the scene, as i said. what can you tell us at this time about, first, gabrielle giffords' condition and what we know? >> well, i think, charlie, in

listening to the medical professionals this was called a through-and-through head wound. through one plate of the skull and through a second. entry wound; exit wound. and in their business, there are reasons for optimism, reasons to find good news and hope even though we are talking about a very, very severe head wound. the updates have been coming usually twice a day and usually very buoyant and upbeat that she is finding a way to communicate. i cannot tell you the number of tentacles from gabbie giffords-- this congresswoman-- through an into this community. here in tucson, as you may know, the culture is they're kind of the southern city, the anti-phoenix. it is very much a smaller community feel. when you check into a hotel here as a visitor from new york-- as

happened to us last night-- the guy who helped us said "oh, i went to high school with gabbie, we were in the band together, we always knew she was going to amount to something. i myself had a traumatic brain injury, my money's on her." over and over again. people thank national media for coming to tucson, they apologize for the reason we're here. so a close place where this was a prominent, promising politician. some regarded her as the most promising in the western u.s. among up and coming democrats in her age group. and now everything is in suspended animation. >> rose: and what about the accused? what do we know about him that we might not have known earlier this morning? >> well, i think an examination of his home safe yesterday and continued searches on the web show-- the term of art among new york plafrs-- is an e.d.p., an

emotionaly disturbed person. here's the crux of the debate right now over vitriol, the tone and tenor of our national conversation, our politics, our public conversation. i'll just put this out as a question: what if this 22-year-old man happened organically? that is to say this happened to be his home base? this happened to be his congressional district and gabbie giffords happened to be his member of congress? and everyone. in the path of his life had a very bad day saturday. was there anything specific to this area? was there anything about our politics that fueled the chemistry in his brain? you know, i've watched no fewer than 20 people come forward in local media saying, in effect, we knew this was going to happen. a fellow student of his, charlie at community college, felt strongly enough to e-mail a friend of hers that a kid in one of her classes was "going to be one of those people whose picture we see on the news"

after he uses an automatic weapon in the workplace. his math teacher at the community college kicked him out of the class after he wrote things across the top of a math quiz and on his own arm. there were a million signs and signals out there. >> rose: as it was at virginia tech, yes? >> absolutely. the writer of the manifesto. and if you go back through time, there are witnesses, people who come and go through the lives of these suspects, these assassins who will tell you, "oh, we knew early on there wasn't something right about him or her." >> rose: does our focus need to be at least in part understanding the makeup of the kind of person that does this so that we will have a process and a system for early detection? >> some of these web sites, charlie, if people haven't seen them, it's a little bit margaret

madey to suggest this. but it's good to know what's out there and the availability of the web gives us all kind of a perverse view. check out some of the web sites alleging that through gramar there is mind control or government control over the citizens. that the flag isn't valid, the constitution isn't valid, the currency isn't valid. there are perhaps no fewer splier groups these days than there were a century ago, but they sure all find a home and affinity groups now on the web. and there's an interesting kind of tributary off of this story for future discussions among all of us. >> rose: jon? >> brian, is it your sense that there was anything particular about the climate in arizona, the political climate, that may have put fuel on the garage floor here? >> well, i can only speak for... not our entire news division even but just our broadcast.

we're going carefully on that one. it looks from what they found in the safe a return constituent letter from the congresswoman that perhaps he developed some kind of feelings, not quite obsessive, about the congresswoman. perhaps that was prison mat i can action that he saw her life as going forward in a robust fashion while he was seemingly stuck living with his parents aged 22, couldn't get into the u.s. army, not doing well even at the local entry level community college. but it is... i am not qualified, i'm not ready, i'm not equipped and haven't seen enough evidence to draw a tie between the current political at here in the state of arizona and this shooting. could this shooting have happened in pennsylvania, in new york, vermont, new hampshire, so on and so forth. that's going to be among the

