Portfolio.com: Do you agree with Yahoo C.E.O. Jerry Yang's recent push to make the site "the premier starting point on the Web"?

Wilson: Most adults I know start their Internet session at Google, and most kids I know start their Internet session at either Facebook or MySpace. So it just doesn't seem to me that it's a viable strategy.

Portfolio.com: How will Twitter make money?

Wilson: The centerpiece of Twitter is the Twitter timeline. It's you and all your friends and the updates you've made most recently. It looks very similar to the Facebook minifeed, and to me, the Facebook minifeed is the second most interesting attention aggregation point on the Internet, the first being the search engine result page. So if you own a powerful attention aggregation point on the Web, I think you can monetize that. Facebook has already started to do that by putting sponsored messages into the minifeed, and I think over time you'll see them do more and more with the minifeed as a place for monetization to happen. And I think if they're successful in that, a lot of people, Twitter included, will probably watch those moves closely and emulate them.

Portfolio.com: So you think Twitter might put sponsored messages in the Twitter-feed?

Wilson: Maybe not. But maybe that's not the most powerful idea. Maybe the most powerful idea would be if iTunes had a button that says, "I'm listening to this song right now," and when you click that, it goes into your Facebook minifeed and your Twitter minifeed. And maybe iTunes or the person who's trying to market the music in iTunes pays for the right to do that, because maybe when you do that someone clicks through and goes and buys the song, or listens to the song.

Portfolio.com: But wasn't that what got Facebook into trouble with Beacon, the company's social advertising system that broadcast users' purchases to their friends?

Wilson: I think there's nothing wrong with Beacon, other than the fact that it was launched as opt-out, instead of opt-in. So I think that users will absolutely want to broadcast certain things to their friends, and there are some things they're not going to want to broadcast to their friends. And they need to be able to control that at a very granular level. When they decide they want to broadcast that they think the new iPhone is the greatest phone ever, that's possibly a way for commerce to happen.