Hatching Twitter

Hatching Twitter follows the rise of Twitter through the lives of its founders and initial employees. As someone how has followed twitter since the beginning, I thought I knew the story but wow was I wrong. It turns out that there was far more power jockeying and boardroom backstabbing than I ever thought.

The way this story is told is also rather impressive. Rather than just being a telling of facts, you feel like you're there with the characters in the rooms as ideas are brainstormed or things go right (or more often wrong).

Twitter has played an outsized role in my life. The first startup I worked at where I felt true ownership of my work was a platform to connect Twitter users with advertisers to make money (before promoted Tweets were a thing). I remember going to Twitters first (and only) conference, Chirp, right around when Twitter hit 140 employees. I remember sending out a sponsored tweet manually from a Rails console that someone paid $20k to send. I remember having lunch with coworkers and friends on the floor at a Twitter event while Will.i.am had discussions over us.

Twitter holds a number of great memories for me. While this book shed light on some of the darker sides of the company, it also left me feeling how important a part it was (is) for the founders - a feeling I could easily identify with.