questions that smart people are going to have to look at in the days to come. >> rose: what questions are you in search of down there and how long will you stay? >> well, the second part is open-ended. we never kind of know. and... but charlie the questions i'm in search of just continue to be as i call it either wiring or chemistry. and that is the involvement of... you take this one young man, what set him off, what led him away from quote/unquote mainstream society, the folks driving cars past where we stand. we're a hundred yards away from what is probably the epicenter of sadness in america, by the way. a we fektly ordinary middle-class shopping center, two shopping stores, a walgreens and safe way. those of us who live in suburban america all have these within five miles of home. what led his life going on as an independent orb to intersect all

of these lives so violently and perhaps, perhaps, change our national conversation. >> rose: and what gave him access to a weapon to commit the crime he did. >> perfectly legal transaction, we're forced to say. 9 millimeter, even the extended clip that gave him 31 rounds, though it was illegal under the clinton gun laws, those expireed in '04, perfectly legal now to pick up one of those. he had 31 rounds, one chambered, 30 in the magazine. he was trying to reload, put a second magazine of 31 in when a woman stopped him from doing that. he was gang tackled and we'll be talking to some of those people for our broadcast tonight. >> rose: in the deepest tragedy, there are always remarkable examples of courage by people who were leading find themselves unbeknownst to them and any expectation they ever had face to face with having to make a decision which they almost

subconsciously do to do the right thing. >> absolutely. that millisecond the difference between doing something and not. so today we interviewed the 20-year-old intern who had a little bit of life-saving instruction, enough to put pressure on the wound and keep the congresswoman cradled in his arms, keep her from losing consciousness, keep her mentally engaged. he talked to her about her husband and her name, things that basic. it will retired army colonel, charlie, never got a scratch in all his years serving this country in the military, he took a round to the back of the head, thankfully it just grazed him, he's walking around today with a fresh wound and walked throughout the scene with us today. he helped to tackle the kid. all those people in an instant just coming to the safeway on saturday because they saw a banner, got an e-mail, got a phone call that their congresswoman was visiting the district. >> rose: once again, brian, thank you very much. >> thanks, charlie. >> rose: brian williams, nbc

news, jon meacham continues with me here at the table. back in a moment. >> rose: we turn now to the national conversation about the shooters. with me again is jon meacham, the author and historian. and from washington, ezra klein of the "washington post." i'm pleased to have both of you here to put some of what has happened in arizona in perspective. ezra, many people first make the statement that there is no connection, apparently, between this man who's been charged with this crime... or these crimes and any particular political movement or any particular piece of rhetoric. but they do suggest that is there may be something in the air and that when you have someone who perhaps has imbalances there may be a connection. do you buy into that?

>> i don't buy the idea that there's any causal connection between anything that anyone or even any group of politicians or movement said and what happened in arizona. the way i've been thinking about it, though, is that what has been happening in the national conversation, this searching feeling about our own rhetoric and the way we're practicing our politics is akin to watching a loved one die of a disease you're not likely to get. we've all seen this happen and it helps people think about how to be healthier and fitter themselves. so i think this has been an opportunity for people to go back and look at themsels and say you know what? if it had been different, how would i feel about the way i've been acting? i think in a lot of cases the answer is not really that good. >> rose: but you see no sense of connection to an atmosphere? not a particular group, but an atmosphere? >> it's very hard to say in a situation like this. and obviously there's not been a full investigation yet. but until i see strong evidence of such a connection, what we appear to have is a very mentally unbalanced individual. there was an interview with this

kid's friends in "mother jones" and apparently he had gone to a past event of the congresswoman's and he said to her "what is government worth if words have no meaning?" referring to this grammar based conspiracy theory and she as you would anticipate responded in a confused fashion. and after that he began to build a grudge against her. that suggests to me that what happened here was so idiosyncratic and related to his own mental illness and the theories he was held by that it is very, very hard to draw any connections to anything that any of us recognize in the mainstream of american politics. >> rose: jon meacham? >> i disagree i think a bit. the word "assassination" itself has a political connotation. this was an assassination attempt with victims who were in the line of fire. assassinations happen in times of turmoil and change and almost always-- almost always-- they are carried out by people for

