WEBVTT - The History of Social Networks: Here Come the Micro-Blogs! 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:15.000 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:17.880 job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:21.599 Radio and how the tech are you. We are continuing 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:25.880 our series of episodes about the history of social networks. 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.160 This one will be the fourth one in that series. 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:32.440 So in our first episode, we covered some of the 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.240 really early examples of social networks like six degrees, dot 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:40.360 com and high five. In episode two, we talked about 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:44.040 how my Space became the dominant player in social networks 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.800 until Facebook swept up from behind and overtook it. And 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:51.160 then in the third episode we talked about Google's early 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:55.000 attempt at a social network, a Orchid, and we also 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:58.520 talked about Bibo, and I covered some networks that are 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:02.320 related to social networks but maybe not a full social 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:06.200 network on their own, like YouTube and Reddit, and just 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:08.760 as a reminder, I am tackling these kind of one 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:12.520 network at a time. So while the episodes are organized 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:17.520 chronologically in regards to when these networks were founded, I'm 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:20.480 not going like year by year. This isn't like and 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:23.080 now we're covering two thousand ten to two thousand fourteen, 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:27.240 because you would have to jump back and forth across 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:30.920 so many different stories would be impossible to keep them 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:35.120 all sorted. It would be Madness or Sparta, or you know, 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:38.480 one of those two. Anyway, we're up to two thousand six, 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:42.120 and that year would see the birth of a microblogging 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:46.000 service that would be founded early on uh and then 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:51.040 launch publicly in the summer. And this microblogging service would 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:55.880 end up taking advantage of the technology of things like 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:58.680 short messaging system that kind of thing. And I am, 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:06.240 of course talking about jaiqu got you didn't I maybe anyway, 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:08.240 it might have sounded like I was talking about Twitter, 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:10.680 you know, being founded in two thousand six and launching 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:14.640 publicly in that summer. But technically a couple of engineers 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:19.720 in Finland founded Jaiku one month before Twitter would emerge. 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.799 As to who was working on what first, I don't know, 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:25.600 but they weren't aware of each other at the time. 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:29.239 They couldn't have been, because Twitter was not a publicly 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:34.120 known entity yet at the finished team built their tool 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:37.800 with a specific phone operating system in mind, the Symbian 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:43.200 operating system specifically on the Nakia S sixty platform. Now 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.360 keep in mind two thousand six is still a year 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:50.079 before the iPhone would launch, and while smartphones would take 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:52.519 time to get some traction here in the US, over 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.600 in Finland, Nokia and the simian Os already had a 0:02:56.720 --> 0:03:01.040 leg up. Jaiku's creators figured that young people were starting 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:04.640 to do this crazy thing called texting, and they had 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:08.760 also taken up the practice of journaling online using blogs, 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:12.239 So why not combine the two and build an application 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:17.160 that would allow for really concise blog posts microblogging in 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.720 other words, and it would work on mobile devices so 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:22.799 that you could post your thoughts right when you had 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:26.720 them and maybe have no filter. Many of the same 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.639 concepts that Twitter would embrace were also present in Jaiku. 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:34.840 Now there was also a web based components, so you 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:37.600 could go to the Jaiku web page and access your 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:41.880 account there rather than using the phone interface if you preferred. 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:45.800 And I suspect that because the service launched overseas, it 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:48.120 didn't really get as much attention here in the United 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:52.280 States as Twitter would. Also, the engineers would later say 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:56.880 that the s sixty platform was quote impossible to develop 0:03:56.960 --> 0:04:01.520 for end quote. It did still an attention, however, and 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:05.040 the folks who heard about Jaiku got into it pretty 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:07.960 quickly and used it a lot. And while the team 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:10.480 had been hoping for this kind of success, the rapid 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:14.040 adoption created some new challenges for the small group of 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:16.640 engineers because now they had to figure out how to 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:20.680 scale the service to meet demand, and they were having 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.280 lots of performance issues as a result, because it's expensive. 