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

I'm Rabble, one of the people who helped start Odeo and i'm mentioned a bunch in the first couple chapters. This review might not be useful for evaluating the book as something to read, but i figured this might be a decent forum to provide a review.The story is very well told. It's a captivating read. It's very surreal to read about your friends and former co-workers in a book like this. Most of us live our lives only ourselves. Having this book is kind of like having a well researched MTV Rock Documentary about our work, friendships, and time in our lives. I think if you interview enough people, look at what happened in any situation, it's easy to put a spin and story on things. None of us know the details of everybody else's life.I wish there'd been more discussion about the technical and models we pulled from to build twitter. Where the ideas came from and how they were put together. It's very weird to see how much focus there is on people's drinking, clothing, hygiene, and being broke. That we were pulling from txtmob, the unix finger command, carlton university's status update system, bike messenger dispatch, blogger, etc... that's not as sexy a story. That we considered how to look at transitions of mediums from desktop to web, from web to mobile, as a place to create new systems for communications in old ways, isn't as cool as intrigue amongst friends who ended up creating twitter. There's a lot of the people and not as much understanding twitter and it's context.The order of things as they happened and as they are told in the book isn't the same. This is ok, i think, mostly because the book is about telling the story of twitter's creation. It's no a strict chronology. Reordering things makes for a better story arc. There were a number of people not interviewed and i think their story was diminished. Some of us were talked about more because they fit a better story arc.One last thing, i'd say that Twitter's management problems were due to lack of ability to come together and make a decision, and not the anarchists refusing to follow rules and allow order.

Well-researched and sincere take on a fascinating story: the inception and development of Twitter. Bilton takes advantage of the abundant web material available about the early days of Twitter and also seems to have had extensive opportunity to do his own original interviews with the company's four founders Biz Stone, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, and Evan Williams. Bilton uses this material to study the unique character and personality of each of the four founders. This becomes key when you see how each founder's unique personal style leads to their conflicting visions for the future of Twitter. For example, Jack Dorsey saw Twitter as a status updating tool useful primarily for enabling users talk about themselves and what they were doing, while the more civic-minded Evan Williams saw it as information-gathering tool whose greatest potential was in describing the world and current events. Intriguingly, Bilton notes that that Evan Williams forbids his young children to use iPads, iPhones, or television, and encourages them to read physical books. Makes you think even the one of the important people in the tech world believes that Twitter and social media are just a waste of time. I also enjoyed learning about the "forgotten founder" Noah Glass, who was critical in starting the company but received very little attention for his contribution. On the downside, you get the feel that Bilton got a free pass to write an "authorized" version of the Twitter story that emphasized hype and glossed over flaws in Twitter as a platform and as a company. Still, it's an engrossing read.

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.

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.

La vera storia di twitter

Nick con este libro logra transmitir el dinamismo, pasión y frustración de los primeros días de twitter y toda la sucesión de eventos que marco al mundo

Given I've spent well over two decades working within the IT industry, I wasn't really surprised by the skull duggery that was described to have taken place behind the closed doors of the Twitter office. Its rapid growth, significant potential and interest from influencers certainly left the start up open to being a target.It's a great insight into what happens & it certainly demonstrates very clearly that Ego has no rightful place in business.Twitter has changed the way people view social media platforms and use its services. Freedom of speech, the realtime validation of what's happening around the world... all surged forward with a leap when the founders of Twitter provided a mechanism to write 145 char in a square box.Brilliant.

I just couldn't put the book down. I had never thought Twitter had gone through so many ups and downs