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

Author:Nick Bilton [Bilton, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781591846017
Amazon: 1591846013
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Published: 2013-11-05T08:00:00+00:00

IV.

#EV

The Third Twitter Leader

Jack sat glaring at Ev, not a word coming out of his mouth, his eyes so steady and precise you’d have thought he was in the middle of a staring contest. Except his opponent, Ev, was trying his best—as difficult as it was—to ignore him.

“People hear about Twitter a lot but don’t know what it is or why they’d want to use it,” Ev read aloud from his slide deck, periodically glancing as Goldman, Bijan, and Fred, who tried to listen attentively, though they, too, were distracted by Jack’s silence. Still, Ev went on.

It was October 22, 2008, Ev’s first board meeting as CEO—just three weeks after Jack had been ousted. Ev was explaining that the 2008 elections Web site, which Jack had previously put all of his efforts behind, was the wrong approach for Twitter.

“On average, it only generated thirty-five thousand page views a day,” Ev said, pointing to a jagged graph to back up his statement. Next to the chart were sample tweets from the site that were more high-school jokes than intellectual punditry: “Palin is a S.M.I.L.F.,” one read, as Ev noted that a S.M.I.L.F. was a “sexy mom I’d like to fuck.”

Then Ev moved on to more important matters, patiently going through the agenda: venture debt, finances, burn rates, hiring plans, revenue (which was still at zero), spam, and how to reduce Twitter’s now infamous downtime. It was clear to everyone in the room that there was now an experienced CEO running the company, one who had a plan to fix all of the above.

Although some employees had been sad to see Jack go as a friend, they were relieved they no longer had to report to him as a boss. In the months leading up to Jack’s departure, employees had complained to senior staffers that Jack had acted like a “cowboy” when he was CEO, sometimes ordering people around and rarely trusting those who worked below him. When Ev stepped up to take charge of the company, he took a completely different approach to management, always trusting employees from the get-go, which gave them a sense of pride and, in turn, a loyalty to Ev and Twitter.

Jack’s stare was interrupted when the following words came out of Ev’s mouth: “Mark Zuckerberg” and “Facebook.”

In the weeks leading up to Jack’s firing, Facebook had been trying to buy Twitter. Mark had made it his personal mission to woo Jack into selling the little blue bird to Facebook. After Jack was let go, it was the two other Twitter cofounders who now needed romancing.

Biz and Ev had driven down to Facebook’s campus a few days earlier to meet with Mark. Like most meetings involving the chief of Facebook, it had been almost unbearably uncomfortable.

When Ev and Biz arrived at Facebook’s campus, they were given what seemed like an endless tour, then ushered into a small office space with Mark. The room was gray and relatively sparse, looking more like a Russian prison than part of the office of the hip social network.

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