Twitter boss wants more 'tweets' in Iraq
Jack Dorsey, among executives on a US State Department organised trip to Baghdad, held discussions with mobile telephone companies during his trip and said he is determined to get Iraqis using Twitter on their handsets.
“We definitely have an intention to get it going here,” Dorsey said, sat alongside bosses from top US IT giants Google and YouTube.
“I spoke to my business development person last night and said ‘can we work with these people?’. We intend to do it.”
Twitter, which allows users to pepper their followers with messages of a maximum 140 characters, can be used on mobile phones or through the Internet.
Eighty-five percent of Iraqis have mobile phones, compared to a home broadband penetration rate of only five percent, which Dorsey said meant using handsets was the way ahead.
“The thing we saw in the US election was the transparency it brought to government,” Dorsey said. “I have never felt closer to what was going on in my government. A lot of Iraqis are interested in government, whether good or bad, so I’d like to see the same happen here.”
Dorsey met representatives from Zain and Asiacell, two of the major mobile operators in Iraq, and said there are four other carriers that Twitter will look at partnering with.
“The (mobile) carriers we talked to last night went from 300,000 subscriptions to 10 million in two years, so there is amazing potential,” he said.
The technology executives, who arrived on Sunday and will leave tomorrow, met Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, government representatives and students as well as private companies during the trip.
Twitter in Iraq – give your views
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