whom you cannot draw a causal connection. in our most recent analogous period beginning in 1963 and ending about 1975, beginning with the death of med ger evers in mississippi and i would argue going through the kennedys, dr. king, george wallace and the two attempts on president ford's life, you had enormous social, political, cultural upheaval in which political violence took root and flowered. you then had a fairly... a quieter period. now, to be sure oklahoma city. besides that, mrs. lincoln, how was the play? i see that. but the attacks on individuals is something that did go down in the '90s and the first decade of the new century. and so i think it does have something to do with the way in which we talk about politics and the way in which it's practiced in not just in the farthest

corners of the fringes but also pretty close to the surface. >> rose: ezra? >> i simply don't agree. ier what jon is saying about past periods but i think when you speak about something like what happens in the civil rights movement with prominent activists being killed you really can draw that causal connection. i think we should be careful about erring on the side of not presuming... that this says too much about our politics because i think down that road lies some dangerous things. when you begin to hear about politicians arguing for much stronger laws restricting speech about politicians or worse for large security details or very large changes to the way congressmen and congresswomen meet with their constituents. in the absence of anything suggesting we are entering a period in which this sort of thing will be a pattern. in which there's something we need to defend against and change our norms to defend against. i worry about overreading this. because i think if you look at what they were doing that day, that congress on the corner, it was really the finest tradition of democracy. a congresswoman meeting with her constituents in an everyday

setting. and i would like so much as we can to double down on that and to realize that in recent history political assassination has been very, very rare. we saw in the 1983 from the soviet union and you saw it in 1978 i believe it was in the jonestown massacre. but on this soil it has been very rare. and as far as we know it continues to be. and i think that's a good thing to continue believing until we have evidence that proves it to the contrary. >> i think we do have that evidence. i think we are in a moment not unlike '61, '62, '63. lee harvey oswald, arthur lee brehmer, james earl ray were not political scientists. these were not men who took a direct ideological stand and... in order to carry out their crimes. i just think the atmosphere and a lot of folks worried about this, particularly last year, remember september in particular when there was some question

about whether the president could address school children in america's public schools where the guns were showing up at health care debates. and that reminded... i think we talked about this. that reminded me of adlai steven and lay lady bird johnson getting jostled in dallas. and i don't think it is irresponsible to assess the climate with a cold eye without overreacting. but i would not underreact either. >> rose: when you sit back and assess our rhetoric, what conclusions do you reach? >> i think it has been genuinely worrisome. i think the scariest thing for people in the hours after the attack before we knew more about the alleged murder was realizing what happened could have fit so easily within things people had been saying. when michelle bachman talks about armed and dangerous resistance or sharron angle talks about second amendment remedys if this congress keeps going the way it's going or

sarah palin talks about "don't retreat, reload." this gun-based and violence-based imagery is very scary. there was a nice comment on the blog of james fallows at the "atlantic" and this person wrote in and said "the governing theory of our rhetoric in this country should be no regrets." which is to say if something happens we shouldn't have to regret what we said a year ago, a month ago, six months ago. i don't think we've been living by that rule. i will say it isn't just violent imagery. it's been the relentless increase in what we tell people the stakes are. we talked about death panels and threats to freedom and the most corrupt administration in history. that, to be sure, more than the olence is what worries me because you're telling people to be a patriot you need to believe that something unusual is happening to this country and that does imply perhaps more extreme remedies. >> i think ezra has just described very well what richard of said ther in october of 1964 described as the paranoid style of american politics. in a piece in "harper's" where he talks about exactly the kinds

of folks who... whom i think we sigh more and more of now who believe that every crisis is existential, there is room for compromise because everything is apocalyptic. that was off steder's word so that politics is not the madisonian working out of difference, it's a struggle between good and evil. and i am good and you are evil and so therefore-- and this may be where the daylight is between me and ezra-- the distinction is how do you refact that climate? do you demonize and do you then take a step? to do you create a climate in which steps then go to violence become more likely? >> rose: or do you move towards some more... whatever means possible, civilized discourse

for the lack of a better word? >> i think the civilized discourse is something that isn't cool to talk about. it's cool this week. and i think we should make a resolution. you know, there's a line in tom sawyer who talks about a prewhich you a who came through town who was so good that even huck finn was saved until tuesday. >> rose: (laughs) >> let's see how long this moment of civility lasts. and one hopes, actually, because everything hits home, the fact that this was a... one of their own, particularly in the congress this will be true. but i think that, you know, people who say both sides have a point get clobbered out there in the web land, if you will, for somehow being establishmentarian or false equivalencys. there's a certain stigma to civility.

