Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
Author: Nick Bilton
Rating: ā 4/5
Date Read: 2014/08/08
Pages: 299
I donāt really use Twitter. This isnāt out of ignorance or confusion: Iāve been pretty well informed about Twitter since the beginning, given the amount of press it got in places like Lifehacker, and Iāve definitely signed up for the service more than twice. The issue for me has always been that itās fundamental purpose has never seemed clearly defined: is it for personal status updates to let friends and family know what youāre doing? Should you use it as a promotional tool to direct people from Twitter to your website? Does it work best as a news service? Of course, the answer to all of these things is yes, which has left me feeling that Twitter was a little too scattershot for my tastes.
Hatching Twitter, a narrative non-fiction account of the creation of the service that reminded me, more than once, of [b:The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal|6326920|The Accidental Billionaires The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal|Ben Mezrich|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320527444s/6326920.jpg|6512514], reveals that no one at Twitter could really agree on what it was for, either. Jack Dorsey always saw it as a status update system, a way of letting people know what youāre doing. Evan Williams, on the other hand, thought of it as microblogging. Twitter seemed to grow autonomously, creating itās own conventions with @ messages and hashtags, well beyond the concept the founders set out for the site. The book is an interesting look at how technologies sometimes seem to control and change themselves.
This is also the story of personal in-fighting between the myriad founders, CEOās, and board members of Twitter. Itās all super interesting, although I get the feeling that the story was quite a bit more nuance than Bilton makes it out to be. What does seem clear is that Twitter suffered from executives with unclear and undefined roles, who had major issues trying to monetize the service. Itās all outlined in a page-turnery way, which is fun.
Who knows, maybe Iāll attempt to tweet about this book review. Maybe it will be the first in a long line of tweets. Or maybe not. As Bilton points out, more than once, the people behind Twitter desperately wanted to feel connected to others, and shouting into what feels like a cavernous abyss probably wonāt help there, even if your words echo back to you.
