One of the very few exciting non-fiction books I have read in the recent times [guess after Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson]. It kept me awake at nights and even made me get up early so that I could finish this thriller asap. Who knew what was going inside twitter – Hate, fight, ever-changing CEO’s and much more!
I have read the twitter story in bits in various news articles but never knew so much was going on inside the company. Infact for the first 100 pages you will not believe that the company was actually growing while so much was happening inside! Fight, betrayal, talking behind the back, making teams and what not.
The actual twitter founders Ev, Noah, Jack and Biz have been in a continuous fighting mode from the very start. Ev was the guy who founded this application that you are reading this review on. Yes, he founded Blogger and then Google bought it! Noah was the founder of a podcasting company called Odeo and that’s where the twitter story started. And Noah was the one who gave twitter its name. It was Jack’s idea to make a product which would allow someone to ‘update’ his/her current status.
Noah was the first one to be thrown out of the company, then Jack, then Ev and then Jack comes back then the investors create a lot of scene, a new CEO comes into picture, Dick and what not. All this while twitter was growing at a phenomenal pace.
The initial product prototype was built in a few weeks and it was even referred to as a building which has been built with paper, cardboard and joint by tapes. There are millions of people who have moved in already. How do you carry out the repair work? It was that fragile. Twitter used to go offline, just go blank so many times that a whale image that was put up during such outages became pretty famous – the fail whale.
The time when all the founders went to Yahoo! offices and they offered to buy twitter for a mere $12 million, the time when they went to Facebook offices to meet Mark (offer was made but rejected even before amount came into picture), the time when Al Gore invited them to his office and they all drank like old buddies and even he offered to buy twitter! 🙂 Everyone wanted to either buy twitter or grab an equity stake for signing up, including superstars!
This book will also show you how investors twist you and your company. Doesn’t matter if you are a founder of a multi billion dollar company, you can be thrown out in a second.
What twitter actually has become today is exactly what the founders had envisaged when they talked about it. Especially Noah and Jack that it would eventually revolutionise radio and TV. It is doing just that. Today, you get the news first on twitter then the others pick it up from there and broadcast it to other channels.
Hatching twitter is such an eventful ride that am surprised why its not made into a movie yet! I will totally watch it. Social Network which was the movie on Facebook hardly had any twists and turns and I have already watched it like 10 times. Hatching twitter movie will get my attention, complete uninterrupted attention. Bring it on baby!
This book is a must read for all the social media savvy people out there. Buy it at Amazon
nymag.com has a neat article which summarises all the feuds in 1 page. I suggest you read it too. Click here.