Hatching Twitter

Hatching Twitter is a narrative nonfiction account of the founding of Twitter and the power struggles among its four cofounders: Evan Williams (known as Ev), Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone. Journalist Nick Bilton draws on interviews and internal documents to trace a decade of friendship, betrayal, and competing visions that shaped one of the most influential technology companies in the world.

The book opens on October 4, 2010, with Ev, Twitter's chief executive officer (CEO), vomiting into a wastebasket minutes before addressing 300 employees to announce he is stepping down. A blog post claims he decided voluntarily to hand power to Dick Costolo, the company's chief operating officer (COO), but Ev has been forced out in a boardroom coup orchestrated by investors and people he once considered friends, including Jack, the first CEO, whom Ev himself pushed out two years earlier. The narrative rewinds to show how all four cofounders arrived at this moment.

Ev grew up on a farm in Clarks, Nebraska, a shy daydreamer who never fit the hunting-and-football culture around him. After dropping out of college, he moved to California in 1997, taught himself to code, and created Blogger, a tool that let anyone publish a blog. Google acquired Blogger in 2003 for tens of millions of dollars, making Ev wealthy.

Noah Glass, raised in a hippie commune in Santa Cruz, discovered that his San Francisco neighbor was the newly famous Ev. They became close friends, and Noah persuaded Ev to invest in a podcasting start-up called Odeo. Ev agreed but insisted on serving as CEO, requiring Noah to cede control of his own company.

Jack Dorsey, born with a speech impediment in St. Louis that left him socially isolated, fell in love with computers at age eight and eventually landed at Odeo as a freelance programmer in mid-2005. Biz Stone grew up on food stamps in Wellesley, Massachusetts, using humor to cope with an abusive, absentee father. After dropping out of college twice and working alongside Ev at Google, Biz quit in 2005, forfeiting more than 2 million dollars in unvested stock options, to follow Ev to Odeo.

By late 2005, Odeo was floundering. Apple announced it was adding podcasts to iTunes, a fatal blow, and Ev and Noah clashed constantly over leadership. In late February 2006, Jack mentioned to Noah a "status" concept he had sketched years earlier: a website where people could share short updates about what they were doing. Noah recognized it as a way to combat loneliness by connecting people. On February 27, Noah and Jack pitched the idea to Ev and Biz. After a company-wide hack day where Jack presented the concept more formally, Ev greenlit two weeks of development.

Noah obsessively searched a dictionary for a name and landed on "twitter," defined as "the light chirping sound made by certain birds" and "agitation or excitement; flutter." On March 21, 2006, Jack sent the first tweet: "just setting up my twttr." The prototype combined Jack's status-update concept, Ev's blog-like chronological stream, Noah's humanizing vision, and Biz's design work.

In July 2006, Noah drunkenly announced Twitter to a tech blogger at a party, taking public credit and infuriating Ev and Jack. His erratic behavior escalated, and Jack privately told Ev he would quit if Noah stayed. Ev fired Noah at the park benches in South Park, a San Francisco neighborhood near the office. Jack, who never revealed his role as the catalyst, consoled Noah over drinks that night.

Twitter's public launch at a September 2006 rave netted fewer than 100 new users, but in March 2007 the service won best start-up at the South by Southwest conference after Ev placed large screens displaying live tweets in hallways. Sign-ups soon passed 100,000. Ev installed Jack as CEO while retaining 70 percent ownership and giving Jack 20 percent. Jason Goldman, Ev's longtime ally who oversaw product development and held a board seat, and Biz each received about 3 percent.

Jack and Ev's product disagreement deepened: Jack saw Twitter as a personal status updater asking "What are you doing?" while Ev envisioned it as a way to share what was happening in the world. Rapid growth exposed catastrophic engineering problems; the site collapsed repeatedly, and the "Fail Whale" error page became iconic. Ev grew frustrated as Jack left at 6 P.M. for drawing classes, yoga, and fashion school. Board members Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital secretly interviewed employees and concluded Jack was in over his head. When an engineer revealed Twitter had no database backup, Jack's remaining credibility evaporated. In October 2008, the board installed Ev as CEO and gave Jack an honorary "silent chairman" title with no real power.

As CEO, Ev declined Facebook's offer to buy Twitter for 500 million dollars, believing the social network's approach to privacy was incompatible with Twitter's mission. Twitter's cultural influence exploded: Oprah Winfrey sent her first tweet on live television, driving nearly half a million sign-ups in a day. In June 2009, Iran's disputed presidential election triggered street protests organized partly through Twitter. Jack, who had built State Department connections during a delegation trip to Iraq, was credited by the New York Times with agreeing to delay scheduled maintenance so Iranians could keep communicating, despite holding no operational role.

While exiled from operations, Jack reinvented himself as "the next Steve Jobs," copying Jobs's uniform, hiring former Apple employees, and cultivating press coverage casting him as Twitter's sole creator. He quietly lobbied disaffected executives to voice frustrations about Ev to the board and held secret meetings with board member Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital and Dick Costolo to plan Ev's removal. Ev had hired Dick as COO in September 2009 and, at Fenton's urging, begun meeting with Bill Campbell, a legendary CEO coach. Campbell praised Ev in their sessions but privately told the board to remove him.

The coup came in September 2010. Campbell told Ev the board wanted him to "step up to the chairman role." At a formal meeting, Ev said, "I resign as CEO." Fred moved to confirm; Jack raised his hand to second, and in that moment Ev realized Jack had orchestrated the entire overthrow. Dick became CEO, and Jack was installed as executive chairman with real voting power. Biz erupted at Dick for refusing to let Ev stay on in a product role: "How about you fucking be uncomfortable in reference to the entire fucking career of this guy?" A compromise allowed Ev a nominal role and delayed Jack's public return.

Within months, Goldman was pushed out, Ev found his ideas ignored, and Biz stopped coming to the office. In March 2011, Jack returned to a standing ovation. Biz officially left in June. Dick transformed Twitter into a profitable enterprise, fixing chronic outages, growing advertising revenue to hundreds of millions of dollars, and pushing the valuation to 10 billion dollars by 2012.

The epilogue traces where each cofounder landed by 2013. Noah moved back to San Francisco with his girlfriend, Delphine, and wept with joy upon learning they were expecting a daughter, realizing the human connection he sought through technology was found in his family. Biz and his wife, Livy, once so broke they cashed in a coffee can of coins to buy groceries, now give away most of their wealth. Jack, a billionaire in a 12-million-dollar glass house, plots future ambitions including returning to Twitter as CEO. Ev and his wife, Sara, built a quieter life, placing their sons before work and reading together on Sunday nights. The narrative closes with Commander Chris Hadfield tweeting photos of Earth from the International Space Station, reflecting that loneliness "is not so much where you are, but instead is your state of mind," an echo of Noah's original hope that Twitter could make people feel less alone.