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

by Nick Bilton

His Twitter stock and other investments are now nearing two billion dollars, sure to continue growing as Twitter pursues its goal of becoming a hundred-billion-dollar company.

  On Wednesday evenings a cooking teacher comes to the house. Four-year-old Miles and Ev and Sara’s second boy, Owen, now fourteen months old, learn about vegetables, soil, and farming.

  In 2012, a year after Ev officially left Twitter, thinking of what had taken place behind his back, he sat down with Sara and they asked each other the following questions: How can we raise our children to never act this way? How can we raise them to be honest and caring? How can we make a road map for the kinds of parents we want to be and the type of family we want to raise?

  They came up with two solutions. First, the money they have made over the years would go into a trust. When Miles and Owen grow up, they will be responsible for giving it away to charities, organizations that exist to try to make the world a better place. Second, they would develop a weekly schedule to adhere to, ensuring that family comes before anything else.

  Weekends are special for Ev, Sara, Miles, and Owen. On Saturday mornings Ev makes waffles. They are often bizarre concoctions, with Ev adding nuts and seeds and other strange ingredients.

  Miles, like his dad, is a daydreamer, and he often just sits and stares into space, thinking. On Sunday mornings the two daydreamers go on an adventure together, always taking the train through San Francisco to a museum, a park, or the bookstore.

  Ev and Sara noticed early on that, like Ev, Miles is shy and sometimes socially awkward. As much as they want to change that in him, they know they can’t. But they also know that technology won’t change that either, so the kids are strictly forbidden to use iPads, iPhones, or televisions. Human interactions are encouraged. So are physical, paper books.

  So Sunday nights, before the weekly schedule begins anew, it’s time for the nightly ritual, the best part of each day.

  On one side of Miles’s bedroom there is a wide, oval, gray couch. It’s big enough for the entire family to squeeze onto. Directly across the room there is a stacked bookshelf. On it there are dozens of print books of all shapes and sizes. Children’s books. Books about butterflies and pirates. Encyclopedias.

  Each night, as Ev drops down onto the couch, Sara next to him with Owen in her arms, Miles runs across the room, his feet briskly flying across the gray carpet to grab his favorite book: The Astronaut Handbook, a story about a group of kids who want to become astronauts when they grow up. Miles bounds back across his bedroom, handing the book to his father. Then together, as a family, they read as Miles stares out the window, just as Ev did on his father’s green tractor as a child, up into space.

  From time to time the astronauts on the space station host a question-and-answer session on Twitter. People ask 140-character queries that are sent via cyberspace into real space, where astronauts who live for sixth months at a time in small spaceships that circle Earth do their best to explain what it’s like to live in a glass capsule hundreds of miles away.

  In one recent session, a woman on Earth asked whether it was lonely in space.

  “In the centre of every big city in the world, surrounded by noise and teeming millions of people, are lonely people,” Commander Hadfield wrote. “Loneliness is not so much where you are, but instead is your state of mind.” Then he explained that the few people who live on the space station can contact their families through a number of technologies designed to connect people, including radio, telephone, and social media.

  As the sessions on Twitter concluded, someone else asked how these astronauts tweet from space. Hadfield explained that he has a laptop inside his sleep pod. As he floats around the spaceship, checking on experiments that could cure diseases or enable people to grow scarce resources in space or answer previously unanswerable questions, he often takes short breaks and slips into his bay to check Twitter. There he talks to millions of people who are floating 240 miles away. People who can talk to him but can’t touch him. People who can make him feel just a little less alone.

  Acknowledgments

  On Twitter people can only send 140-character updates at a time; printed books have their own character limits, too. So for those I do not thank individually, please understand that it is a matter of constraint, not appreciation.

  A special thanks to the hundreds of people who provided me documents and e-mails and took the time to sit for interviews for this book, especially Ev, Biz, Jack, Goldman, Noah, Bijan, Fred, Fenton, and Dick. Although some of these people agreed to speak to me reluctantly, I am eternally grateful for their time. There are some people I cannot thank by name—sources who put their job and friendships on the line to help me find the truth—they know who they are when I offer a heartfelt and respectful bow of gratitude.

  Thank you to my editor, Niki Papadopoulos, who seemed to telepathically know when I was stuck on a sentence or theme, reaching out, sometimes via Twitter, to push me along and in the right direction. (And immense appreciation for her listening to me ramble for hours on end about the book.) To my agents, Katinka Matson, John Brockman, and Max Brockman, who helped me find this project and a publisher that believed in it. And to Natalie Horbachevsky, Jennifer Mascia, Adrian Zackheim, and Drummond Moir for their involvement in, help for, and dedication to this book.

