WEBVTT - The Twitter Story Part One 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.560 Get in test with technology with Text Stuff from stuff 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:15.040 dot com. Hey everyone, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:19.480 Jonathan Strickland, and and we're going to try and bring 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:23.880 you this podcast in characters are fewer. I don't think 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:27.120 that's an accurate description. But we are talking about Twitter today, Yes, 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:30.120 we are. In fact, anyone who knows me knows that 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:34.280 that would be impossible for me to express any thought 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:36.680 in characters or fewer. Well, you you do it pretty frequently. 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.080 I mean you're on Twitter. You have multiple Twitter accounts. Yes, 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:41.159 that's why I have to link like eight tweets in 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.400 a row for one thought. That's true. You do that thing, yeah, 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:47.000 do um. But anyway, yes, we're gonna talk about Twitter. 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:49.040 And for those of you who have been listening to 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:51.760 Text Stuff for years and years and years, you might say, 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:54.720 well hang on there. I seem to recall back in 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:58.560 the dark days, way back before you guys had any 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:01.120 idea of how you were doing podcasting, that you tried 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:04.000 to tackle Twitter before, and to you, I say, hey, 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:08.400 words can hurt. Twitter was the topic of the twelfth 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:11.680 ever episode of tech Stuff, way back on August four, 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:17.520 two thousan episode, and now we're up to almost six hundred. Ye. 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:21.399 But yeah, we talked in that episode about the technology 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.479 of Twitter, what what it actually was, and back then 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:27.039 it was in its still pretty young days, and we 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:29.360 thought now it would be fun to talk about the 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:32.600 actual story of the company itself. Right because in the 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:36.120 intervening time period, as of February, which is when we 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:39.520 are recording this podcast, Twitter has two hundred and forty 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:43.280 one million monthly active users who send some five hundred 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:48.120 million tweets per day. Yeah. That's uh, that's pretty heavy volume. 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:50.360 And if you had asked me back then when we 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:52.600 first did the Twitter podcast, if I thought that it 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:55.040 was ever going to get that big, I probably would 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:57.680 have laughed in your face because at that point I 0:01:57.720 --> 0:01:59.440 had only been using Twitter for a little while. But 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:01.720 we'll get in to when we both started using Twitter 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:04.160 as we go through this podcast, and that that big. 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:06.560 And I do want to say also, that widespread because 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:10.239 only thirty three of Twitter's accounts are from the US. Yeah, 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:12.240 and that's a big deal. In fact, it's played a 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:16.400 huge role in some world shaping events actually, and we'll 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:19.200 talk about that too. Um, and might as well say, 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:22.200 this is gonna be two episodes because it's a long story, 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:24.160 so we doesn't want to do a like an epic 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:27.240 one and a half hour episode of tech stuff, so 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:30.040 we're going to split them up. But the other interesting 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:33.120 thing about Twitter and it's early days is that it's 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:37.320 actually kind of controversial. It's not just a simple story. 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:40.519 If you go and look at most of the uh 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:43.200 the accounts of the early days of Twitter, you hear 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:46.960 about three co founders, and that would be Jack Dorsey 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:51.000 or at Jack on Twitter, Evan Williams at e V 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:54.880 or at ev on Twitter, and Christopher biz Stone or 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.760 at biz on Twitter. So, uh that that's like the 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:01.080 official story is, those are the three people who co 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:03.600 founded Twitter. But if you look into it a little 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:06.280 more deeply, you'll see some other names pop up, other 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:10.000 people who were instrumental in the early days, including someone 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:13.760 named Noah Glass, who, according to at least some people, 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:17.000 should at least be considered another co founder. Um, and 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:21.040 we'll explain, you know, the whole controversy behind that story too. 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:24.080 It's pretty interesting stuff. Uh. This was all stuff that 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:26.160 I was completely unaware of back when I did the 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:28.959 first episode of Twitter, because none of a lot of 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:31.919 people were talking about the actual early days. In fact, 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:33.639 a lot of people were skeptical that this thing was 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:35.960 going to stick around for very long. Sure it wasn't 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:38.040 so big yet that people had started to really do 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:42.080 these sort of interesting inner looks and mini biographies and 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:44.760 stuff like yeah, yeah, Well, it hadn't been around long 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:46.600 enough for it to really accrue much of a story 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:48.920 at that point, unless you had been at south By 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.520 Southwest and then thought that it was the most amazing 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:54.440 thing in the world. So the story of Twitter actually 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:59.520 begins with a different company called Odio, and Odio was 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:03.240 a company that was looking into creating a platform for podcasting, 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:05.800 and it was kind of similar in a way to Twitter, 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:07.600 because in the early days of Twitter, it was very 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:11.440 much focused on using your phone to send out messages. 