Hatching Twitter

A case study on camaraderie and competition.

Written by New York Times technology columnist Nick Bilton, Hatching Twitter provides a glimpse into the tumultuous and ego-driven world of one of Silicon Valley’s biggest success stories. It all starts with the creation of Blogger — anyone remember that? This was the late 1990s where there were also these things called LiveJournal and Xanga.

We follow the formation of Twitter’s 4 founders beginning with Evan “Ev” Williams developing Blogger, which was later bought by Google. After a brief stint at Google, Ev left to start a nascent podcasting company called Odeo with his neighbor Noah Glass. Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone join shortly after, along with several others to become a core team for some time to come.

Although they were officially building a podcast product, which in mid-2000s was not yet mainstream, the team came up with an idea to share everyday status messages with others through SMS (aka text messaging) on mobile phones. The remaining narrative is a long deterioration of the friendships that can barely stand the strain of their success.

With betrayal and revenge coming up again and again, I’d recommend this book for those wanting a scandalous romp behind one of today’s biggest technology companies. It will take you through the ups and downs, the coups and oustings, and how money can turn best friends into enemies.

Read more for my top 3 takeaways from Hatching Twitter.

In my years as a product manager and business analyst, I’ve become very familiar with the term “pivot”. Whenever there is a new strategic direction of business usually set by senior management decision or client need, your team quickly shifts towards the new ask while repurposing to salvage any build or analyses previously completed.

You can’t make a cake with the ingredients of pasta, but you can use the same kitchen and human capital.

2. Mistakes are here to assist in our evolution.

We often associate a mistake with an error. As if it is something bad that must be avoided and prevented like the plague.

I think the quote in the painting means you gain insights from past mistakes and apply them to tomorrow. But why would you want “better” errors again and again? Instead, what if we rethink a mistake to be an outcome from putting forth sincere effort and taking calculated risk. Perhaps pressing forward results in more mistakes but “better” mistakes are ones we reflect on and cultivate clarity that can bring us closer to achieving our ultimate goals.

3. The answer may lie somewhere in the middle, as it often does.

This summarizes the polarity between founders Jack and Ev’s visions that became the root of disagreements about how the company should be run. Jack saw Twitter as a way to talk about what was happening to him, while Ev viewed it as what was happening in the world. While it’s not an easy question to answer, Twitter’s unique value proposition ultimately lies in the combination of the two.

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