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:26.280 It's something that's really hard for a small team to do, 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:29.320 and it soon became clear that they were going to 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:34.080 be completely overwhelmed. And that's what when something that appeared 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:37.760 to be a lifeline showed up. In the long run, 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.680 it wasn't a lifeline, but at the time it seemed 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:45.880 that way. So in late two thousand seven, Google bought Jaiku, 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:50.919 perhaps sensing that maybe the company Google could push Jaiku 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:55.240 to greater heights and challenge the now trendy Twitter, which 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:57.640 we will talk about in a second, because by two 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:02.839 thousand seven, Twitter was quite the phenomenon now. Unfortunately, the 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.760 same thing happened with Jaiku that we've seen happen in 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:11.679 countless other examples of Google acquired companies and services. Google 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:16.240 didn't really know how to promote Jaiku or to develop Jaiku, 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:20.680 and it failed to gain any real traction. While Twitter 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:24.680 continued to grow in popularity. In two thousand nine, Google 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:28.320 decided to stop actively developing Jaiku as a company, but 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:32.360 turned it into an open source project. But even that 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:35.960 move only kept Jaiku around for a couple more years. 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:39.080 In two thousand eleven, Google announced it was going to 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:41.320 kill off Jaiku at the start of the following year, 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:47.480 and in January, Jaiku guessed its last breadths and then 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:52.080 was heard no more, as was predicted by the Mayan 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:57.440 Long Count calendar. Yes, that's what the two twelve stuff was. No, 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:03.000 not really, I'm being asias obviously, but yeah, it was gone. 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:05.920 Jaiku did not stand the test of time. But let's 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:08.640 get back to two thousand six, because that is also 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.760 the year that Twitter would launch. As I said a 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:15.160 little bit earlier, it launched a month after Jaiku did 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:19.680 well after Jaiku was founded. Technically, Jaiku didn't launch publicly 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:24.039 until July, which was after Twitter had its public launch. 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:28.760 So I've talked a lot about Twitter's history over the years, 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:34.080 especially this year. So we're gonna keep this really bare 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:37.560 bones and relatively fast. I mean, you know me, nothing 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:40.880 is fast but as fast as I go. Anyway, So, 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:44.640 once upon a time there was a company called Odio, 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:49.000 and this company developed directories for stuff like podcasts. The 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:52.680 idea was, how can we make podcasts easier to discover 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:56.359 and to subscribe to because early, early, early on in 0:06:56.400 --> 0:06:59.239 the days of podcasts, you kind of had to hunt 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:02.080 down our ss feed and subscribe to it. There was 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.960 not like a whole lot of easy options for you know, 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.760 doing this without hunting and pecking. Of course, this isn't 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:12.840 the very very early days of podcasts now. The brief 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:16.120 story of Odio is a pretty interesting one. It's complete 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:19.080 with drama around who started the company versus who got 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:22.560 you know, the credit for being a founder, and lots 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:25.240 of things like that. But that's for another time. But 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:29.640 by two thousand and six, Odeo was struggling to be relevant. 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:33.920 The main problem was that shortly after Odio became a thing, 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:40.920 Apple began to support podcasts and incorporate podcast subscriptions into iTunes, 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:43.920 and you know, we even call them podcasts because of 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.480 the Apple iPod. That kind of gives you an idea 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:49.800 of how dominant Apple was in the space and still 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:53.520 is to a great extent. So Odio quickly found itself 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:57.680 looking for ways to keep investors on board because the 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:01.800 company was really struggling with its main product. Now a 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:05.920 side project in Odeo was also developing. This project was 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.880 to create a messaging service that would let one person 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:12.600 post a short message via SMS or short messaging service 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:16.680 to their own timeline of posts, and it would also 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:20.400 send it out to their contacts or followers, and it 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:26.240 became a form of microblogging, journaling in very short character messages. 