and i don't think we should ignore that. and i say sort of to hell with that. you have to be willing to acknowledge that both sides are not... that there is almost always common ground. there's not always common ground. and the middle way is not always the right way but sometimes it is and what's become very, very difficult is for any person seeking votes to make that point in a competitive race. because the basis of both parties have become increasingly ideologically pure. >> rose: let me put this on the table. you just wrote a pulitzer prize winning biography of andrew jackson "a different time in our history." was it a less violent time? >> no. >> rose: was the rhetoric milder and more civilized? >> there were the... the first two attempts of the life of a president were on andrew jackson. one was a man who tried to assault him on a boat and the

other was an attempt to kill him in 1835 on the capitol steps. jackson tried to attack the guy. >> rose: before or after the attack? >> well, that's a nice north carolinian attack on tennessee. but jackson... the jacksonian era is a good one because there was a time of enormous technological change, enormous fear, there were immigration questions, there were people already saying things like "this isn't the america i grew up in." which apparently everyone had a wonderful childhood. if that were through there would be no psychiatrists at work in the world and they're doing pretty well. this sense that the country's changing. that it's somehow or another slipping away and that there has to be a restoration of some prelapse dream of the country is a very dangerous one because, in fact, i think that we have

gotten stronger. we have gotten more security. the wider we've opened our arms and the more broadly we've defined the mainstream of the country. and in realtime, in washington, in the 1830s people worried that it was going to ancient rome. there were assassinations, intrigues, an elite trying to reestablish itself. and all of this, i believe, is perennial. >> rose: ezra, what drives the nature of the rhetoric in america today? is it different than it is in china or brazil? >> government is high stakes and to some degree we try to push that away. but when you talk about the health care bill which will have a life or death impact on hundreds of thousands of people, or the iraq war or jobs policy, economic policies, when you talk about people whose livelihoods and self-esteem and whether or not their daughter can go to college, these things truly matter.

then they connect to these deeper fundamental values. is the country the country we grew up in and is it the country we want our children to grow up in? these are about the biggest and most personal and most important questions we asked in modern life. to some degree it's to our credit that we keep them a little bit further away from us. that we don't do the things you might imagine we would do because they are bigger than any one person. they are high stakes. in other nations they lend themselves to violence and terror and to other forms of politics by more violence means. now, whether or not this has been different in other places, that i can't speak to. but i do have a sense it's getting a little different here. i'll add one more point to this which is that in wyoming last week there was introduced a bill from ten representatives and three senators in the state legislature and the bill criminalizes the implementation of the health care law. any state employee who implements it get caughts impleasanting it gets two years in jail and any federal employee

gets five years. and when we start looking at things like that, looking at... seeing things as so deeply un-american that we need to jail people for impleasanting the law of the land something has gone somewhat awry. and i think that one of the difficulties we are having is that a lot of our representatives and leaders no longer feel like it's their role to be the adult in the room. they no longer feel like it's their role to stand up to their base and say "listen, we may not like this bill, we may disagree with it but it is not the end of the world. is it not the beall end all. we can modify it, we can change it." instead everything gets amped up to a high level of pressure. whether it's different elsewhere i can't speak to brazilian politics, i don't know them well. but it's worrisome enough here. >> rose: thank you very much, ezra klein. thank you, jon meacham. pleasure to have you. thank you. we'll be right back. stay with us. >> rose: jack dorsey is here.

