Ev Williams is the founder of Twitter. And according to the his presentation at the XOXO conference in Portland, Oregon, he has a foolproof method of getting rich via the net.

So, what’s the trick?

“Here’s the formula if you want to build a billion-dollar internet company,” he said. “Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time…Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”

The bottom line, Williams said, is that the internet is “a giant machine designed to give people what they want.” It’s not a utopia. It’s not magical. It’s simply an engine of convenience. Those who can tune that engine well — who solve basic human problems with greater speed and simplicity than those who came before — will profit immensely. Those who lose sight of basic human needs — who want to give people the next great idea — will have problems.

He went on:

What the internet is doing now is connecting everyone and everything, every event and every thought, in multiple ways — layer upon layer of connection. Increasingly, everything that happens and everything we do, everyplace you go and check in, every thought you have and share, and every person who liked that thought… is all connected…and it keeps multiplying relentlessly.

The internet makes human desires more easily attainable. In other words, it offers convenience,” he said. “Convenience on the internet is basically achieved by two things: speed, and cognitive ease.” In other words, people don’t want to wait, and they don’t want to think — and the internet should respond to that. “If you study what the really big things on the internet are, you realize they are masters at making things fast and not making people think.

What do you think? Is success about doing something new, or doing something old, but better?

[Source : Wired]