Hatching Twitter: A true story of money,power, friendship and betrayal

Favourite Books of 2013, Sunday Business Post

THE ULTIMATE 21ST CENTURY BUSINESS STORY

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 exsists.’

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 e-mails, 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.