Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal

Review for: Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and BetrayalOVERVIEW:The broad lesson of the story is about individual and collective contribution. The founders each brought their own strengths, resources, ideas, and skills to the table. It is easy to imagine Twitter not being what it is today without all their contributions. This book helps give credit to both the known and some of the important less well known contributors, for example Noah Glass in the early days and Ev's contribution beyond just financier.With a startup story including the word betrayal in it and in reading the reviews here you might think the book is all Hollywood pitch drama with no business details, however many of the business details can be found in the book, the setting of the chess pieces, inception, creation story of famous twitterisms, decisions, the turning points, etc.While there is certainly a lot of drama, the author does a good job of explaining the business reasoning behind the drama and how the decisions were executed so you can make up your own mind. Betrayal or the right business decision at the time? Personnel decisions made with reasonable consideration or done in a Machiavellian or manipulative manner?There is almost no mention of the technology behind the scenes. For example, the site was going down regularly and this helped contribute to the ouster of a CEO, but when the issues are resolved there is no mention of how and what the problem was. Ramble's post here suggests there may be an interesting technical challenge story or two here.In the end, the author uncovers a great startup story partly from often reluctant interviewees, and in so doing gives us a real world business story to entertain us and learn from.SOME OF THE BUSINESSHISTORY COVERED:Inception- Ev's background creating and selling Blogger, and thus funding Odeo and thus later Twitter.- The serendipity of Noah meeting Ev.- Odeo, the company inside which Twitter was started, saw its certain doom when Apple added podcasting to iTunes, forcing founders to focus on new ideas.- Jack telling Noah about the idea for Twitter he had years ago, Noah likes it.- Jack and Noah telling Ev about the idea for Twitter.- Noah coming up with the name Twitter (p61), the silly names others came up with including friendstalker and smssy. Thank goodness for Noah.- Ev declaring a hack-a-thon for competing ideas that cemented his committment to the Twitter idea.- Original Twitter written.- The Odeo board not seeing potential in Twitter, thus not agreeing to fund Twitter as another startup and agreeing to be bought out by Ev.- Noah's importance in the early days, why he was asked to resign.- March 21, 2006 saw the first twitter.Onwards- Jack and Goldman cutting back on command verbs to make Twitter friendlier.- South by Southwest March 2007 a huge success for Twitter, ultimately due to an idea of Ev's months before (p97).- Jack setting message character limit to 140.- Twitter outages actually generating more interest in it.- The creation story behind @ and # at Twitter (p117).- Ev convincing board not to sell to Facebook (p164).- Ev on Oprah and the Oprah server.- Various threats to Twitter emerge, though little follow-up is given. Just a brief reminder that there are competitors and potential competitors in the real world.SOME STRENGTHS:- Great job stitching the story together from so many sources, hopefully the story is accurately portrayed.- Lots of character development, though in some cases it detracts from the story in an attempt to double as a morality play. Also some folks seem to be reduced to caricatures of real people, though that is often unavoidable in an effort to stick to a limited set of themes.- Some important lessons about treating your people well, being a team player, etc.SOME WEAKNESSES:- There is mention of past attempts at Twitter-like services that failed, but why they failed and who they were isn't mentioned, nor is what was different about Twitter that allowed it to succeed when others couldn't, etc. Was it the ability of Ev to keep it funded without any income stream? Was it product differentiation? Timing luck?- Technology is not covered at all, the challenges, the solution to all the outages isn't covered in any detail. There is a brief mention that Twitter was first written in Ruby on Rails in 2 weeks and that's pretty much it.- The character assassination of Jack seems a little much and past a certain point I think it detracts from the Twitter story and lays on the morality play a little thick. To his credit the author gives the reasons behind decisions Jack was part of, and I think the author would have been better off leaving us with both sides of the story and acting as a neutral business story teller.

Author Nick Bilton conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with both current and past employees at Twitter, as well as their friends and even competitors at other companies. All four co-founders of the company agreed to be interviewed - and so did board members (past and present). I've read plenty about the history of the company and still found some surprising information in this book.In addition to interviews, Bilton turned to Twitter itself to help fact check Twitter's history and the varied personalities behind the company. He also pored through thousands of online photos, videos, and tweets. If conversations with key players revealed significantly different recollections, trails of info found on Twitter could often set the record straight. A smart move on the author's part - scrutinizing how the founders used Twitter - right down to tweets on the exact days and times when certain pivotal events occurred.From the first pages, I found myself drawn to the details of the power plays and personalities vividly chronicled by Bilton. The first section focuses on Twitter's founders: Evan Williams, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone. All of them diverse and fascinating. Williams, the farm boy who came to California and taught himself code. Noah Glass, who opens a magazine and realizes he lives in an apartment directly across from Williams (talk about coincidence) and introduces himself by yelling, "Hey, Blogger!" at Williams. Then there is Jack Dorsey, , the "invisible man" who had a significant speech impediment but didn't let that stop him from eventually becoming so successful that he won Wall Street Journal's 2012 "Innovator of the Year Award" in technology. And Biz Stone gets his due, noted to have left millions of dollars in stock options on the table when he quit Google.After the fast-paced, yet amazingly detailed, introduction, there is a play by play account of the rest of Twitter's history, with even more close-ups of the founders and their friends, associates, and competitors. Each part is lively and irresistible. The backstabbing. The irony of a company meant to bring people together but which alienated its founders from one another. The various intrigues. The final part of the book is also riveting, providing an update on Jack, Evan, Biz and Noah. But won't give anything away here so you'll have to to read the book to discover which man currently has relatively little money and hopes to be part of another start-up someday. Or which one is worth millions, earning $500K - or more - for a 15 minute speech, yet still drives old cars and dresses in clothing that could easily be found a thrift shop. Another founder is often featured on magazine covers and in media interviews but is portrayed as someone who spends plenty of nights in his "lonely glass castle in the sky." Then there is the one so affected by his Twitter days - and the power plays - that he doesn't allow his kids to use iPads, iPhones, or television.

