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Biz Stone and Stephen Colbert in More Than 140 Characters

By Catharine Taylor

Updated on: April 3, 2009 / 3:13 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

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I'll close the week out with this interview of Twitter founder Biz Stone on "The Colbert Report." Colbert, as you might expect, is skeptical about tweeting. A compendium of Colbert's best lines:

"Did [the idea for Twitter] just come to you in a flash, or was it from years of trying to say less?"
"Why 140 characters? Was texting too complex?"
"What was the very first tweet ... was it "what hath God twat?"?
"A space is also a character? You are ripping people off!"

Best exchange between Stone and Colbert:

Stone: "[Twitter is] the messaging system we didn't know we needed until we had it."
Colbert: "That sounds like the answer to a problem that we didn't have until I invented the answer."

There is some real information here, including Stone's statement that Twitter will be "a strong, profitable, independent company." In light of the rumor du jour, that practically qualifies as news. Eh. Go watch the clip already and have a good weekend. Thanks to @ischafer for tweeting this clip so I knew about it.