he is the chairman of twitter. since its inception in 2006, the site has become a powerful tool of information and communication. almost 200 million users worldwide tweet everyday. that has allowed twiter to become a real-time news feed. there's also reshaped how public figures from celebrities to politicians communicate. the company is now working hard to monetize its popularity. dors started twitter as a side project in 2006 with evan williams and biz stone. his latest venture is called square which can turn your mobile phone into a credit card reader. pleased to have jack dorsy at this table for the first time. welcome. >> thanks for having me, charlie. >> rose: good to have you here. let's talk about square and go back to twitter. how did that come about? >> it came about because my co-founder is a glass artist and he sells these beautiful glass faucets and he was selling one for $2,000 and all he had in his pocket wasis mobile phone. he couldn't accept the credit

card from the woman who wanted to buy this faucet and she didn't have a checkbook and she obviously didn't have $2,000 of cash so he lost the sale. and we were discussing this and we have these general purpose computers next to our ears and yet... >> rose: the iphone 4. >> or an android phone, blackberry, what not. but yet he wasn't able to accept that credit card. so we wondered why that was and we answered it by building this system. >> rose: you write code. >> yes. i wrote code. >> rose: that's what you do well. >> yes. >> rose: that's what you've been recognized for since you were 14 15 years old. >> uh-huh. >> rose: so you immediately set out to do what? >> my goal is to simplify complexity. i just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction. twitter was around communication and visualizing what was happening in the world in realtime. square was allowing everyone to accept the form of payment people have in their pocket

today, which is a credit card. so we have built the simplest way to accept credit cards. it's a little tiny device that we give away for free and you just download some so wars from the app store and plug it in to your mobile phone or ipad and suddenly you can take credit cards. so if you're a tax accountant or a lawyer or doctor or even a hair stylist, you can now accept credit cards. >> rose: and you monetize it how? >> we take a cut of every transaction. so we charge 2.75% and 15 cents on the transaction which we then pay the credit card companies out of. so the user only has to pay that 2.75%. they don't pay any credit card fees. they don't have to have a setup charged. they don't have to pay for the hardware or even the software. >> rose: hardwares free, software's free. >> just use the phone you have in your pocket. >> rose: so this sounds to me like a win-win for everybody. small businesses like it. >> they love it. >> rose: somebody has a credit card and wants to pay with a credit card likes it.

>> you can pay everywhere now. >> rose: you who created this with your partner like it. it seems so fundamental. why hadn't someone done that bere? >> turns out it's really complex. it's really complex to make something simple and especially when you started a dressing the financial world. we have a number of things... in order to accept credit cards you have to talk with a bank. normally when you're a small merchant or a business or individual you have to get a merchant account, which means you have a one to two-year relationship with the bank and then there's always these fees and setup costs and monthly minimums. it's a mess. and it's never really been designed in a beautiful way and at's what we're good at. that's hardtor do. >> rose: how do you minimize fraud? because that would be a concern. >> right. so we actually have a lot of benefit in using the credit card system itself because a lot of the protections are on the payer side. when someone issues you a credit card, when your bank issues you

a credit card that assume that that card is going to be lost or stolen. so all the protections are watching the payer. so if we get a swipe or if we get a signature on those card payments then a lot of the risk is off us because we know the payer was in that location. apart for that, there's a lot of information in these phones. there's g.p.s. we know where the transactions are taking place. people are putting in their twitter accounts. they're putting in their facebook accounts. they're telling us about themselves and we can use that to build a reputation for how they will interact in the world. >> rose: did i read that you were involved in some kind of lawsuit because of somebody else >> we... so we worked on this system which actually was prior art. so we built this little credit card system with another individual who we worked very well with in the past. but unfortunately we were not included on the patent we both created together. so it's just a minor thing.

we're not independent on this i.p., it's just something nice to have. >> and this is the future of mobile payment, in your judgment? >> i think so. i think... the biggest thing we're trying to address is let's simplify this entire world. let's speak what people are using today. number of people in the united states, almost everyone, is using plastic cards to pay for this. but it's extremely difficult to accept these cards. so let's make it's easy and take more and more of the friction out as we can. >> rose: and what's the global response? >> the global response has been really good. you need to tailor these technologies to each market. so we're starting on the u.s., but we want to be completely payment device agnostic. different countries use different methods. so in japan, for instance, they're using a lot of near-field communications, obviously. in places like kenya they're using s.m.s., they're using

phone credits. so all these markets have their own technologies to pay for things and exchange value so we need to make sure that square can accept every form of payment that is in the payers' pocket. in the u.s. it's the credit card. >> rose: and how do you divide your time between square and twitter? >> i have a really fortunate situation. i'm now in the midst of i think two of the great et cetera companies in the world. i'm chairman of the board of twitter so i go in when i'm needed, i point out what i think is moving, what technologies are interesting, things we may need to fix and things that we're doing really well at. and when i'm not needed i get out of the way. >> rose: and how did twitter get started? >> twitter has a long story. i've always been fascinated by cities and how they work and i thought myself how to program so i can understand how the city works. >> rose: you taught yourself to program so you could understand how cities work? >> i wanted to visualize them. i wanted to see them.