  To my friends and coworkers: Nora Abousteit, Jill Abramson, Melissa Barnes, Ruzwana Bashir, Lane Becker, Veronica Belmont, Danielle B. Marin, Ryan Block, Tom Bodkin, Danah Boyd, Matt Buchanan, David Carr, Brian Chen, Mathias Crawford, Tony and Mary Conrad, Tom Conrad, Paddy Cosgrave, Dennis Crowley, Damon Darlin, Anil Dash, Mike Driscoll, Aaron Durand, Josh Felser, Tim Ferris, Brady Forrest, David Gallhager, Michael Galpert, John Geddes, Shelly Gerrish, Ashley Khaleesi Granata, Mark Hansen, Quentin Hardy, Leland Hayward, Erica Hintergardt, Mat Honan, Arianna Huffington, Kate Imbach, Larry Ingrassia, Walter Isaccson, Mike Issac, Joel Johnson, Andrei Kallaur, Paul Kedrosky, Kevin Kelly, Jeff Koyen, Brian Lam, Jeremy LaTrasse, Steven Levy, Allen Loeb, Kati London, Om Malik, John Markoff, Hubert McCabe, Christopher Michel, Claire Cain Miller, Trudy Muller, Tim O’Reilly, Carolyn Penner, Nicole Perlroth, Megan Quinn, Narendra Rocherolle, Jennifer Rodriguez, Evelyn Rusli, Naveen Selvadurai, Ryan and Devon Sarver, Elliot Schrage, Mari Sheibley, MG Siegler, Courtney Skott, Robin Sloan, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Suzanne Spector, Brad Stone, David Streitfeld, Gabriel Stricker, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Kara Swisher, Clive Thompson, Deep Throat, Baratunde Thurston, Mark Trammell, Sara Morishige Williams, Nick Wingfield, Jenna Wortham, Aaron Zamost, Edith Zimmerman.

  To my family: Terry and Margie, Betty and Len, Eboo, Weter and Roman, Sandra and David, Stephen, Amanda, Ben and Josh, Matt and Sam, and, of course, Michael, Luca, Willow, and Crazy Lotte, who housed and fed me (and Pixel) while I wrote at their dining room table.

  To the readers who, in a world of never-ending media, took the time to read this book.

  And last, but very far from least, Chrysta Olson, for her wisdom, support, and love. And, thanks in part to our discussions at Cecconi’s and elsewhere around the storyline of Hatching Twitter, allowed us to hatch a relationship of our own. I love you.

  October 2005. Noah captains the boat through the San Francisco Bay as Biz pretends to hold on for dear life. Ev, at right with sunglasses, laughs. Rabble is in the rear right.

  October 2005. Jack, middle, listens as Noah and Ev, not pictured, talk at Sam’s Bar in the Tiburon Marina. Ariel Poler, an investor in Odeo, is at right.

  January 2006. Noah, at right, records a podcast with Biz, seated in the chair, and Ev, seated on the floor.

  May 2006. The Odeo employees gather at Amici’s in San Francisco to say good-bye to some who have been let go in the layoffs. From left to right: Blaine Cook, Adam Rugel, Courtney Brown, Jack Dorsey, Rabble, Ray McClure, Noah Glass, Sara Morishige, and Evan Williams.

  September 2006. Jack and Noah pose for a photo at the Love Parade in San Francisco during the grand public unveiling of Twitter. Hours later, Jack would end up in the hospital.

>   March 2007. Jack gives a speech at the 2007 South by Southwest Awards. Left to right: Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Jason Goldman, and Ze Frank.

  June 2007. From left to right, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Jason Goldman. and Evan Williams gather to celebrate Biz and Livia’s wedding.

  January 2009. Twitter wins best start-up founders at the Crunchies Awards ceremony.

  April 2009. Twitter employees watch Ev on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

  April 2009. Jack peers out of an army helicopter on his way to the American-occupied Green Zone in Iraq.

  May 2009. Ev, Jack, and the singer M.I.A. and her husband pose for a photo at the Time 100 dinner.

  November 2009. Dick Costolo joins Twitter as the company’s first chief operating officer.

  August 2009. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, stops by the Twitter office for a town hall–style discussion with Ev and Biz.

  January 2011. Snoop Dogg rapping at the Twitter office.

  June 2010. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev visits Twitter right as the site goes down.

  July 2011. Jack hosts a Twitter town hall with President Barack Obama.

  February 2012. Dick Costolo addresses employees during Tea Time, the company’s weekly all-hands meeting.

  May 2012. Jack, in one of his now-signature suits, talks to Dick, now CEO of Twitter.