Donald Trump is 'master' of Twitter: Co-founder Williams
Washington DC: US President Donald Trump is a "master" of Twitter and him causing a "lot of noise" certainly directs more attention, according to the microblogging site's co-founder Ev Williams.
Trump, who became the 45th President of the United States after defeating former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2016 elections, often uses the platform to express his opinion on various issues, target his political opponents and advertise his policies.
Twitter co-founder Williams, at the Collision tech conference in Toronto on Tuesday told CNN Business that "What Trump has done with Twitter is pretty genius, frankly".
"He's a master of the platform like few others," he said.
As for whether Trump's daily tweets were good for Twitter's business, Williams said it's "hard to say."
"The fact that the president is on there and causing a lot of noise, it certainly directs more attention. But it doesn't necessarily direct more users or... more money," he said.
Trump had once said that he uses the social media not because he likes to, but because "it is the only way to fight a very dishonest and unfair press".
Trump, 72, has been at loggerheads with several US mainstream media outlets including the CNN, ABC News, The New York Times and the Washington Post. He has quite often described these popular media houses as "fake media".
Williams, however, said that the potential negative effects of the president's tweets on the country's political discourse are "trivial compared to the effect of the broader media."
"The vast majority of the electorate is not on Twitter reading Trump's tweets and being convinced by that.
"What they're convinced much more by is the destructive power of Fox News, which is much, much more powerful and much more destructive than Twitter," said Williams.
A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning, the CNN Business report said.
"Why the media's not critiquing itself I think is kind of obvious, and it's very easy to blame the tech platforms. But it's an ecosystem and the traditional media companies that have benefited financially from Trump very much outweigh the tech companies," the Twitter co-founder said.
Williams also said that Twitter should have invested more money and resources into fighting abuse on its platform while he served as CEO but said he didn't believe there were any "silver bullets."