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:30.840 That character limit was because the limitations of SMS itself. 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:34.960 The project leaders, among them Noah Glass, decided to call 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:38.400 the service Twitter, but there were no vowels. It was 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.080 t W T t R. Now, of course this would 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:45.960 become Twitter t w I T t e R, and 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:49.320 it launched in March two thousand six. Jack Dorrisey created 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:52.960 the first profile on the platform and sent out the 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:57.000 first tweet, which read, just set up my Twitter, and 0:08:57.080 --> 0:09:00.880 he spelled it the the no vowels way. So worlds 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:05.760 are turned on such tweets. So that's Marched two thousand six, right, 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:07.960 But Twitter would launch to the public a few months 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:10.400 later in July. Actually, July is the same month that 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:13.880 Jaiku would launch to the public too, so both services 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:15.920 hit the public at the same time. But to keep 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.320 in mind. Jaiku is launching in Finland and didn't get 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:21.679 nearly the same amount of coverage as Twitter did here 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:25.839 in the United States. Ev Williams, biz Stone and Jack 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:31.479 Dorsey decided to purchase up most of odio in October 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:34.439 of two thousand six. They bought it back from the 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:39.520 various stakeholders and investors, and we're consolidating ownership and pivoting 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.920 the business away from podcasting where clearly Apple was going 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:46.080 to dominate, and instead they were going to focus on 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:50.120 this new kind of social network and messaging service. The 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:53.400 service grew over the course of two thousand six, but 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:57.200 it really began to take off the following March in 0:09:57.280 --> 0:10:00.760 two thousand seven, So essentially a year after Dorsey sent 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:04.960 out that first tweet, Twitter itself would become famous. It 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:07.680 was the year that Twitter had gone to south By 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:12.880 Southwest in Austin, Texas. It's a big festival. It's got 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.120 lots of different components to it, like there's a film 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.360 component and a music component, but there's also a tech 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.960 or interactive component in south By and south By is 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.000 how some people refer to it. I always feel weird 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:27.959 calling it south By. I don't think I'm cool enough. 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:31.319 That's the problem is that really cool people can call 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:34.600 it south By and sound like, you know, they're not 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:37.559 total dweebs. But if I try and say cool things, 0:10:37.920 --> 0:10:42.520 my dweet bishness comes to the surface and it's undeniable. 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:44.120 And I'm cool with that. By the way, I'm not. 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:50.480 I'm not upset. I just know who I am. Anyway, Uh, 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:53.000 it was seen as sort of the cool conference in 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:55.480 the tech space. You know, it's where the young startups 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:58.520 would show off what they could do while rubbing elbows 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:02.760 with you know, the mon e and Uh. South By 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:07.000 was leaning more towards trendy and fashionable, much more than 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.839 larger tech industry conferences like ce S, which were still important, 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.040 but they weren't seen as being like, again, you're gonna 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:17.400 think I'm terrible because I'm gonna use terrible, antiquated language. 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:21.040 But you know, they didn't seem hip anyway. The Twitter 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:25.480 teams set up displays around south By Southwest that showed 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:29.200 the latest tweets that were sent across the microblogging service. 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:32.440 And I'm sure you know this. Folks really like it 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:36.439 when they see themselves or their words up on screens. 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:39.840 Gives them a real kick. So for more proof of that, 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:42.360 just go to any big sporting event in the United 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:45.880 States and watches the jumbo tron shows video of fans 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:48.400 in the stands. They go bonkers for that kind of thing. 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:53.559 So Twitter was declared the best startup at south By 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:58.680 Southwest and thousands of people signed on. Moreover, the people 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:02.000 who attend south By south West tend to fall into 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:06.400 the category of influencer, so these folks had their own 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:10.240 fan bases, which also began to join the platform. Twitter 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:12.520 proved to be really popular as it seemed to give 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:15.240 folks a more personal insight into the lives of folks 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.920 that they liked, whether those folks were close friends or 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:22.160 you know, like a celebrity crush. Twitter spun off to 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:25.520 become its own company in two thousand seven, and Jack 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:30.120 Dorsey was the first CEO. Dorsey would serve as CEO 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:33.560 another time later on in Twitter's history actually, but in 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:36.040 the summer of two thousand seven, Twitter began to see 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:40.120 some emergent behavior that would become foundational for the service. 