i wanted to play with them. i was inspired by new york city and just... if you consider new york city, all these entities roams about the cities, taxicabs ambulances, fire trucks. they're always reporting where they are and what they're doing. and you can see how the city is living and breathing and what's happening in the city. so i started building dispatch software and that's the software that runs these entities. always reporting where they are and what they're doing. i'm an ambulance at fifth and broadway taking a patient in cardiac arrest to st. john's mercy. very, very simple model. in 2000 i realized that i had this beautiful picture of all these verticals in the city that make the city work but i was missing the citizens. i was missing the people. i was missing my friends. so what if i could just take my phone and... we didn't have mobile phones that worked that well in 2000. i had a very simple rim device which was the precursor to the blackberry. what if i could be anywhere and

share what's happening and i could get everything in realtime. what if we did that? and it turns out it was just the wrong time. 2006 s.m.s. t really big in this country. i met my co-founders biz stone and evan williams who had worked with blogger to build blogger. so they understood the importance of self-publishing. and i just added this real-time aspect, this s.m.s. aspect and we said what if with just s.m.s. and the web i can go anywhere i want and report what i'm doing and see what everyone else is doing in realtime. very, very simple start and users have taken it from there. >> rose: was there a conversation that took place to make you do that or did this takelace in your head? >> we were... you know, we were working... >> rose: because what was the company? >> we were working on a podcasting company and i joined as an engineer and the interesting thing about odio was that no one in the company was really that excited about podcast. so we weren't...

>> rose: so it was a business you didn't care a lot about? >> i just wanted to work with ev and biz. i saw them as my first real job, the first time i had to write a resume. i wanted to do more consumer facing stuff. i had always been back in the realtime transactional systems and they presented that opportunity. so we joined, i worked on this podcast, it wasn't that interesting and then itunes came out with the podcast directive which kind of took odio's business model and potential off the table. so we started trying to figure out what we're going to do and how we make audio more social. how we have group communication and during this timess me was coming and being used and the first time you could send a message from cingular to verizon and it was amazing. i fe in ve with the chnology and the rest of the company did as well. and one day ev said "go out, think of some things to do, come back, we're going to present to

the company." and i took a group of two other people and we talked about this very simple idea of being able to report where i am and what i'm doing and stlag go out in realtime over our phones and the web in 160 characters. and we were on the playground and we presented to the company. it didn't really go anywhere but then a week later we talked about it more and we decided i would take two weeks andbiz stone and my other program florian and we would build the system. and we built in the two weeks and took more and more resources and the first tweet that was actually written by a human was by me and it was inviting co-workers. >> rose: inviting co-workers. >> that was the start. >> rose: how did you decide on the responsibility between you and evan and biz snz >> well, i was leading a lot of idea and the vision for where the product was going. ev was funding and supporting what we were doing. he put the shelter over our heads. and biz was just an amazingly creative guy.

and he was helping come up with words like follow... >> rose: he's the marketing... >> he's a marketing genius. he's amazing and fun to talk to. >> rose: so where is it evolving to? because some have made this point: it's more information than social. social being facebook. >> yes. i think that is a great point. i think we've put a lot of emphasis on tweeting when a lot of the value is actually following people and anything you're interested in the world whether it be charlie rose or jetblue or public figure or your local coffee shop, they're on twitter and broadcasting what is interesting to them. they're broadcasting about the organization, what they're doing. so i can go and get immediate value from these things that i care about. and that's the most important thing is getting in immediately and being able to follow someone i love, like kanye west or like barack obama or any politician

