A Chat with Kaveh Gharib of Twitter: Revolutions, Mobile, and Monetization
Channel: Wamda
Date: 14/11/2012

At the Abu Dhabi Media Summit last month, Kaveh Gharib, the localization project manager at Twitter specializing in the Middle East and North Africa, discusses the future of the social media platform and how its role in revolutions across MENA affected its internal policy.

"We don't think that we played a huge role in forming revolutions but we definitely acted as a free and open platform, as a mechanism ... that helped facilitate or expedite the speed of events happening in the region. We are very glad that we were one of the few technology companies that were able to cause a social change in different parts of the world, so in that sense we are very proud of it," he says. 

Despite their impact on global events, Gharib notes that Twitter's internal policy hasn't changed much except to make Twitter "more and more rigorous in defending our users' voice."

He also explains the growing mobile use among Twitter users and how the social network plans to continue to monetize content going forward. Gharib notes that over 60% of Twitter traffic is from mobile devices.

"We are very, very happy about the growth that we are seeing on our mobile platform - I think it's going to continue and to speed up," he says.

Regarding monetization, Gharib explains that Twitter offers three core products for users- promoting a single tweet, promoting an account, and promoting a trend or hashtag- a strategy they will continue in the future. 

"Tweets as an atomic unit can hold information [like] pictures and videos," he says. "And regardless of what platform will be trendy or global in the coming years, tweets will be available on that platform as well."