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:44.880 And I'm talking about the hashtag. So that's the pound sign, 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:48.760 that little cross hatch sign. The hashtag when used in 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:51.320 front of a name or a keyword would make it 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.960 easier to search Twitter for that specific topic to see 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:57.800 what folks were saying about it. Because Twitter wasn't really 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:03.680 designed to make large conversations a possibility, right, Like, it's 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:08.800 hard to participate in a conversation on Twitter beyond back 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:12.679 and forth with just two people. So some users came 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:15.680 up with this idea of using a hashtag in front 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:19.480 of a keyword, like what the conversation is actually about, 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.359 so that people could do a search for that hashtag 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:26.760 word and pull up the actual relevant tweets. Tweets that 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:28.680 did not have the hashtag in front of the word, 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:31.280 those wouldn't get tagged, right, Those wouldn't get pulled up 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.439 in search results. So this made it easier to look 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:38.320 for specific kinds of content. And again, this was just 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.400 something that emerged through user behavior, but over time Twitter 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:45.840 would adopt that and some other user behaviors and incorporate 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:50.360 those as features. In two thousand eight, Jack Dorsey stepped 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:55.000 down as Twitter's CEO and co founder Evan Williams would 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:57.960 take a turn. But don't worry, we'll be back with 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:02.040 Jack Dorsey in a little it. Before we can do that, though, 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:15.800 let's take a quick break, Okay, we're back. In two 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:20.160 thousand nine, Twitter got the first account to hit one 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:23.280 million followers. That actually was a kind of a race. 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:28.560 The account belonged to Ashton Kutcher, the celebrity who campaigned 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:31.440 hard to be the first to hit one million, because 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:34.360 CNN was closed again on a million followers right around 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.560 the same time. These days, you can find lots of 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.840 accounts that have many millions of followers. But keep in mind, 0:14:40.880 --> 0:14:44.160 you know, this event where we hit the first one 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:47.400 million followed account was in two thousand nine. It was 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:51.600 just a few years after launch, and really folks outside 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:54.800 of the text space hadn't really found out much about 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:56.840 Twitter at all, Like they didn't know that it was 0:14:56.880 --> 0:14:58.520 a thing. It was really the tech space that was 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:01.520 aware of it, and in a few folks on the 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:05.440 periphery of tech. This would change when Oprah set up 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:08.560 her own Twitter account on an episode of her daytime 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:12.200 talk show, which led to thousands more people signing up. 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:15.720 I should also add Twitter in the United States is 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:18.680 seen as a pretty big deal, but it's not as 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:22.720 big in other regions. There are other social networks that 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:26.560 actually are used more frequently than Twitter. In those cases, 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:29.800 I say this because even as someone who is on Twitter, 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:34.600 I often forget that it's not as widely used as 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:39.160 you might think. And while you might feel that that 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:44.080 certain sentiments that are really popular on Twitter, uh have 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:48.600 widespread appeal, you're really looking at a kind of slice 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:51.800 of the overall population. I say this because it means 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:53.720 that if you spend a lot of time on Twitter, 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.600 your perspective could be skewed so that you think that 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:01.480 more people think a specific way, and that's not necessarily 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:04.640 the case. I know I've been guilty of falling into 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:07.400 that trap myself, so I just thought I would mention 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:10.120 that here now. It's also good to remember that Twitter's 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:14.560 early years coincided with the growth of the consumer smartphone. 