serving my particular state. i can see the immediately. but then there's another hook you can actually participate with. you can reply to them and they may reply back. they're human again. and we spend so much time putting these organizations and public figures on this massive, massive med stall but we have to remember they go through all the small details of live that we do. and you can make them human again and you can interact with them. and it's not just humans, it's a social movement. it's seeing what's unfolding in iran. it's seeing what's unfolding in moldova or arizona or anywhere in the world. >> rose: so it has political implications? >> it could. >> rose: it did in iran. it was about the only way people could... >> it was one way. there were multiple ways. i think what was really important in iran was that the

first time people were really using these tools to be on the ground and show what was happening. and that alone created an international conversation. to a lot of people in america iran and what's happening in iran is a black box. it's hard to understand what's happening. but to be able to instantly see video and to see man on the street accounts of how things are unfolding in realtime as they're happening is amazing and i've never seen that before with any other technology. >> rose: what i don't understand when you look at your penetration around the world, you've done really well in japan facebook hasn't. what does that say? >> we've had massive success in japan and it wasn't just recently. it was very early on. it was within our first year. people just took to it right away and we couldn't figure out why. but we found all these amazing things. people would actually put these automated tom goch chis on to twitter and you could follow the

tomogachi patterns. >> rose: what does it say about culture? >> it's a very engaged culture and they're very, very focused on constantly it rating technology. and twater is a very, very fast way to do it. in japan, it's not 140 characters, it's 140 words. so you could write a little mini novel. this is a whole story in the universe. >> rose: and in china? >> in china it's the same. very much the same. so people are writing non-stop about what's happening in the country. what's happening around the country. so it's a very, very interesting peek into these cultures. >> rose: to there's two ideas. someone that is twiter the next big internet success story? i would expect you to say yes but if you had to say yes, why would you make the case? >> i think it's huge. i think it's huge because never before have we had such access to that immediate information.

and once we have that information we can participate and interact with it. it spans at the intersection of every single media. it's a great way to point to video, to images, to text, to web sites, any media that you can imagine it can point to a carry in realtime and the only other technology i know that's ne tt well is the web itself. so i put it on the same league as the web. >> rose: when was the last time you wrote an e-mail? >> i write one everyday. >> rose: more than one? do you write many or do you mainly use text messaging? >> i use text messaging a lot more. >> rose: than e-mail? >> more than e-mail. >> rose: and do most people you know who are... have the same affinity for technology follow that rule? follow that practice? >> i think so. as we go to a younger generation that's definitely through. it's more instantaneous. i use e-mail as a reference.

e-mail is a great reference. it has a subject line, it titled what the e-mail is about and i can refer to it, i can search. but it's not great for communication because it's not focused on the most important thing. the subject is the message and that's the message. the subject is in the message in i.m. it's bringing the content to you right away. one of the things i love about the ipad, for instance, is when you're using the ipad, the ipad disapprs, gs away. you're reading a book. you're viewing a web site, you're touching a web site. that's amazing and that's what s.m.s. is for me. the technology goes away and with twiter the technology goes away. it's so easy to follow anything you're interested in. it's so easy to tweet from wherever you are and the same is true with square. we want the technology to fade away so that you can focus on enjoying the cappuccino that you just purchased.

>> rose: your c.e.o. has said that twitter has cracked the code when you advertise. what did he mean by that and how is it crack the code? >> it's not just the advertising but the human behavior. it's a new way to communicate which is to spark interaction. one of the first entities that was using the promoted products that twitter has was disney and toy story. we naturally have when toy story three came out people were going the theater and they were tweeting they were going to see "toy story 3" and someould tweet during the movie. then they would come out and say "this is amazing." and it just naturally trends to the top. and disney used that as a way as an opportunity to capture that natural trending ability. and then also point to content that they want to surface to their consumers and to their

customers. so it was just a very natural and easy way to again point attention and direct attention to something that the livnier wanted to see. it was trending. >> rose: the relationship between evan, biz, you, and where there's tension and where there's not tension and where one... and why there have been so many different executive changes since twitter was filmed what's the answer? >> for any silicon valley company, the most important thing is the company: and any great founders need to get out of the way of the company. we presented a spark with an ea, we saw a lot of the directn beg iven by our users and a lot of what we have to do now demand very, very specific management. and we now our strengths. and that's mainly it.

