Hatching Twitter

Hatching Twitter Plot Summary

Introduction

In a small, nondescript office in San Francisco's South Park neighborhood, a group of young technologists were about to change the world with 140 characters. What began as a side project at a failing podcasting startup would evolve into one of the most transformative communication platforms of the 21st century. The story of Twitter's creation is not one of a solitary genius, but rather a complex tapestry of collaboration, friendship, betrayal, and power struggles that would ultimately reshape how humans connect and share information. At the heart of this story are four founders with vastly different personalities and visions: Jack Dorsey, the quiet programmer with grand ambitions; Evan Williams, the thoughtful farm boy turned Silicon Valley entrepreneur; Biz Stone, the jovial creative spirit with unwavering moral convictions; and Noah Glass, the passionate dreamer who named the platform. Their journey reveals how technological innovation is often driven not by seamless cooperation but through conflict and competing ideas. Through their experiences, we gain insight into the human dynamics behind world-changing companies, the price of ambition, and how the tension between ego and idealism can spark innovation while simultaneously threatening to destroy it.

Chapter 1: Origins: From Farm Boy to Silicon Valley Dreamer

Evan Williams grew up in the tiny farming community of Clarks, Nebraska, a place where his departure would reduce the population from 374 to 373. Unlike his peers who embraced hunting, football, and pickup trucks, young Ev was a daydreamer who preferred taking apart bicycles, building models, and sketching ideas for video games he hoped to create when he could afford a computer. His different interests made him something of an outsider, though a bright yellow BMW in high school briefly catapulted him to popularity before his parents' divorce during his senior year disrupted his life once again. Ev's entrepreneurial spirit emerged early, though his first ventures rarely connected with local Nebraskans. One summer, he created instructional VHS tapes explaining "what this Internet thing was" and drove around in his BMW trying to sell them to local businesses. The tapes hardly sold, but this failure didn't diminish his determination. After a brief stint at the University of Nebraska, he left college, believing his professors were wasting his time. In a bold move that would characterize his future decision-making, he drove 2,000 miles to Key West, Florida, to seek employment with an advertising guru he'd read about, sleeping in a van and listening to business audiobooks along the way. By 1997, Ev had made his way to California with the hope of joining the tech boom. He arrived as a 25-year-old with empty pockets, fierce idealism, and tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. The job he'd been hired for at O'Reilly Media turned out to be in Sebastopol, a small hippie town 55 miles north of San Francisco. With no college degree and no programming skills, he settled for writing marketing material and rented a $600-a-month shoebox atop a stranger's garage. During the day, he worked at his desk wearing baggy jeans and oversized T-shirts; at night, he taught himself to code, his only companions the crickets gathering around the garage. Ev eventually escaped Sebastopol, moving south to work for Intel and Hewlett-Packard before making his way to San Francisco's Mission district. There, he and a girlfriend, Meg Hourihan, started Pyra Labs, a company designed to build workplace productivity software. But an internal side project would change everything. While Meg was away on vacation in the summer of 1999, Ev released a simple internal diary website to the world. He called it Blogger, introducing a word that had not existed before. This platform would allow anyone without programming knowledge to create a "web log" or blog, democratizing publishing in ways previously unimaginable. When the tech bubble burst in 2000, many startups closed and their employees fled the Valley. But Ev stayed, refining Blogger even after his team disbanded and he was left alone in his apartment. He worked 14-16 hour days, coding by day and writing on his blog about music, movies, and run-ins with the IRS by night. Eventually, his persistence paid off. By 2002, Blogger housed nearly a million people's blogs and around 90 million posts – both huge numbers for that time. In February 2003, Google acquired Blogger, turning Ev into a Silicon Valley success story and planting the seeds for his future ventures.