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:17.240 Like I said, smartphones have been kind of a thing 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:19.040 in certain parts of the world, but here in the 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:22.920 United States, they just were not the domain of the 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:26.360 general consumer. It was pretty much your executive on the 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.840 go who had a smartphone, and that was it until 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:35.680 Apple debuted the iPhone and made smartphones sexy, and then 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.960 they had a really disruptive effect on the web. In general, 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:43.360 services like Twitter could be repackaged as an app, and 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:47.400 this really helped boost user numbers as well. Now, in 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:49.800 these early years, Twitter didn't really have a means to 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.800 generate revenue. Uh, it was dependent upon influxes of cash 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:58.240 from investors. But in two the company introduced promoted tweets, 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:00.560 so then an account could pay a to have a 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:03.560 message promoted so that it would show up on the 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:06.840 feeds of hundreds of thousands of Twitter users. Even if 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:10.880 those users didn't follow that specific account, they would see 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:15.000 the tweet. We started seeing more brands engage with Twitter 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:18.360 as a way to promote themselves and their products as 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:20.560 well as to interact with customers. And we also saw 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:22.800 the beginning of folks using Twitter as a way to 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:26.200 fast track issues to get them resolved with customer service 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:30.919 of various companies. I saw so many tweets directed at airlines. 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:33.960 Oh and those early years would also be when we 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:38.080 would see the famous fail whale a lot. So This 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:41.080 image created by artist Kooney a k a k a 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:45.080 Dash ninety two has the official title of Lifting a 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:47.800 Dreamer and it shows a flock of little birds holding 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:50.359 onto strings that serve as a kind of harness for 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.960 a happy whale. This was the image that greeted users 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:58.320 when Twitter services were put which happened frequently enough that 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:00.159 if you were using Twitter back in those days, you 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:03.719 undoubtedly saw the fail whale at some point or another. 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:08.960 Twitter users would sometimes push Twitter beyond capacity, particularly during 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:13.240 really popular live events where everyone was trying to give 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:15.320 their hot take on what was going on at the 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:20.480 same time. In Evan Williams stepped down as CEO in 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.720 order to focus more on product development. He would leave 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:28.400 the company no several years later. He actually completely divorced 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:32.439 himself from Twitter by like twenty seventeen, so in his place, 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:37.040 Dick Costolo became the new CEO. In two thousands thirteen, 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:40.520 Twitter would transition from being a private company to a 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:43.919 publicly traded one, and so it held its I p 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:48.119 O or initial public offering on November. Uh, well, in 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:50.760 November of two thousand thirteen, I don't have the specific 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:53.440 date in front of me, but not everything was going 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:56.640 super smoothly for Twitter even as it was making this transition. 0:18:56.920 --> 0:19:00.720 For one thing, the platform was starting to get a 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:06.600 reputation for abusive users. People were complaining that Twitter failed 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:12.000 to handle abuse properly. Like it it wasn't responding quickly enough. 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:14.560 In fact, a little bit later it was it got 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:18.000 so bad that the CEO copped to it. In an 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:21.920 internal memo. Costolo said that Twitter had failed to handle 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:24.960 trolls and abuse and as a result, had lost users 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:28.840 in the process. Now, this was around the time of 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:33.919 gamer Gate, which was really a harassment campaign conducted mainly 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:38.520 online but also in other ways. And while Twitter would 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.439 see quite a bit of action during gamer Gate, the 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:45.320 real battles were being fought elsewhere online in the real world. 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:48.760 But lots of folks in the gaming industry, particularly women 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:52.200 who dared to be so bold as to work professionally 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:56.240 in the field, found themselves the targets of abuse. In 0:19:56.280 --> 0:20:01.200 the summer of Dick Costolo stepped down as CEO, and hey, 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:05.160 Jack Dorsey came back as CEO, you know, the first 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:08.160 CEO of Twitter, one of the code founders, and Dorsey 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:11.920 remained in charge of Twitter until the fall of when 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:16.040 he would resign and the former c t O, Parague 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:19.880 Agraval would take over and Agrival would lead the company 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:23.959 until a certain tech billionaire would really shake things up. 