They say history is written by the victors. And that's usually true—unless the losers have powerful allies at The New York Times. In the case of Hatching Twitter, a new book that tells the story of Twitter's early days, that ally is Nick Bilton, who dug deep into Twitter's history and comes up with a story most people probably have never heard before. It's an adventure story full of lies, bad behavior, and lots and lots of backstabbing. And as with most billion-dollar businesses, the infighting and intrigue ring true much more so than the more popular and politically convenient narrative.
The book is coming out just as Twitter is going public. Both an IPO and book from a major publisher are two very long-term efforts. While no doubt Bilton was hoping for proximity to the IPO, that Hatching Twitter and Twitter's stock will both be available for purchase within a few days of each other is a remarkable stroke of luck—at least for Bilton. But even if Twitter were not going public, this would be an interesting read. One caveat: I'm mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book—I spoke to Bilton as he was writing it and told him a (very) little bit about what I'd seen at Twitter in years past. Yet despite the fact I've reported on Twitter since its very early days, what Bilton unearthed surprised me, again and again.
It's an adventure story full of lies, bad behavior, and lots and lots of backstabbing.The Twitter origin story most people have heard goes something like this. Jack Dorsey was an engineer at a failing podcasting startup called Odeo. The company was running out of money and options, and asked its employees for ideas on new directions. At a meeting on the playground in San Francisco's South Park, Dorsey describes his vision for a status-messaging service that would let people send short updates about their lives and change the world. Twitter is hatched straight from Jack Dorsey's brain, and all that was left was to build it.
Like most origin stories, the popular Twitter origin is both a good yarn and largely bullshit. The Eureka Founding Myth is a Silicon Valley staple, born of Reed Hasting's video rental late fees and Chad Hurley and Steve Chen's inability to share their videos of a dinner party. It's less interesting to say that things just evolved, one idea building upon another. You don't get as much press for that. But it's almost always more true.
Hatching Twitter is an adventure story, written like a crime novel. It's the product of hundreds of hours of interviews with founders, early employees, family members, and even the cleaning staff of one of its characters. The book tells the story of Twitter's four founders: Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and its largely forgotten first leader, Noah Glass. It also tells the story of its now-CEO Dick Costolo, and a board that engineered the blindside ousters of two of its leaders. (Hint to aspiring startup CEOs: Beware the wrath of Fred Wilson).
But mostly, it's the story of how lonely people came together to build a product designed to connect them to each other and the world around them—only to rip each other to shreds in order to control that very thing.
Noah Glass is the Twitter founder (though he wasn't given the courtesy of that title) most people have never heard of. While running Twitter, it was an intriguing plaything that even its own employees and founders could not adequately describe. It was a mish-mash status updater that ran on the web and AOL Instant Messenger and SMS. Glass is forced out by his friends, and comes away empty-handed from the thing he built. Of all the players in the book, Noah is the one who gets fucked hardest. Despite an uplifting final moment, it is difficult not to feel pity for him.
Stone is presented again and again as a moderating influence on all the others. He's the moral voice of the company, the one who stresses the importance of its political neutrality and commitment to free speech. He comes to his friends' defense again and again, trying unsuccessfully to save them from their fates. But it's also kind of unclear what, you know, Biz actually does other than provide moral support.
Mostly, however, this book is about Twitter's yin and yang: Jack and Ev.
The Jack Dorsey described by Bilton is very different than the myth. Far from a clear-headed visionary leader, Dorsey is painted as a petulant dilettante, who at times just wants to drop it all to become a dressmaker. His tenure-leading Twitter is painted as a disaster. He comes across as petty, driven by ego and lust. He leaves the office to brood, or to go to art class, while everyone else works on the project. He communicates poorly. It paints Jack as the Forest Gump CEO, a man in the right place at the right time, caught up in events he doesn't fully understand.
While Dorsey was running Twitter, it was certainly a mess. It was plagued with downtime and technical problems, while simultaneously bleeding a fortune. But it was also in that period, during 2008, when it first really began to catch fire. Under Dorsey, Twitter grew from a plaything to a powerhouse. Perhaps despite itself.
Williams, on the other hand, remains very sympathetic throughout, even as he betrays his friends Glass and Dorsey to wrest control of Twitter away from them (he's just doing it for Twitter's own good, after all). It's Williams who bankrolled the company, and stepped in at essential moments of its history to finance it, focus full time on it, and take it to next levels by running it. It is only because of his earnestness that he fails to see the knives out for him until they are stuck in his gut.
The book would have done better to lionize him a bit less. Jack's blemishes wouldn't seem so painted on if we could also see more of Ev's. Would Twitter be preparing for an IPO this week were Ev still running the show?
One of the book's great qualities is that it shines light not just on conflicting personalities, but how those personalities influenced what Twitter is, and what it was and what it might have been. Hatching Twitter describes an essential conflict between Ev and Jack on how they viewed things. "Jack had continued to see Twitter as a way to talk about what was happening to him. Ev was starting to see it as a view into what was happening in the world."
Jack wound up with more power and credit, but it is Ev's idea of Twitter that eventually won out. Twitter has become more about the world than the individual, the hive mind rather than the place you turn to see what your friends are doing. But the book also presents another idea about Twitter that's the most accurate vision of all, and that best gets at Twitter's very soul. This idea came not from Jack or Ev, but Twitter's raging id and first leader, Noah Glass. It speaks to not just Twitter as a personal journal, or newswire, but also as the weird, wonderful place largely built by users themselves: "It can be," Noah predicted, "whatever you want it to be."