Chapter 2: Spark of Creation: Building the First Twitter Prototype

Noah Glass almost dropped an issue of Forbes magazine when he spotted a familiar kitchen through a window in one of the photographs. The kitchen belonged to his neighbor, Evan Williams, who was being profiled for his work on Blogger. This chance discovery in 2002 would spark a friendship that would eventually lead to Twitter's creation. Enthusiastically, Noah shouted across their adjacent balconies to introduce himself, beginning a relationship that would soon evolve into regular coffees, lunches, and late-night conversations. Unlike the reserved Ev, Noah was large in every way – tall, broad, with a wide face and droopy eyes like a sad puppy, and the energy of a nuclear power plant. Born in a hippie commune in Santa Cruz, abandoned by his father, and raised partly by his grandparents, Noah had developed into a passionate, sometimes erratic personality. His effervescence contrasted sharply with Ev's quieter demeanor, yet they formed a bond that would prove creatively productive. When Ev sold Blogger to Google in 2003, Noah was developing a pirate radio project called AudBlog that allowed people to post voice-based entries to blogs from phones. After Ev began cashing out his Google stock, Noah convinced him to invest in turning AudBlog into a startup called Odeo. Noah hired a Ruby on Rails programmer who went by "Rabble" (Evan Henshaw-Plath), a self-described hacktivist who helped with political demonstrations worldwide. The team expanded to include Rabble's fiancée Gabba and Ray McClure, a soft-spoken Flash developer, forming a scrappy group that initially worked from coffee shops around San Francisco. Meanwhile, Ev had semi-retired at 32 after Google, taking Italian cooking classes and exploring museums with his new girlfriend, Sara. But as Noah's team struggled with finances and workspace issues (operating from Noah's apartment to his wife Erin's growing displeasure), Ev was eventually pulled back in. Noah approached Ev for more funding – $200,000 – to transform Odeo from an idea to a real business. Ev agreed with one condition: he would become CEO. For Noah, who lacked Ev's tech credibility, there seemed little choice but to accept, trading the CEO role for investment and office space – Ev's old apartment that Noah had first seen in that Forbes magazine. The emerging team was soon joined by Jack Dorsey, a quiet 28-year-old programmer who spent his days at Caffe Centro near South Park. Jack had grown up in St. Louis with a speech impediment that had left him more comfortable with computers than people. He spotted Ev walking by the café one day and quickly emailed him asking for a job. Hired as a freelancer, Jack fit into Odeo's culture with his hacker mentality and no college degree. He earned respect by winning the company's "Getting Shit Done Award" multiple times, though his ideas were sometimes considered strange – like wearing a T-shirt with his phone number sewn onto it as a social experiment. As the team came together in 2005, they faced a devastating blow when Apple announced it was adding podcasts to iTunes, immediately undermining Odeo's business model. The company was suddenly adrift, searching for a new direction. It was during this uncertain time, in early 2006, that Jack mentioned to Noah during a late-night car conversation his concept for a service where people could share their status updates. Noah immediately grasped the broader potential: "It's not just about sharing what kind of music you're listening to or where you are at that moment; it was about connecting people and making them feel less alone." This insight would transform Jack's simple status idea into something far more profound – a technology that could address the fundamental human emotion of loneliness that Noah, Jack, Biz, and Ev had all experienced growing up. The seed of Twitter had been planted.

Chapter 3: Growing Pains: Leadership Conflicts and Technical Challenges

On March 21, 2006, at 11:50 AM, Jack Dorsey sent what would become the first official Twitter update: "just setting up my twttr." Within minutes, Biz Stone, who was working from home, received the message on his phone and sent his own first tweet with the same words. One by one, the Odeo employees joined, creating a flurry of test messages that ranged from mundane lunch updates to excited proclamations about the new service. The prototype, built in just two weeks, was crude but functional – a simple box asking "What's your status?" with a stream of updates flowing below. The name "Twitter" had come from Noah Glass, who had been obsessively searching for the perfect word. Flipping through a dictionary, he landed on "twitter" – defined as "the light chirping sound made by certain birds" and "agitation or excitement; flutter." The name captured what Noah envisioned for the service: a light, tremulous connection between people. Jack had suggested removing the vowels to match the trend started by Flickr, making it "Twttr," though this would later revert to the full spelling. While the team was excited about Twitter, they faced chaos within Odeo. By February 2006, tension between Ev and Noah had worsened considerably. "I should be running this fucking company," Noah had barked at Ev in front of employees more than once. "I could do a much better job than you! You don't know what the fuck you're doing." Meanwhile, Rabble and Blaine Cook had been labeled "the Anarchists" for their lawlessness and resistance to structure. When Dom Sagolla, a more corporate employee, created an index card system to organize tasks, engineers would secretly switch the cards around when he wasn't looking. When Tim Roberts instituted daily "stand-up" meetings, Rabble and Blaine would deliberately remain seated. As Twitter quietly grew among tech enthusiasts, the platform began to take on a life of its own. Users started developing conventions that would become central to Twitter's identity. The @ symbol, first used by Apple designer Robert Andersen to reply to his brother in November 2006, gradually became the standard way to address other users. Similarly, the hashtag (#) symbol, imported from photo-sharing site Flickr, emerged as a way to group related messages, despite Ev and Biz initially rejecting it as "too harsh" and "for nerds." The first glimpse of Twitter's potential came during a small earthquake in late August 2006. When Jack felt his chair shake, he looked at his phone and saw Ev's tweet: "Did anyone just feel that earthquake?" Immediately, a stream of similar messages poured in, creating a real-time account of the event from multiple perspectives. For Ev, this represented Twitter as a communication network for sharing news, while Jack saw it more as a status updater highlighting the speed of delivery. This philosophical difference would become a fundamental tension between them. Twitter's public launch was less than glorious. In September 2006, the team decided to unveil the service at the Love Parade, a techno music festival in San Francisco. Jack set up a folding table near the entrance to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, handing out flyers and free drinks to ravers. The plan to have people tweet about the music playing quickly fell apart as drunken partygoers showed little interest. Ray's computer was ruined when someone spilled a cocktail on it, and his bicycle was stolen. Jack, increasingly intoxicated, fell and cracked his head open on the concrete floor, ending up in the hospital for stitches. The grand launch netted fewer than 100 new users. Despite this inauspicious beginning, Twitter continued to grow through word of mouth in tech circles. By March 2007, the service was gaining enough attention to be featured at South by Southwest (SXSW), the annual technology conference in Austin. The team set up plasma displays throughout the conference halls showing a stream of tweets from attendees. The strategy worked brilliantly – people gathered around the screens to see their names and messages, and the service became a way to coordinate movement between parties and events. When Twitter won the "Best Startup" award at SXSW, the momentum was undeniable. But as Jack, Biz, and Ev took the stage to accept the award, Noah – who had recently been pushed out of the company – watched from the audience, a painful reminder of how quickly fortunes could change in the start-up world.

Chapter 4: Founder Fallout: The Brutal Boardroom Politics

By mid-2007, as Twitter continued to grow in popularity, Noah Glass had been completely removed from the company he helped create, and the power dynamics among the remaining founders were growing increasingly tense. Noah's ousting had come after a series of erratic outbursts, including one where he flew into a rage over Google's Dennis Crowley being given access to Twitter. When the board, led by Ev, decided Noah had to go, Jack privately gave Ev an ultimatum: "If Noah stays, I'm going to leave. I can't work with him anymore." Noah was devastated, forced to resign from two companies he had helped start. With Noah gone, Jack had taken over leadership of Twitter, though his inexperience quickly became apparent. The site was plagued by constant outages as thousands of new users signed up daily. Engineers Jeremy Walters and Blaine Cook would often wake up to find hundreds of text messages from Twitter's servers complaining about various failures. The entire operation had been built as a prototype – a small rowboat designed to carry a few people across a pond that was now being used to carry cruise-ship numbers across an ocean. As CEO, Jack struggled with basic management responsibilities. When Ev coached him to send a company-wide email setting goals, Jack's first draft began with "3 things I want for Twitter" and continued with "I want" statements throughout. When frustrations mounted, rather than confronting problems with employees, Jack would walk out of the office and spend hours circling South Park with a petulant look on his face. Meanwhile, he attended drawing classes, hot yoga, and fashion school in the evenings, developing an interest in designing A-line skirts and jeans. The investors, Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet, grew increasingly concerned as the site's technical problems worsened and Jack seemed unable to address them. In October 2008, they called a board meeting where Ev announced he was stepping down as chairman to become CEO, with Jack being moved to the largely ceremonial role of chairman. Jack was devastated, calling his parents immediately after the announcement to tell them – though he insisted to them it had been his decision. For Ev, taking the reins meant dealing with Twitter's explosive growth and persistent technical issues. The site was now processing 35 million tweets daily, up from just 5,000 in 2007. His first priority was ending the "Fail Whale" – the illustration of a whale being lifted by birds that appeared whenever the site crashed. He also needed to figure out how to make money from a service that had yet to generate any revenue. Most importantly, he had to resolve the philosophical question at the heart of Twitter: was it about sharing your status (Jack's vision) or about sharing what was happening in the world (Ev's vision)? Under Ev's leadership, Twitter received another round of funding in 2009, this time at a valuation of $250 million. Bill Campbell, a legendary CEO coach who had mentored Steve Jobs, was brought in to help Ev manage the company's growth. In September 2009, Ev hired his friend Dick Costolo, a former improv comedian turned tech entrepreneur, as Twitter's first COO. Costolo jokingly tweeted on his first day: "First full day as Twitter COO tomorrow. Task #1: undermine CEO, consolidate power." The joke would later prove uncomfortably prophetic. Meanwhile, Jack was plotting his comeback. Outwardly, he was focused on his new mobile payments company, Square, but he was also carefully crafting his public image as Twitter's creator and visionary. He took on any press interviews that came his way, often presenting himself as the sole inventor of Twitter and omitting any mention of Noah, Biz, or Ev. When he appeared on the cover of technology and business magazines, the narrative increasingly portrayed him as the sole genius behind Twitter – "the Twitter Mastermind" as CBS called him. As 2010 began, Jack was working with Peter Fenton, Twitter's newest board member and investor, to orchestrate Ev's removal. Jack began meeting privately with Twitter executives who were frustrated with Ev's slow decision-making, encouraging them to take their concerns to the board. The seeds of another boardroom coup were being planted, setting the stage for the third leadership change in Twitter's short history.

Chapter 5: The Ousting: Jack's Removal as CEO

The showdown between Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams reached its climax in October 2008, when the Twitter board decided that Jack's leadership was insufficient for the rapidly growing company. Though Jack had the brilliant initial concept for Twitter, his management style had proven problematic. He couldn't address the site's constant outages, struggled with basic business operations, and often seemed more interested in his extracurricular activities than running the company. Most damaging was his failure to properly manage the company's finances – when Ev asked a seasoned entrepreneur to help Jack with the books, the meeting turned into a basic accounting lesson at a whiteboard. The board meeting where Jack's fate was decided was tense but decisive. Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet, Twitter's lead investors, had spent months preparing for this moment. They met privately with key Twitter employees, including Jason Goldman and Biz Stone, to gauge the impact of removing Jack. While Biz threatened to quit if Jack was fired – "Should Jack be running Twitter? Probably not, but if you fire Jack, I'll quit" – the consensus was clear: Twitter needed new leadership. Jack was summoned to breakfast at the Clift Hotel with Fred and Bijan on a Wednesday morning in October. "We're making Ev CEO," Fred told him bluntly. "You're going to get a passive chairman role and a silent board seat." Jack would maintain the title of chairman, but it would be largely ceremonial – he would have no real power or vote on company matters. The board also took back some of his unvested stock options, though they gave him a $200,000 severance salary for the following year. Devastated, Jack walked out of the hotel and wandered aimlessly through San Francisco, eventually sitting on the steps of One Embarcadero, where he broke down in tears. The next day, he had to face the company and announce his departure. Standing in front of Twitter's employees, he delivered a brief, prepared statement: "The board has decided, and I agree, that I'm going to step down as CEO. Ev will take over." He didn't explain that he had been fired or that his chairman title gave him no real power. The official blog post announcing the change painted it as a mutual decision, claiming Jack had "decided to ask our COO, Dick Costolo, to become Twitter's CEO." This public narrative masked the brutal reality of the boardroom politics that had played out behind closed doors. Similarly, Jack told his parents that stepping down had been his decision, that he agreed it was best for the company. But privately, he was seething with resentment. After being ousted, Jack embarked on two parallel paths. Publicly, he poured his energy into Square, the mobile payments company he founded with his friend Jim McKelvey. Privately, he nursed his grievances and plotted his eventual return to Twitter. Unlike Noah Glass, who disappeared from the tech scene after his departure, Jack remained highly visible. He accepted every press request that came his way, positioning himself as the visionary founder of Twitter in interviews where he rarely mentioned Ev, Biz, or anyone else's contributions. Jack's media campaign was so effective that many journalists and industry insiders began to believe he was the sole creator of Twitter. In article after article, he was portrayed as a visionary entrepreneur in the mold of Steve Jobs – a comparison Jack actively cultivated by adopting Jobs's fashion sense, management philosophy, and even his musical preferences. "Listening to the Beatles and working," he tweeted repeatedly, knowing that the Beatles had been Jobs's favorite band and model for business. As Jack methodically built his new public persona, he was also laying the groundwork for his return to Twitter. When Mike Abbott, Twitter's VP of Engineering, expressed frustration with Ev's leadership, Jack advised him to take his concerns to the board. Soon other senior executives were meeting with Jack, venting their own frustrations with Ev's indecisiveness. Jack quietly encouraged them to speak to the board members, particularly Peter Fenton, who had promised Jack: "I will not rest until you're back in that company." Jack's calculated strategy to undermine Ev while burnishing his own image represented the dark side of Silicon Valley's founder mythology. While the public saw Twitter as a technological marvel connecting millions of people worldwide, behind the scenes it was the story of human ambition, betrayal, and the relentless pursuit of power – a drama that would continue to unfold as the company entered its next phase.

Chapter 6: Ev's Reign and Fall: The Second Leadership Battle

When Ev Williams took over as Twitter's CEO in October 2008, the company was at a critical juncture. The site was growing exponentially but suffering from persistent outages, and there was still no business model in sight. Ev immediately set about addressing these issues with a methodical approach that contrasted sharply with Jack's more erratic leadership style. Under Ev's guidance, Twitter's workforce expanded from 30 to nearly 200 employees, the site became more stable, and the company moved into larger offices on Folsom Street. Ev's vision for Twitter was becoming clearer too. In November 2009, he made a significant change by altering the prompt in the tweet box from Jack's "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?" This subtle shift reflected Ev's belief that Twitter was less about personal status updates and more about sharing information about the world – less ego, more news. The change proved prescient as Twitter increasingly became a platform for breaking news and global events. Twitter's cultural impact was growing dramatically during Ev's tenure. In April 2009, Ev appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to help the daytime television queen send her first tweet. The appearance resulted in 500,000 new sign-ups in 24 hours. A few months earlier, Twitter had played a crucial role in reporting on the "Miracle on the Hudson" when a plane landed safely in New York's Hudson River. Most significantly, Twitter became instrumental in the Iranian Green Movement protests following the disputed 2009 presidential election, with the U.S. State Department even asking Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance to ensure the service remained available to Iranian protesters. Despite these successes, trouble was brewing behind the scenes. Jack continued his media campaign, giving interviews where he positioned himself as Twitter's visionary founder. When the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people included Ev and Biz but not Jack, he was furious. At a gathering of the Time 100 honorees in New York, when someone asked Jack about his role at Twitter, he launched into a lengthy complaint about being excluded from the company he had founded. Meanwhile, Ev hired Dick Costolo as COO in September 2009. Dick, a former stand-up comedian who had sold his company FeedBurner to Google, quickly became an influential figure at Twitter. He was instrumental in securing the company's first significant revenue deals – $15 million from Google and $10 million from Microsoft for access to Twitter's data. But Dick's arrival also set the stage for the next power struggle. By mid-2010, Jack's behind-the-scenes campaign against Ev was gaining traction. Twitter's board members, particularly Peter Fenton, Fred Wilson, and Bijan Sabet, were growing concerned about Ev's slow decision-making and his tendency to hire friends for key positions. Jack had orchestrated private meetings with senior Twitter executives, encouraging them to take their frustrations directly to the board. When issues arose – such as the potential acquisition of TweetDeck to prevent a competitor from building a Twitter clone – Ev's indecision was portrayed as potentially catastrophic for the company. The crisis came to a head in October 2010. Bill Campbell, Ev's CEO coach, unexpectedly appeared in his office with grim news: "The board wants you to step up to the chairman role." Ev was stunned to learn that the board planned to make Dick Costolo the new CEO. When he called Fred Wilson to understand what was happening, Fred bluntly told him that he had always been a terrible CEO with no product sense. "I never considered you a founder," Fred added dismissively. "Jack founded Twitter." Ev fought back, arguing that he should remain at the company as head of product while Dick became CEO. After an emotional confrontation where Biz Stone passionately defended Ev – "How about you fucking be uncomfortable for the sake of Ev's entire fucking career?" he shouted at Dick – a compromise was reached. Ev would step down as CEO but remain at Twitter as product director. The blog post announcing the change presented it as Ev's voluntary decision to focus on product strategy. But the compromise was short-lived. Once Dick took over as CEO, Ev found himself increasingly sidelined – excluded from executive discussions and ignored when he presented new product ideas. By January 2011, Ev realized he had been effectively pushed out and announced an extended "vacation." A few months later, as Jack triumphantly returned to Twitter as executive chairman, Ev officially resigned from day-to-day involvement with the company. The second boardroom coup was complete, and once again, a Twitter founder had been ousted from the company he helped build.

Chapter 7: Return of the Founder: Jack's Comeback Strategy

Jack Dorsey's path back to Twitter was a masterclass in image management and behind-the-scenes political maneuvering. After his ousting in 2008, Jack had carefully constructed a public persona as Twitter's visionary founder and sole inventor. He gave countless interviews where he presented himself as the creative force behind the platform, rarely mentioning his co-founders. As his new company Square gained traction, he leveraged its success to burnish his reputation as a tech visionary. Most remarkably, Jack began deliberately modeling himself after Steve Jobs, who had famously been forced out of Apple only to return triumphantly years later. Jack adopted Jobs's minimalist fashion sense, wearing a daily uniform of dark jeans and a white button-up shirt with a black blazer. He began using Jobs's favorite terms in product meetings – "magical," "delightful," "surprising" – and even hired former Apple employees, asking them about Jobs's management style. He made a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi his computer screensaver after learning that Jobs had traveled to India seeking enlightenment. When asked about his role at Twitter and Square, Jack began referring to himself as "an editor, not just a CEO" – exactly how Jobs had described his role at Apple. The strategy worked. Tech blogs began asking, "Is Jack Dorsey the next Steve Jobs?" and inevitably answered "Yes." The media portrayed him as the heir apparent to the Steve Jobs mystique, further cementing his image as Twitter's rightful leader. Even a major profile in Vanity Fair titled "Twitter Was Act One" reinforced the narrative that Jack was the creative genius temporarily separated from his creation. Behind the scenes, Jack was methodically laying the groundwork for his return. In early 2010, he began meeting with Twitter executives who were frustrated with Ev's leadership. Mike Abbott, Twitter's VP of Engineering, became a key ally after expressing concerns about the company's direction. Jack advised him to take his complaints directly to the board and encouraged other senior executives to do the same. Even Dick Costolo, who would replace Ev as CEO, began meeting with Jack for advice. Jack found his strongest supporter in Peter Fenton, who had joined Twitter's board in early 2009 as part of a new funding round. After learning about the tension between Jack and Ev, Fenton became determined to bring Jack back, telling him during a dinner: "I will not rest until you're back in that company... You are the founder of this company." With Fenton's advocacy, board members Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet gradually came to see Jack's return as essential to Twitter's future. The opportunity came in October 2010, when the board forced Ev to step down as CEO and installed Dick Costolo in his place. Although Jack wasn't immediately given a formal role, the groundwork had been laid. By March 2011, Twitter officially announced Jack's return as Executive Chairman, leading product development while continuing as CEO of Square. When he addressed Twitter employees at his first company-wide meeting, Jack played the Beatles song "Blackbird" – about a bird with broken wings learning to fly – and announced, "We're calling this Twitter 1.0," implying that everything before his return had been merely a beta version. Jack's comeback was completed when he was selected to moderate Twitter's first Town Hall with President Barack Obama in July 2011. The White House event streamed live to millions of Americans, presenting Jack as the face of Twitter on a global stage. When Biz Stone protested that having a Twitter founder moderate violated the company's stance of political neutrality, his company-wide email was blocked – a sign of how completely the power dynamics had shifted. Yet Jack's triumphant return didn't immediately translate into effective leadership. His tendency to change product directions frequently frustrated the engineering team, and his continuous media appearances – where he was often introduced as Twitter's CEO rather than Executive Chairman – created tension with Dick Costolo. By 2012, Jack's influence within Twitter was waning, even as his public profile continued to grow. The board had brought back their prodigal founder, but the reality of Jack's contribution didn't match the carefully crafted myth he had created.

Chapter 8: Legacy: How Twitter Changed Modern Communication

By 2013, Twitter had transformed from a quirky side project at a failing podcasting company into a global communication platform with hundreds of millions of users, including world leaders, celebrities, activists, and ordinary people from every corner of the globe. What began as Jack Dorsey's simple idea for sharing status updates had evolved into something far more powerful – a real-time information network that compressed time and space, connecting people across vast distances through 140-character messages. The platform's impact on communication was revolutionary. Twitter democratized information flow, allowing anyone with a smartphone to become a broadcaster. During the Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2010, protesters used Twitter to organize demonstrations and share real-time updates with the world, bypassing government-controlled media. When a plane landed in the Hudson River in 2009, the news broke on Twitter before traditional media outlets could mobilize. Political campaigns, from Barack Obama's groundbreaking 2008 presidential run onward, recognized Twitter's power to directly reach voters without media filtration. Twitter also transformed celebrity culture, enabling direct communication between public figures and their fans. Musicians, actors, and athletes bypassed traditional publicists to share personal thoughts and professional announcements. As Ashton Kutcher explained to Oprah Winfrey during her 2009 Twitter debut: "I believe that we're at a place now with social media where one person's voice can be as powerful as a media network. That is the power of the social Web." Perhaps most significantly, Twitter created a new language and communication style. The platform's 140-character limit (later expanded to 280) forced concision, while user innovations like @replies and hashtags emerged organically to solve communication problems. The hashtag, initially rejected by Ev and Biz as "too nerdy," became a powerful tool for organizing conversations around topics, events, and movements, from #sandiegofire to #iranelection to #BlackLivesMatter. For all its global impact, Twitter's legacy is also deeply personal for its founders. Each experienced dramatic life changes through their involvement with the company. Ev Williams, the farm boy from Nebraska who had once ridden a borrowed bicycle to work, became a billionaire whose investment in Twitter would eventually be worth over two billion dollars. After leaving Twitter in 2011, he reopened his idea incubator, Obvious Corporation, and focused on raising his family with his wife Sara. Biz Stone, who had grown up on food stamps in Wellesley, Massachusetts, went from breaking open a coffee can of saved change to buy groceries to earning hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking engagements. True to his ethical principles, he directed much of his wealth to the Biz and Livia Stone Foundation, supporting education and animal welfare causes. Jack Dorsey achieved his ambition of becoming a tech icon, purchasing a twelve-million-dollar glass mansion overlooking the San Francisco Bay and building Square into a multi-billion-dollar business. His carefully constructed persona as "the next Steve Jobs" made him a fixture in business magazines and on television, though his relationships with his former co-founders remained strained. Noah Glass, who named Twitter and envisioned it as a cure for loneliness, found himself written out of the company's official history. After years of struggle following his departure from Twitter, he eventually found happiness through parenthood, announcing the birth of his daughter in 2013 with his first tweet in over two years: "Cheeks stained with glorious tears of joy and absolute humility I celebrate the birth of my daughter." The story of Twitter illustrates how technological innovation emerges not from seamless cooperation but through the messy collision of different personalities and visions. Jack's concept of Twitter as a status updater, Ev's vision of it as a information network, Biz's ethical framework, and Noah's emotional understanding of human connection all contributed to creating a platform that changed how the world communicates. Their conflicts – painful as they were – ultimately produced something greater than any one founder could have created alone.

Summary

Twitter's creation story reveals a profound irony: a platform designed to connect people was born through disconnection and conflict among its founders. The struggle between Jack's vision of Twitter as a personal status tool and Ev's conception of it as an information network created a tension that ultimately made the service more powerful than either vision alone. Their story demonstrates that innovation often emerges not from harmonious collaboration but from the creative friction between different perspectives – a reminder that the path to building something transformative is rarely smooth or straightforward. The human dynamics behind Twitter's rise offer valuable lessons about ambition, recognition, and legacy. Each founder contributed essential elements to Twitter's DNA, yet their inability to share credit and power ultimately tore them apart. Jack's calculated campaign to position himself as Twitter's sole visionary creator succeeded in public perception but came at the cost of genuine relationships. Ev's more collaborative approach built a stronger company but left him vulnerable to boardroom politics. Their experiences remind us that how we achieve success matters as much as the success itself. For entrepreneurs, technologists, and leaders in any field, Twitter's founding story serves as both inspiration and cautionary tale – a testament to human creativity and a reminder of the price we pay when ego overshadows contribution.

About Author

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Nick Bilton

Nick Bilton is a Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair, where he writes about technology, politics, business and culture. He is also a contributor to CNBC, and a former columnist and reporter for The New York Times.He has written three books, including The New York Times bestseller, “Hatching Twitter,” which chronicled the turmoil and chaos inside Twitter as it grew from a fledgling startup to a multi-billion dollar company.

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