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

by Nick Bilton

THE ULTIMATE 21ST CENTURY BUSINESS STORY

Ev told Jack he had to 'chill out' with the deluge of media he was doing. 'It's bad for the company,' Ev said. 'It's sending the wrong message.' Biz sat between them, watching like a spectator at a tennis match.

'But I invented Twitter,' Jack said.

'No, you didn't invent Twitter,' Ev replied. 'I didn't invent Twitter either. Neither did Biz. People don't invent things on the Internet. They simply expand on an idea that already exsists.'

Since 2006, Twitter has grown from the accidental side project of a failing internet start-up, to a global icon that by 2013 had become an $11.5bn business. But the full story of Twitter's hatching has never been told before.

In his revelatory new book, New York Times journalist Nick Bilton takes readers behind the scenes of Twitter as it grew at exponential speeds, and inside the heads of the four hackers who created it: ambitious millionaire Evan Williams; tattooed mastermind Jack Dorsey; joker and diplomat Biz Stone; and Noah Glass, the shy but energetic geek who invested his whole life in Twitter, only to be kicked out and expunged from the company's official history.

Combining unprecedented access with exhaustive investigative reporting, and drawing on hundreds of sources, documents and internal e-mails, HATCHING TWITTER is a blistering drama of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles. A business story like no other, it will shock, expose and inspire.

(P)2013 Penguin Group USA

• ISBN10: 1591846013
• ISBN13: 9781591846017
• Publish Date: 5 November 2013
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Portfolio
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 302
• Language: English

Reviews

[adamfortuna]

Hatching Twitter follows the rise of Twitter through the lives of its founders and initial employees. As someone how has followed twitter since the beginning, I thought I knew the story but wow was I wrong. It turns out that there was far more power jockeying and boardroom backstabbing than I ever thought.

The way this story is told is also rather impressive. Rather than just being a telling of facts, you feel like you’re there with the characters in the rooms as ideas are brainstormed or things go right (or more often wrong).

Twitter has played an outsized role in my life. The first startup I worked at where I felt true ownership of my work was a platform to connect Twitter users with advertisers to make money (before promoted Tweets were a thing). I remember going to Twitters first (and only) conference, Chirp, right around when Twitter hit 140 employees. I remember sending out a sponsored tweet manually from a Rails console that someone paid $20k to send. I remember having lunch with coworkers and friends on the floor at a Twitter event while Will.i.am had discussions over us.

Twitter holds a number of great memories for me. While this book shed light on some of the darker sides of the company, it also left me feeling how important a part it was (is) for the founders - a feeling I could easily identify with.