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

Nick Bilton

Penguin Publishing Group, Sep 30, 2014 - Business & Economics - 320 pages

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.

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - newtonco - LibraryThing

In hatching new businesses, founders tend to collect business partners with little thought to whether this team is willing and able to weather startup stress together. Nick Bilton's Hatching Twitter ...

HATCHING TWITTER: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal

User Review  - Kirkus

Novelistic rendition of Twitter's contentious origins in the techie subculture of San Francisco.New York Times Bits Blog columnist Bilton (I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why Your World ...

About the author

Nick Bilton is a columnist and reporter for The New York Times, where he explores the disruptive aspects of technology on business, culture and society. His columns span everything from the future of technology and privacy to the impact of social media on the Web. He is a regular guest on national TV and radio and is the author of I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works. He lives in Los Angeles.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
• Author: Nick Bilton
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2014
• ISBN: 1591847087, 9781591847083
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology; Business & Economics / Corporate & Business History; Business & Economics / Industries / Media & Communications