Nick Bilton

A behind-the-scenes portrait of the influential news and networking company traces its rise from a failed podcasting business to a multi-billion-dollar giant, recounting the high-stakes power struggles, betrayed friendships and global influences that shaped its evolution. 75,000 first printing.

A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal

Hatching Twitter

siegs

lots of drama in this story. bilton must have done a ton of work uncovering all the little details. jack dorsey definitely gets dragged through the mud but according the facts in here, it's justified.

Aamna

Quite a pageturner. Wish it wasn't as biased as it was.

I really enjoyed reading about the behind the scenes of Twitter. Would highly recommend.

Eneko Uruñuela

A New York Times bestseller Ev told Jack he had to ?chill out” with the deluge of media he was doing. ?It's bad for the company,” Ev said. ?It's sending the wrong message.” Biz sat between them, watching like a spectator at a tennis match. ?But I invented Twitter,” Jack said. ?No, you didn't invent Twitter,” Ev replied. ?I didn't invent Twitter either. Neither did Biz. People don't invent things on the Internet. They simply expand on an idea that already exists.” Despite all the coverage of Twitter's rise, Nick Bilton of The New York Times is the first journalist to tell the full story?a gripping drama of betrayed friendships and highstakes power struggles. The four founders?Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey, and Noah Glass?made a dizzyingly fast transition from ordinary engineers to wealthy celebrities. They fought each other bitterly for money, influence, publicity, and control as Twitter grew larger and more powerful. Ultimately they all lost their grip on it. Bilton's unprecedented access and exhaustive reporting have enabled him to write an intimate portrait of four friends who accidentally changed the world, and what they all learned along the way.

Jowanza Joseph

Quite simply the most exciting story I've heard in a long time.

jack morris

Listened to this book over a few drives back-and-forth from Arlington to Charlottesville. Great book to listen to, since the chapters are loosely connected, and the story is easy to follow. I originally picked it because I'm interested in the story of Twitter's CEOs (specifically how Jack Dorsey headed Twitter, was forced out, and then brought back in again). 

I enjoyed the stories of the early days of Blogger and Odio and vicariously experiencing the lifestyle of the small startup CEO. I hadn't heard of Noah Glass, Evan Williams, or Biz Stone, and I'm glad that now I have. I really liked the story of the Twitter executives traveling to Iraq to help teach Iraqi leaders how to use Twitter. Twitter carries a lot of social clout, and it was funny listening to the stories of different actors, celebrities, and politicians interacting with the service.

But if you're going to choose this book to understand the story of Jack Dorsey, don't do it. The book was published in 2013 (oops) and ends with Dick Costolo as the CEO. It's a story of the founding (hatching) of Twitter, and is fairly light on the more current details. All and all it's a fun read, tells the backstories of some really interesting people, and a provides a solid origin story for the weird radio startup turned billion-dollar media company.

Matthew Bischoff

Thouroughly enjoyable, well researched. Occasionally too cute.

Bruno Casali

Livro muito bom que fala sobre a criação do Twitter e das suas intrigas...

Se fosse para resumir em poucas palavras parece uma novela das 8 que basicamente fala apenas das intrigas e das trocas de CEO da empresa. 
Gostei do livro, mas esperava mais sobre tecnologia e sobre a companhia em si, mas histórico.

Josh Clement

Finished this in 1 summers day. Easy to read, written like a really entertaining, thoroughly researched magazine article

Sarah Christine Gill

Thoroughly enjoyable story of how Twitter was built.
I think I might have enjoyed it even more if it dwelled a bit less in the minutiae of the disputes and  and more on though do appreciate that is kind of the premise of the book. 

Volkan Yorulmaz

Ev asked his first question to Bill Campbell, a legendar CEO coach, who had mentored Steve Jobs and a long list of other titans during the coaching session:

What’s the worst thing I can do as CEO to fuck the company up?

Without skipping a beat, Campbell responded:

Hire your fucking friends!

For more, visit: 
https://volkanyorulmaz.blogspot.com/2...

ANDREW BRYK

Incredible read. One of my favorites of the past year. A must read

Bryan Maniotakis

Informative and inspiring, I haven't been sucked into a book like this for quite some time now.

Nikolay Bachiyski

If anybody wrote fiction startup drama novels, they would surely be less dramatic than Twitter’s early history.

Morals for me:
* avoid working with your best friends
* egos and power are more important than money – you can repay money, but revenge leads to more aggression
* when stakes are high it’s “hunt or be hunted” situation
* you can change the world
* avoid drama.

Daniel Akang

Interesting story about the start of Twitter. Focusing on friendship, betrayal and how hiring decisions & fund raising can make/break you.

Daniel Marino

If you are a tech geek, this is a fun book to read. Incredibly interesting history of back stabbing. I would recommend this book even though the ending is a little flat. (I am sure they will fix that in tens years when they write an update.)

Adam

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.

Manuel Steinberg

Erich W

Joe Woods

'A tale of Machiavellian plots and coups d'etat, it's just all so gripping' Chris Evans, BBC Radio 2 THE ULTIMATE 21ST CENTURY BUSINESS STORY Since 2006, Twitter has grown from the accidental side project of a failing internet start-up, to a global icon that by 2013 had become an $11.5bn business. But the full story of Twitter's hatching has never been told before. In his revelatory new book, New York Times journalist Nick Bilton takes readers behind the scenes of Twitter as it grew at exponential speeds, and inside the heads of the four hackers who created it: ambitious millionaire Evan Williams; tattooed mastermind Jack Dorsey; joker and diplomat Biz Stone; and Noah Glass, the shy but energetic geek who invested his whole life in Twitter, only to be kicked out and expunged from the company's official history. Combining unprecedented access with exhaustive investigative reporting, and drawing on hundreds of sources, documents and internal emails, New York Times' bestseller HATCHING TWITTER is a blistering drama of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles. A business story like no other, it will shock, expose and inspire.

A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship and Betrayal

Daniel Klopper

Luca Conti

Kattia

Niels Andersen

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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