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I worked on Twitter from the time it had six users (me) to the time it had 500. A thing that stands out to me is that it worked at every size. On day one, it

I worked on Twitter from the time it had six users (me) to the time it had 500. A thing that stands out to me is that it worked at every size. On day one, it was just the Odeo team that Twitter ended up spinning out of, maybe 15 people. And it worked that way as a group messaging thread where we felt more connected to the people we worked with. Then we let in close friends and family with a stern warning from our CEO not to let anyone from Google see it. So that was 50 people and maybe each of us had 3-4 close friends on the platform. To someone else's point that the community already exists, you're just building the communication platform: this was still when Facebook was locked down. I invited in close family (existing community) and learned stuff about them that sounds trivial but was meaningful to me (communication platform). Then the community ballooned again to maybe 500 people and suddenly there were interesting tech luminaries to follow. And on and on.

bikeshaving 7y ago
What was the reasoning behind not letting anyone from Google see it? Was the startup kill zone known and in full effect at that time as well?
- tonystubblebine 7y ago
  They were the big gorilla at the time and he'd come from there (they'd acquired his previous company, Blogger). In hindsight, it probably didn't matter at all. The only people I can think that it would have been worth hiding from was press because Twitter rightfully made us look unfocused and we weren't willing to say publicly that Odeo was dead and Twitter was now the thing. Also, nobody actually thought Twitter was definitely a hit. We just thought Odeo was not working and that Twitter was worth continuing to explore.
paulpauper 7y ago
so you were involved with twitter from day 1. what happened to odeo then. I remember reading a story about early employees being bought out and later regretting it when the company became worth billions.
- tonystubblebine 7y ago
  Re: Odeo. It got sold to some guys who tried to roll it up with other small acquisitions. It's dead now. Re: regret. People misunderstand the regret of not continuing to have stock. Twitter was nothing when we left. I didn't even bother to exercise my options. Then Odeo's CEO bought out all the investors and that return on their money was way more than whatever Twitter was worth at the time. Those investors were all using Twitter, so they knew what they were getting bought out of. But it was still basically nothing at that point, a few hundred users. The things that made Twitter valuable were what happened after Odeo. Evan Williams bought the whole thing back and then relaunched it as a new company with funding from him and a new equity structure. Imagine if Jack & Biz had "co-founded" Twitter but had to stay on their existing Odeo option grants which were probably less than 0.5%. So just that alone was big. Twitter had a solid year of grinding where it looked and felt just like every other nascent startup, i.e. worth continuing but not at all a sure thing. To me, the game changer was the way Biz managed to start making Twitter part of the media landscape and something everyone heard about on every half hour segment of cable news. Twitter basically became a core part of the internet at that point. So Odeo people probably all have some amount of regret (I quit and then refused an offer to come back). But I don't think anyone really feels like they were entitled to the money or credit.
  - NoodleIncident 7y ago
    > To me, the game changer was the way Biz managed to start making Twitter part of the media landscape and something everyone heard about on every half hour segment of cable news. I've always hated those segments. It makes me strangely happy to hear that the cause and effect here was indeed backwards; cable news didn't start reading those tweets because twitter was important, twitter became important because cable news started reading those tweets!
    - nl 7y ago
      It's pretty difficult separating cause and effect here. The hugely successful SWSX campaign moved Twitter out of the tech-only sphere into other areas. That got non-tech people using it, but by the time of the time of the Aston Kutcher vs CNN race to a million followers (less than 2 years later) it already had its own momentum.

bikeshaving 7y ago

What was the reasoning behind not letting anyone from Google see it? Was the startup kill zone known and in full effect at that time as well?

tonystubblebine 7y ago
They were the big gorilla at the time and he'd come from there (they'd acquired his previous company, Blogger). In hindsight, it probably didn't matter at all. The only people I can think that it would have been worth hiding from was press because Twitter rightfully made us look unfocused and we weren't willing to say publicly that Odeo was dead and Twitter was now the thing. Also, nobody actually thought Twitter was definitely a hit. We just thought Odeo was not working and that Twitter was worth continuing to explore.

paulpauper 7y ago

so you were involved with twitter from day 1. what happened to odeo then. I remember reading a story about early employees being bought out and later regretting it when the company became worth billions.

tonystubblebine 7y ago
Re: Odeo. It got sold to some guys who tried to roll it up with other small acquisitions. It's dead now. Re: regret. People misunderstand the regret of not continuing to have stock. Twitter was nothing when we left. I didn't even bother to exercise my options. Then Odeo's CEO bought out all the investors and that return on their money was way more than whatever Twitter was worth at the time. Those investors were all using Twitter, so they knew what they were getting bought out of. But it was still basically nothing at that point, a few hundred users. The things that made Twitter valuable were what happened after Odeo. Evan Williams bought the whole thing back and then relaunched it as a new company with funding from him and a new equity structure. Imagine if Jack & Biz had "co-founded" Twitter but had to stay on their existing Odeo option grants which were probably less than 0.5%. So just that alone was big. Twitter had a solid year of grinding where it looked and felt just like every other nascent startup, i.e. worth continuing but not at all a sure thing. To me, the game changer was the way Biz managed to start making Twitter part of the media landscape and something everyone heard about on every half hour segment of cable news. Twitter basically became a core part of the internet at that point. So Odeo people probably all have some amount of regret (I quit and then refused an offer to come back). But I don't think anyone really feels like they were entitled to the money or credit.
- NoodleIncident 7y ago
  > To me, the game changer was the way Biz managed to start making Twitter part of the media landscape and something everyone heard about on every half hour segment of cable news. I've always hated those segments. It makes me strangely happy to hear that the cause and effect here was indeed backwards; cable news didn't start reading those tweets because twitter was important, twitter became important because cable news started reading those tweets!
  - nl 7y ago
    It's pretty difficult separating cause and effect here. The hugely successful SWSX campaign moved Twitter out of the tech-only sphere into other areas. That got non-tech people using it, but by the time of the time of the Aston Kutcher vs CNN race to a million followers (less than 2 years later) it already had its own momentum.