Just over a week after announcing a link up between the professional social network LinkedIn with the popular microblogging service Twitter, co-founders of those companies Reid Hoffman and Biz Stone shared a stage in London along with one of Britain's best known celebrity tweeters Stephen Fry to discuss whether social networking is a source for good.
Twitter has been in the spotlight more than once over the past year for its role in helping to disseminate information during political protests, most notably following the Iranian elections.
Stone says it’s not his job to champion causes, other than the open exchange of information.
"So our priority is making Twitter available and making it work. That alone is all we have to do for social good to take place because Twitter is not about the triumph of technology, it's about the triumph of humanity. So all we have to do is keep this network running and our basic belief is people will do good," he said.
And while Twitter, which allows its users to send messages of up to 140 characters to masses of people, has been one of the hottest technology companies over the past couple of years, there's still a great deal of interest in how the company plans to monitise the activity on its site.
But following a new round of funding, Stone seems in no rush to go down the advertising route which has been so successful for the search company Google.
"Google is a good role model. When you have an information network that people are relying on around the world, you have the opportunity to make introductions between individuals and businesses, and that's something we'll be looking to do down the line. Right now, we're more focussed on creating value for our users and we're putting those revenue generating models on paper and we're definitely going to get to them but we have a lot more work to do at the core of Twitter first," says Stone.
LinkedIn's Hoffman says the deal with Twitter is not about making his site more competitive with Facebook. In fact, he's an investor in that company.
"We realised that there was a part of the Twittersphere that is very urgent and important for business and if you brought together the assets we have in LinkedIn including asking questions about how you solve professional problems, and you integrated in both directions with Twitter you could actually add a lot of value for professionals live their professional life".
And while Twitter gets far more of the attention these days, Hoffman says that LinkedIn is already turning a profit.
Reuters