this company is bigger than any individual. it's bigger than biz, bigger than ev, bigger than myself. >> rose: do i get this then? biz's strength is marketing? >> he's a great communicator. he's a great protector of the brand. >> rose: evan's strength is product strategy and that kind of thing? >> yeah, and he has a great way of thinking abouhe user and how the user's coming to the technology. >> rose: and your strength is writing programing? >> my strength is programming. i also think my biggest strength is simplification. that's what i love doing. i love making something complex. i love taking everything away, taking all the debris, the conceptual debris a technology away so that you can just focus on what's most important. so i see myself as a really good editor. that's what i like to be. when i edit a technology, i want to edit a story so that we have one cohesive product that we

tell the world. >> rose: meaning what? what does edit mean? >> there's so many ways twitter can i would build, there's so many features twitter can build. there's so many features square can build but there is only one or two going to bring us to the next level. so edit that to one. to get rid of all those inputs and edit to one cohesive story. one single thing we're seeing and this's what we do with product. >> rose: are you by... at the core primarily a software programmer or are you primarily an entrepreneur who's simply wanting to ask the right questions which will lead you to the next business? i think i'm a mix. i love building technology, i love programming, i love building teams and i also love building beautiful things. i love art, i love design, and i love seeing that intersection of technology and the teams that workn it.

>> rose: but once you build them are you thinking about the next thing? >> no, i'm thinking about how to scale what we built. how to bring it to a global audience. >> rose: so what do you have to do to scale twiser? >> we have to get it everywhere. we have to make it's easy... >> rose: 200 million users? >> 200 million. >> rose: facebook has 500 million plus. >> we have a long way to go. >> rose: do you think you can reach 500 million. >> we can go well beyond that. i think the important thing for twitter is that it works on any technology. the mobile phone itself, like anyone in the middle of... we have a short cut in iraq, for instance, twitter has a short cut in iraq. 60% of the population of baghdad have a cell phone on their hands and they can use s.m.s. and they can send a tweet for free to the short code in the middle of baghdad and then also receive these tweets in realtime. that is amazing. that is just unheard of and

that's why i'm so excited about this technology because it speaks to the lowest common denominator. every technology. >> rose: would you argue the most exciting agent of change in the world today is the number of mobile devices? i mean by that one smart phone? that an increasing number of people in the world have it? that that's the agent of change? how many people get put in their hands a device that has such power. >> i think it's a... i think it may be... it's a single spark. i think it's a good way to further our understanding of what it means to be mobile. what it means to have technology around us all the time. but the ipad is mobile as well. laptops are mobile. so all these devices we can take with us and interact but i think the important sr. what does that mean for these technologys?

what does it mean for communication when a device like those knows where it is? when it can accept the forms of payments that we use and we can build it intoddress whater weant to address. >> rose: so what is your counsel inside when the subject is the following: we ought to merge with google or we ought to follow the facebook and stay independent and go public? >> i think twitter is so unique that we must stay independent. we must continue to build what we dream of having in the world. and we just barely started, that'she thing. twter's be an amazing success, but we've just gotten started. >> rose: just gotten started because of what it can do or just gotten started... >> because of what it can do. >> rose: they that out for me finally, what it is you think you can do.

>> so we've built this very easy way-- no matter where you are-- to put content in. to share what's happening around you. but it's still very difficult to find meaning and relevancy in realtime. how do we get people to discover what's most important? how do we surface what's happening right now th someone should pay attention to? and that happens within your social network. it happens in the things you care about, within the country or even the world. how do we in realtime bring that to people? and this is not just a challenge for twitter, it's also a challenge for the technology industry because we have all of this information just swirling about. how do we make sense of it? we need to do a much, much better job in making sense of it. >> rose: is twitter making none? >> it's making money. we have revenue. (laughs) >> rose: i know you have revenue. making money has to do with prof. making money has to do with a positive cash flow. >> we have a long way to go. >> rose: that's yes, or no? i'm not sure? >> we have revenue.

we have revenue. you'll have to speak to dick. >> rose: everybody has revenue. thank you for coming. >> thank you so much. >> rose: jack dorsey, square and twitter. thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org