In his first UK interview since becoming Twitter’s chief executive last month, Costolo, when asked for his long term vision of the company’s purpose, replied: “I am working on clarity around that at the moment. I am currently trying to define what Twitter’s purpose is in the long term. We will be able to be more specific on that answer in the near future.”

Costolo took over the chief executive role from Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder, who has remained at the company to focus solely on product development. His quick ascent to the top job from chief operating officer, was seen by many as the repositioning of the company, as it focuses on generating profit and scaling its operations around the world.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and chairman, added that it was difficult to try and define Twitter’s function and purpose, as so many of its uses had been defined by its users over the past four years. “It is hard to speak about Twitter’s vision without factoring in how much of its purpose has been defined by its users over the years. Users came up with so many parts of the service, such as the ‘hashtag’ [which allows people to link to a subject or an event] as so many people use it in so many different ways.