Hatching Twitter is a great read, telling the story of how Twitter rose, somewhat haphazardly from Blogger and then Odeo. The story focuses on the backgrounds, personalities and infighting between the four co-founders (Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams) and it's a fascinating read. You're left wondering how the company was ever successful given the dysfunction throughout its history. I thoroughly enjoyed the book but I would have two complaints. Firstly, this book takes the Evan Williams side throughout and he was clearly one of the more active participants (though all four co-founders were interviewed). Jack Dorsey in particular gets a very rough treatment being characterised as incompetent, narrow-minded, scheming and Machiavellian at various points. Maybe this is correct, but I couldn't help feel that the book lacked balance. Secondly, the book focuses almost solely on the people, not the product. It would have been fascinating to see how the product developed, how features were decided and added, and how the service we know today took shape. But this is sadly glossed over at best.In summary, a great read, had me gripped, but has left me wanting to get another perspective and learn more about the company.

The tale of tech ego was great! The stories are important and devastatingly impactful but the writing... the writing is GODAWFUL. Almost as bad as Morrissey's attempts to be a novelist. A 'vice presidential laugh'? Caricatures for main characters with just one or two personality traits? Come on man...let's hope that movie is a lot better.

I read this book as a non-twitter user, an older person who frankly is not that interested in Social Media. I knew about Twitter but never really understood what it was, how it worked and why it seemed to be so addictive to so many people.What made celebrities for example want to spend their time tweeting what they were doing to millions of fans so that they were constantly " on call" to them. So I hoped this book would give me an insight into what this phenomenon was all about. And to a degree it did. It explained how a group of geeks got together to think up this idea. It explained how the idea caught on and how the idea developed into a world wide sensationIt explained what it was about Twitter that made it such a valuable source of information as people used it to report on what they saw around them. The power of a crowd of people to Tweet at public events and let them be understood and exposed to a world wide audience. It also gave the reader an understanding of the social side of Tweeting and the way it could allow people to share their likes and dislikesFinally it gave what to me was a completely unknown story about the board room shenanigans that engulfed Twitter and the bitter disputes between those who were its founders. We all know about Mark Zuckerberg and the disputes he had both with his original partner and the Winklevoss twins but that was a tea party compared to the divisions that engulfed Twitter and possibly still cause problems today according to this book.If I had a complaint it was that it did not really explain the technology behind Twitter. I would have liked to have understood how it actually works and what level of infrastructure is needed to allow it to operate.But that is a small quibble against what was an interesting read on one of the key developments since 2000 that are transforming the landscape in which we all operate on a word wide basis

Having been a user of Twitter since 2008, I was interested to read the background to the company and understand how someone was able to create such a disruptive technology out of a seemingly simple idea.The book tells the surprisingly tumultuous story about the inception of Twitter and the internal power struggles between the various invent... err, co-founders of the company. It takes the reader through the key characters of the company in its humble beginnings and attempts to give insight into the minds of Ev, Jack, Biz, Noah and everyone else as they adapt to the increasing maturity of the Twitter.The Good:- It's a great story about egos, emotions, and the birth of a disruptive technology out of a side project. It genuinely inspires budding technology entrepreneurs who think they need the killer idea up front. My favourite quote of the book is the sign hanging in their office saying "Let's make better mistakes tomorrow".- Cameos from Mark Zuckerberg, President Medvedev and Snoop Dogg are very entertaining and give an insight into the rollercoaster early days of the company- Nick Bilton seems to have been given great access to current and former Twitter employees, founders, board of directors etc. to be able to give such an in-depth account of movements in an organisation.The Other:- It's entirely a matter of personal taste, but I personally found the language to, at times, start sounding like fiction which threw me off a couple of times. The scene is set with such description that I wonder whether this is artistic license or a description given by an interviewee.Example "It was dark outside as the rain pelted Dick Costolo's car relentlessly. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands trying to concentrate on the dark road. He was exhausted after the long flight from Indianapolis, where he had been speaking at a conference about Twitter. A few more miles, he thought, and I'll be home, out of these wet clothes"Personally, I like non-fiction books that are detailed, but very matter-of-fact. This book has a different perspective which some people may find enjoyable.Overall - Very enjoyable book, which I am pleased is being turned into a movie so people who may not be reading it, can still enjoy the story of Twitter.

I can't comment on the accuracy of the content and this version of events of the forming of Twitter and at times the writing is a little on the unnecessarily flowery side (reminded me of reading a story written by a college student). However, this was a really good read and I enjoyed it a lot. One of the better (in terms of entertainment at least) bios of a tech company.