Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

The Bullhorn Interview Video: Twitter's Adam Bain Silences BoomTown (For One Second, At Least)

Last week, BoomTown interviewed Adam Bain, the longtime online advertising guy from News Corp.’s Fox Audience Network who now has the lofty title of president of global revenue at Twitter.

During the onstage chitchat at TWTRCON SF 10, the man in charge of figuring out a lucrative advertising business for the popular San Francisco-based microblogging service pulled out a bullhorn to make a point.

Also to “get in a word edgewise” with me!

I would say I was offended, but it was kind of a genius Sue Sylvester move.

Let’s hope he can come up with some more of those for Twitter!

I also liked his line about online advertising going from “‘Mad Men’ to math men.”

The interview we had was a lively one, as I wrote:

“At one point I asked Bain if he would tell me Twitter’s revenues, if he ‘did not mind,’ and he answered, ‘I do mind. I’m all about managing expectations.’ Which is to say, they are probably less-than-impressive still.”

Here is the bullhorn part of the interview, for those who might enjoy seeing me shut down–even if only for a moment, since I quickly got ahold of the very loud speaker myself.

Enjoy:

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik