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Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal Paperback – September 30, 2014

by Nick Bilton (Author)

333 customer reviews

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The dramatic, unlikely story behind the founding of Twitter, by New York Times bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent

The San Francisco-based technology company Twitter has become a powerful force in less than ten years. Today it’s everything from a tool for fighting political oppression in the Middle East to a marketing must-have to the world’s living room during live TV events to President Trump’s preferred method of communication. It has hundreds of millions of active users all over the world.
But few people know that it nearly fell to pieces early on.

In this rousing history that reads like a novel, Hatching Twitter takes readers behind the scenes of Twitter’s early exponential growth, following the four hackers—Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass, who created the cultural juggernaut practically by accident. It’s a drama of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles over money, influence, and control over a company that was growing faster than they could ever imagine.

Drawing on hundreds of sources, documents, and internal e-mails, Bilton offers a rarely-seen glimpse of the inner workings of technology startups, venture capital, and Silicon Valley culture.

Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, November 2013: Spoiler alert: The subtitle sorta says it all. That is, Nick Bilton's Hatching Twitter delivers "A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal," though not necessarily in that order. The book's four central players--Ev, Jack, Biz, and Noah--conceived of Twitter while working on Odeo, an ultimately doomed attempt to revolutionize podcasting. As their little chick grew, the four men's personal and ideological differences led to a power struggle that eventually left them all on the sidelines as a former stand-up comedian took Twitter into the uncertain future. Writing with the pacing and veracity of detail of a true-crime book, Bilton makes use of a trove of source material--from internal Twitter e-mails to extensive interviews with and early tweets by the founders themselves--and the result is as exciting and fast-paced as it is topically relevant. If you're looking for a thoughtful rumination about Twitter as a revolutionary global communications platform, keep looking. If you're looking for a quick, well-written, thoroughly researched human drama, the story of an utterly dysfunctional foursome and the accelerated unraveling of their once brilliant partnership, this is your book. #HighlyRecommended. --Jason Kirk (@brasswax) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Fast-paced and perceptive.”

--The New York Times Book Review

"Exhaustively researched...extensively detailed...unexpectedly addictive."

--The Wall Street Journal

"#Backstabbing, power struggles and profanity laid bare"– "It is breathless storytelling"

--The New York Times

"Deeply reported and deliciously written."

--The Verge

"A compelling read, more like espionage than a corporate history."

--Fortune Magazine

“With a cinematic approach befitting its eclectic cast of characters, the perceptive read…is rife with Byzantine-like intrigue, character clashes and broken dreams.”

--USA Today

“Nick Bilton’s impressively detailed fly-on-the-wall exposé of the micro-blogging site’s birth and evolution evokes all the titillating elements of a soap opera.”

-Success Magazine

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Product details

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Portfolio; Reprint edition (September 30, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1591847087
ISBN-13: 978-1591847083
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (333 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,530 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7 in Books > Business & Money > Industries > Media & Communications
- #8 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business Technology > Social Media for Business
- #11 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Computers & Technology

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Top Customer Reviews

From the perspective of a participant - rabble

ByRabbleon November 5, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I'm Rabble, one of the people who helped start Odeo and i'm mentioned a bunch in the first couple chapters. This review might not be useful for evaluating the book as something to read, but i figured this might be a decent forum to provide a review.

The story is very well told. It's a captivating read. It's very surreal to read about your friends and former co-workers in a book like this. Most of us live our lives only ourselves. Having this book is kind of like having a well researched MTV Rock Documentary about our work, friendships, and time in our lives. I think if you interview enough people, look at what happened in any situation, it's easy to put a spin and story on things. None of us know the details of everybody else's life.

I wish there'd been more discussion about the technical and models we pulled from to build twitter. Where the ideas came from and how they were put together. It's very weird to see how much focus there is on people's drinking, clothing, hygiene, and being broke. That we were pulling from txtmob, the unix finger command, carlton university's status update system, bike messenger dispatch, blogger, etc... that's not as sexy a story. That we considered how to look at transitions of mediums from desktop to web, from web to mobile, as a place to create new systems for communications in old ways, isn't as cool as intrigue amongst friends who ended up creating twitter. There's a lot of the people and not as much understanding twitter and it's context.

The order of things as they happened and as they are told in the book isn't the same. This is ok, i think, mostly because the book is about telling the story of twitter's creation. It's no a strict chronology. Reordering things makes for a better story arc. There were a number of people not interviewed and i think their story was diminished. Some of us were talked about more because they fit a better story arc.

One last thing, i'd say that Twitter's management problems were due to lack of ability to come together and make a decision, and not the anarchists refusing to follow rules and allow order.

1111 comments 293 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Dispelling some big myths about Silicon Valley

ByLane Beckeron November 9, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Having lived and worked in and around Silicon Valley for most of my adult life, I have always felt that one of the most frustrating things about this still-amazing place is that it never seems content to just tell the world the truth about how technology is made.

Building products--successful and unsuccessful ones alike--requires a lot of things: A solid idea, the right team to execute on it, and good timing, certainly, but on a more complicated note, personal connections, social capital, back-room deals, and, most of all, a whole hell of a lot of luck. Yet the stories that get told about Silicon Valley all too often gloss over all of this (and the power-grabbing and horse-trading that always accompany it) in favor of the much simpler and totally inaccurate narrative about the brilliance of "that one guy." The "founder." The "inventor." The one who made all the money and took all the fame. Never mind the other people who helped come up with it, the people who supported it, the people who contributed to it, the people who toiled away to make it a real thing. Nope: Just that guy. You know, the next Steve Jobs!

Not so "Hatching Twitter." A lot of the reviews here have focused on how compelling Bilton tells this story, weaving the narrative of the tool's creation around some impressively researched details about a seemingly never-ending litany of back-stabbing. That's completely true, and the book's a worthwhile read for that alone. But to me, the most impressive thing about the book is how intently it works to dispel this standard myth of the lone creator, and how tirelessly his prose works to promote the truth, which is simply that making things is hard, and that it takes more than any one person to bring something as big and as important and as fundamental as Twitter seems to be into the world.

I can only hope that the next wave of brilliant, motivated early-twenty-somethings who make their out to California to find their fortunes in the world of startups read this book and take away that message. That it sticks with them, and that they remember, no matter how successful they get, that it doesn't have to be all about them. That there's plenty of glory to go around. This stuff we do here is already impressive--there's no need to mythologize it, to hoard credit, to take away the accomplishments of others for no other reason than to promote a small, self-serving lie.

And if they do, then maybe then they'll be able to treat each other better than the awful, inhumane way the Twitter team did.

Maybe. I'm not holding my breath.

0Comment 62 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Twitter was the update of one’s current status was easily accessible on a mobile device

ByKaterina Stavrakison December 6, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

My name is Katerina Stavrakis and I am currently a student in the ENTR300 class at the University of Baltimore. Before Twitter was as widely used and as popular as it is today, the four founders, Biz Stone, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, and Evan Williams, worked for Odeo, and they decided to try and create twitter as a side job. Twitter was the update of one’s current status was easily accessible on a mobile device. Throughout their journey, they showcase how multi billionaire success goes hand in hand with both negative and positive things. There is backstabbing, mistrust, betrayal, alongside with luck and relationship that are both made and used. I liked the prospective of this novel because whether you want to or not, at some point you will empathize for the characters. However there was a lot of dialogue, which made it hard to keep track of who is who because the language was very modern however this novel could potentially make a great movie. This book is useful to entrepreneurship students because it shows that success isn’t easy. You will fail, you will get hurt, you will have to start from scratch, but in the end, if you keep working at something you have faith in, you will one day succeed.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Riveting

I thoroughly enjoyed this account of Twitter. Who needs to read fiction when such an account of the experiences of real people, and really creative ones at that, is so...Read more

Published 4 days ago by Mel

Dramatic Retelling of Twitter's First Years

This book is a very captivating narrative of the story of twitter. Although this book drags at times, I think it does a good job of picking out the interesting stories of the...Read more

Published 8 days ago by p3rson

Great book...

They sure presented everything down to the smallest detail. Sure a lot of backstabbing and intrigue. A really good book Read more

Published 24 days ago by Jim Lichty

Very important for everyone needs to start business

I really loved this book. First, I was about to quit reading it from the first chapters but once digged in I couldn't wait to finish it.Read more

Published 28 days ago by Mohammad Gabr

Five Stars

Very interesting story about about how Twitter happened.Read more

Published 1 month ago by Cookie

A great look at one of the most impactful social media ...

A great look at one of the most impactful social media websites of the past decade. An amazing and deeply emotional story of the modern day struggle to discover true success.Read more

Published 1 month ago by Colby Haskell

Longer than 140 Characters.

Story of Twitter in a nutshell that is a quick and interesting read. Nothing really new but with it for cheap price.Read more

Published 1 month ago by Geary E. Statham

Amazing and very interesting book!!

Very interesting topic to talk about, everyone who is looking for a great story and interested in a start-up should read this book first.Read more

Published 3 months ago by Carlos López Mararavillas

A superb read!

If you're at all interested in how startups work and what happens when they make it - and what happens to the individuals involved, this is a fascinating read.Read more

Published 4 months ago by IntrepidAcademic

Fantastic recollection

It reads like the best fiction book yet all thef the story is true. It is like ripping the blanket from the obscure thing called a startup where you can only speculate.Read more

Published 4 months ago by Anton

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