Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
Written by Nick Bilton
Narrated by Daniel May
4/5
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About this audiobook
The dramatic, unlikely story behind the founding of Twitter, by New York Times bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent
The San Francisco-based technology company Twitter has become a powerful force in less than ten years. Today it's everything from a tool for fighting political oppression in the Middle East to a marketing must-have to the world's living room during live TV events to President Trump's preferred method of communication. It has hundreds of millions of active users all over the world. But few people know that it nearly fell to pieces early on.
In this rousing history that reads like a novel, Hatching Twitter takes readers behind the scenes of Twitter's early exponential growth, following the four hackers--Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass, who created the cultural juggernaut practically by accident. It's a drama of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles over money, influence, and control over a company that was growing faster than they could ever imagine.
Drawing on hundreds of sources, documents, and internal e-mails, Bilton offers a rarely-seen glimpse of the inner workings of technology startups, venture capital, and Silicon Valley culture.
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Reviews for Hatching Twitter
125 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good history of Twitter, including much on Jack Dorsey of course. Hoping for a sequel on the events of more recent years, including updates on how Jack seems to have overcome some earlier difficulties and succeeded wildly with Square. and hopefully he'll continue to help Twitter change, survive and thrive.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very interesting. The birth of twitter and the schemings of its founders.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Well written and entertaining. I read before the book of Biz Stone, one of the founders, (also a great book). Even when I already knew the story, the author took my attention in every step, and I wanted to know more. I see that it could be an entertaining Hollywood film. It is sad to see all the cunning and conspiracies, but it is also balanced with the ideals of some of the founders in some points of the process.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good book, gives a whole new look on how twitter was founded and how jack dorsey came to power. Highly reccomend
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I find corporate politics fascinating and always have. I've been a Twitter user since the first year it was born. Nick Bilton writes the story of the Twitter's corporate politics is fascinating.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fantastic read, extremely well narrated story that gives you an inside look into the founding of twitter and offers many lessons to take away and contemplate
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In 140 characters or less I will give this audio book 5 stars and a big flappy wings up.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very interesting book. Makes some of the Twitter founders and others look really bad at various times in the book.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Thriller, Mystery, Biography, History, Finance, Psychology.
Oh, it's the Book about #Twitter.
Not sure why I chose this one, I have an account, but don't use it.
Wouldn't have time to read, if I added one more "diversion" to my life. #Seriously!
Interesting book - written before the company went public so very recently.
Now I'll have to read a bit more of current events to see who was still involved and what other twists'n'turns have taken place among the key players. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The iterations of Twitter on the path to becoming what it is now is very interesting. But in many ways this was the Soap Opera digest version of the history of Twitter.
I was left feeling that if I actually knew any of the people involved in the startup I would be offended at how they were being depicted -- which ultimately took away from the story. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I've never read about such a group of immature, whiny, backstabbing losers in my life! To think that some reviewers consider them brilliant is really pretty funny. They were mediocre thinkers with mediocre talent who couldn't cut it in real places, like Xerox PARC or Google, so they wind up at a start up, broke and desperate. The one who has had success, Ev, is good for the seed money. He at least founded Blogger, so he actually had done something, which was sold to Google for millions, making him successful. The other three Twitter founders -- Noah, Jack, and Biz -- were pretty much losers. They founded a company called Odeo that was going to take podcasting by storm, but were beaten to the punch by Apple. Jack and Noah drunkenly came up with the idea for Twitter one night, as an idea to escape loneliness. Noah came up with the name. And so it began. Ev stayed in the background, Biz handled publicity, Noah was the CEO and Jack was in charge of Engineering. I believe, if my memory serves me. This didn't last long. They had a board with capital invested and soon there was rumbling, with Ev doing his fair share of the rumbling. And so Noah was forced out. Jack was brought on as CEO and Ev as chairman. Biz did what he did best. In a little while, Twitter starts taking off, slowly, very slowly at first, but surely. Jack didn't want hash tags, but they emerged and they were brilliant. However, it became clear to everyone that Jack couldn't run a company. They were losing money left and right, weren't making a dime, everyone was on edge, and Ev and the board had had it up to here. So more backstabbing. And Jack was out the door. To plot his revenge. Ev took over as CEO. After all, he had successfully run Blogger, so why not this? Sounded good. Twitter had bought another company a little while before this happened and Jack had asked their main engineer to become director of ops at Twitter, a position this man didn't feel he was qualified for. After Jack was gone, the board asked him for a briefing. He told them, in a state of disbelief, that there was no backup to the system. That if the system crashed, Twitter was gone. And that Twitter was held together with string and wires to begin with. Not good news. They got to work fixing that. Jack had been in way over his head. [Let me interject here. It's clear that the author HATES Jack in this book, and has a serious man crush on Ev, so you have to take everything written about them with a grain of salt.] Okay. Twitter has grown to millions and millions of users. Hosting many millions of tweets daily. Ev has helped people like Oprah tweet her first tweet live on TV. But Jack has been plotting with one of the board members, who -- and this is never clearly explained -- loves Jack dearly, to get Jack back into the company. I could go on and on, but long story short, Ev is backstabbed by Jack and the board, is shoved out the door, Jack comes back as head honcho, Biz quits, we never hear from Noah again, and Twitter continues on, in spite of total incompetence and arrogance. Good book to read, disgusting people to read about. Cautiously recommended.