Jose-Andres Alegria Everyone has their preferred social media platform. I’m probably one of the few whose favorite platform is Twitter. I’m not a very visual person, so Instagram doesn’t do it for me, and I get enough of my family in the giant group chat we have on Snapchat, so Facebook is sort of pointless to me. And yeah, I know, people have some awful experiences on Twitter, and there is a lot of space for hate, but that seems to be the case everywhere in life nowadays. And like all social media platforms, Twitter can also turn into an echo chamber of opinions that seem to cause more divisiveness than anything.
My Two Accounts
I love Twitter so much that I have two separate accounts. One is for friends, family, and sports. Whatever weird thoughts my friends want to share on the internet, that is where I read them. And I get my sports news there. Where else will I read WOJ bombs and baseball’s weird injuries?
My second account is for nerdy stuff. Anime News, esports, content creators, authors to my favorite sci-fi and fantasy series, and everything video game-related is on that account. It’s my little safe space on the internet where I get to indulge in all of the things that make me happy.
Review: Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal By: Nick Bilton
When most of us think about the origin story of a social media platform, we think of The Social Network starring Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield. The late nights coding, the now obvious, but then, genius idea to connect people through the internet culminating in the biggest social network made and the betrayal that came along with it. All that said, Twitter’s origin story is crazier.
The book feels like you are also a co-founder as you read along. You feel the ups and downs of what it means to be a start-up in Silicon Valley. And I don’t know what it is about a group of people who come up with a billion-dollar idea that, inevitably, bitterness, disagreements, and lawsuits follow. We saw it with Facebook, and now I’ve read it through this book. Greed can change someone’s priorities. Whether it’s for better or good is subjective to our view as the reader.
One thing is obvious; Nick Bilton does not like Jack Dorsey. Or maybe that Nick Bilton shown a spotlight on the dirty secrets Dorsey was trying to mask. The irony of Twitter’s original goal of giving everyone a voice only for Dorsey to sculpt the story of Twitter into what benefitted him best is not lost on me. Nick Bilton digs deep into interviews with past Twitter employees to show what the early days were like back then.
What I enjoyed the most about this book is that as a business biography, it didn’t take the founders or CEO and ascend them into some sort of sainthood for the first time. Instead, the book lays out what it took to start Twitter, humanizing the stories. When I think about Silicon Valley, my mind jumps to ones and zeros and people who are way smarter than I will ever be. Nick Bilton showcases the individuals that founded my favorite social platform, faults and all.
Rating: 1 Retweet from each of my Twitter accounts.
Next Month’s Pick
Next month, we are reading The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. So if you are a fan of historical fiction, then you are in luck.