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:28.119 That tech billionaire was, of course, Elon Musk. He made 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:31.800 waves in the spring of So it feels like it 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:35.000 was an eternity ago at this point by announcing his 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:39.440 intention to acquire Twitter. First, he purchased a significant percentage 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:43.879 of shares in the company. Then he declined an invitation 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:46.720 to join the company's board of directors because he learned 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:48.680 that if he did that it would prevent him from 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:52.320 being able to acquire even more stake in the company. 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:54.920 Then he said he wanted to buy the company, and 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:58.400 he started going about to secure the funding for it. 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.560 Then reconsidered and decided he wanted out of the deal, 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:05.160 but at that point he had already committed to it. 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:08.200 There was no easy way to back out. Twitter went 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:10.960 to court to force Musk to go through with the 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:16.840 acquisition bias gosh darn it, you're legally bound to And finally, 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:21.800 in the fall of Musk actually did purchase Twitter. Then 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:25.280 Musk fired like all the leadership at Twitter and half 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:29.200 of the employees. Then another quarter of the employees left 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:32.040 the company. And that's kind of where Twitter is today. 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:35.720 Musk is aiming to transform Twitter into what he calls 0:21:35.800 --> 0:21:41.200 Twitter two point oh. And obviously that's a super fast, 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:45.320 super high level treatment of Twitter. We could talk about 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:48.600 so much more, but honestly, we kind of have, particularly 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:51.199 throughout this year, so I thought I would leave this 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:53.840 here for now, but if people want me to do 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:58.479 like an honest to goodness deep dive on the history, 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:04.560 the evolution, the influence of Twitter, let me know, um 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:06.960 and I guess I can do that. But that'll that's 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:10.240 almost a mini series on its own because it's just Twitter. 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:13.400 While again, while it's reach is not as big as 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:17.920 the way a lot of people think has been incredibly important, 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:21.240 particularly here in the United States, but also in other 0:22:21.240 --> 0:22:24.960 parts of the world, like in in Egypt. But we'll 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:27.439 save that for some other time. If y'all want me 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:30.360 to talk more about it, some of you are probably 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:33.520 sick of hearing about Twitter, so hey, why don't we 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:35.919 talk about something else. So that same year that that 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:39.080 Twitter in Jaiku launched in two thousand and six, saw 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:43.200 the launch of yet another social networking slash microblogging site, 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:47.439 but this one was called Tumbler. I mean it launched 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:50.359 in private beta towards the end of two thousand six. 0:22:50.600 --> 0:22:54.120 It would become a publicly accessible social network the following 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:58.200 year in two thousand seven. David carp who turned twenty 0:22:58.400 --> 0:23:04.000 in two thousand six, dude, anyway, he was behind Tumbler. 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:06.760 He had already established himself as a web developer and 0:23:06.800 --> 0:23:10.040 tech enthusiasts by then, Like when I looked into his background, 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:12.520 because I really didn't know much about David carp. I 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:17.000 know much about Tumbler apart from being somewhat familiar with 0:23:17.000 --> 0:23:19.800 it as a platform, but I looked into his background, 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:24.480 I was just so astonished and humbled, because holy cow, 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:27.040 this guy, by the time he was twinning, had accomplished 0:23:27.400 --> 0:23:33.760 so much. So he creates this site along with Marco Armett. 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:39.160 I don't mean to diminish Marco's contributions. And the whole 0:23:39.160 --> 0:23:41.840 idea was to give a place where users could create 0:23:41.880 --> 0:23:46.440 profiles and write what we're called tumble logs. So these 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:50.760 are short, warm blogs, sometimes longer than tweets, but shorter 0:23:50.840 --> 0:23:53.359 than what you would typically find in a regular blog. 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:57.320 And Tumbler gave tools to users to let them incorporate 0:23:57.359 --> 0:24:02.560 all kinds of multimedia stuff like photos and audio clips 0:24:02.640 --> 0:24:06.040 and videos and even things like chat logs. You could 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:10.400 just post those directly into a Tumbler feed, right from 0:24:10.600 --> 0:24:16.520 the user interface. So it was really streamlining that process 0:24:16.560 --> 0:24:19.600 so that you could create a really engaging and interesting 0:24:20.320 --> 0:24:23.440 tumble log about whatever it is that you wanted to 0:24:23.680 --> 0:24:26.520 write about. You know, maybe it's a journal about your 0:24:26.520 --> 0:24:30.200 own experiences, maybe it's about something you really are passionate about, 0:24:30.240 --> 0:24:32.760 whatever the case may be. So users had a few 0:24:32.800 --> 0:24:35.960 options when it came to designing the look of their feed. 0:24:36.280 --> 0:24:39.480 They had a lot of default options, or they could 0:24:39.480 --> 0:24:42.239 actually shell out some real world money to purchase a 0:24:42.359 --> 0:24:46.280 pre made theme from Tumbler, kind of like a you know, 0:24:46.400 --> 0:24:50.760 a premier theme. And like Twitter, Tumbler let users follow 0:24:50.800 --> 0:24:54.399 accounts that they found interesting, so that each user had 0:24:54.680 --> 0:24:59.480