Hatching Twitter, Nick Bilton
Hatching Twitter, Nick Bilton
2 Rating(s)
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Hatching Twitter
A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal

Author: Nick Bilton

Narrator: Daniel May

Unabridged: 9 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 11/05/2013


Synopsis

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.

About The Author

Nick Bilton is a columnist and reporter for The New York Times and also leads its popular Bits Blog, where he explores the disruptive aspects of technology on business and culture, the future of technology, privacy, and the social impact of the Web. He is a regular guest on national TV and radio and the author of I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works. He lives in San Francisco.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Eklein on December 04, 2013

This book, in less than 140 characters: Nick Bilton really, really hates Jack Dorsey. Hatching Twitter ultimately has a lopping, meta-quality to it: It's about the fight between the four founders for control of both the company and the origin story. But it is, itself, part of the fight between the fo......more

Goodreads review by Andy on November 05, 2013

A stunning modern day story of a company trying to find it's identity in a medium, social media, that barely knows what it is. Zuckerberg may have been an a-hole, but at least he isn't Jack Dorsey.......more

Goodreads review by Jonathan on January 04, 2014

This book is written like a bad valleywag or pando blog post. I knew very little going in and did learn a lot . Had no idea Dorsey was pushed out of the company and was at odds with the former founders. I had also never heard of Noah Glass, who was written out the company's history despite being on t......more

Goodreads review by Nathan on December 14, 2013

It's bizarre to read a True Life Story about people you know. Writing any kind of history is a fraught project, because the nature of the beast is that the people who talk to the author are the ones who get their side of the story preserved. It's clear from reading it who had Bilton's ear, and who d......more

Goodreads review by Caroline on March 08, 2022

Mostly this just made me nostalgic for a time when we weren’t so connected online. Other takeaways include 1) Jack Dorsey is an absolute menace and 2) I will read anything Nick Bilton writes. Nick: if you’re seeing this I WOULD READ YOUR GROCERY LISTS......more


Quotes

“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