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:15.320 Uh Odeo was looking at creating a product that was 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:19.400 more about allowing you to create a voicemail message that 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:22.480 would then be converted into an MP three file and 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:25.839 hosted on the web, so you could create a podcast 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:27.839 that way if you wanted to. You could actually dial 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:31.000 into this and create a long message that then would 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.000 be converted into an MP three and hosted. And they thought, well, 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:36.960 this is a great way of getting giving people the 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:40.200 power of broadcasting. They can actually sit down and do 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:42.320 exactly what Lauren and I are doing right now. We're 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:45.000 talking into a microphone and we're having it recorded. Then 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:48.479 we can broadcast it out and uh. There were some 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:51.560 problems in those early days with this product. One was 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.039 that it launched in two thousand five, just a little 0:04:55.040 --> 0:05:00.920 bit before another big podcasting product launched, just iTunes. Yeah, 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:05.000 iTunes the the platform that defined podcasting in those early days. 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:08.520 Now these days, you can obviously get podcasts through lots 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:12.600 of different programs, lots of different podcast catchers, but iTunes 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:15.400 for a very long time was pretty much the only 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:18.280 game in town because so many people subscribe to it 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:21.400 that everything else was like a teeny tiny slice of 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:26.000 the pie. And beyond that, the other story was that 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:29.120 all these people at Odeo were saying, you know, we 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:32.080 work really hard on this product all the time, but 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:36.920 none of us are using it. Bad sign So if 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:39.120 you are not, If you are an engineer and you're 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:41.520 working on a product you know and you're not using it, 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:45.200 that's what Google calls dog fooding, where the people over 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:48.400 at Google use the products that they're working on. Um, 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:50.839 if if no one's doing that, that's a bad sign 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:53.640 and suggest that perhaps you won't be able to find 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:57.880 customers either. So while all this is going on, I mean, 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:01.440 it was clearly a stressful time at Odeo. There were 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:05.080 some other people who had ideas for potential other uses 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:10.800 of SMS technology, that short messaging service technology, including a 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:14.200 Mr Jack Dorsey. As I recall, yeah, all of all 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:15.640 of the people that we mentioned at the top of 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:19.599 the show as being these these founders or controversial founders 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:22.719 of Twitter were involved with Odeo at the time. Yes, yeah, 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:25.760 In fact, some of them actually had come over from Google. Uh. 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:28.880 Evan Williams was the founder of a little program called 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:31.480 or a little service called Blogger, which got acquired by 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:35.960 Google made him a multi millionaire. He then left Google 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.359 to be one of the co founders of Odeo and 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:42.120 the CEO I believe, Yeah, and Biz also was with 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:45.799 Google before Odeo. And Jack Dorsey was a web developer, 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:49.080 and so Mr Noah Glass was the one who had 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:53.400 come up with this technology that that created that platform, Yeah, exactly. 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:56.760 And so Dorsey had this other idea, and he had 0:06:56.760 --> 0:06:59.360 been kicking it around for a while. Actually, he had 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:03.200 this idea of allowing people to share just a really 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:06.200 brief status update, just kind of like what's going on 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.080 with their life. At that very moment, Twitter was almost 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:13.160 called status that's s T A T dot us in fact, 0:07:13.280 --> 0:07:15.200 and Dorsey has talked about how fond he is of 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:19.040 those kind of little kitchy web naming Yeah, where you 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:21.360 can where you can make the the top level domain 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:25.120 be the completion of whatever your product um But he 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:26.600 he says that he had first come up with the 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:29.200 idea way back in July of two thousand, just a 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:31.800 couple of months into his use of live journal, which 0:07:31.840 --> 0:07:37.080 was a pretty new thing at the time. His concept 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:39.400 was to make a and I quote a more live 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.000 live journal, real time up to date from the road, 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:44.600 akin to updating your A I M. Status from wherever 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:48.520 you are and sharing it. So he was looking into like, 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:50.600 this is a great idea. I know, this is a 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:52.960 great idea. This is going to resonate with people. People 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:55.760 are going to be addicted to this. I just don't 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:58.560 know where to put it. I have no idea where. Yeah, 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:01.200 he toyed with implementing it in a whole bunch of 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:03.800 different bits of software that he was working on, and 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:06.360 his cohorts at Odeo were working on and it just 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.280 kind of didn't take off for six years. Yeah, he 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:12.600 eventually was able to talk to Noah Glass and explain 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:15.720 the idea in a way that Glass was able to 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:18.760 to latch onto it. In fact, if you read interviews 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:21.720 with Glass and with Dorsey, uh, they talk about how 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:24.280 it was this kind of crazy take the guy out 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:26.760 to lunch and explain it. And then yeah, but why 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.200 would anyone want to do that? No, no, no, no no, seriously, 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:31.520 people are gonna want to do them. Yeah, but but 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:33.160 why are people going to want to do that? And 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:36.800 eventually Glass saw the light, you know, something switched on 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:39.520 in his mind. He said, yeah, this is we could 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.520 totally implement this. We could create a system where you 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.240 could broadcast out a message to a network of people 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:48.520 who follow you. Why don't we do that? And so um, 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:51.400 Glass ended up kind of becoming the chief evangelist of 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:54.080 this idea, this product idea, which still was not an 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:58.760 official thing with Odeo. So they decide Dorsey and Glass 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:02.360 along with a third fellow named Florian Webber, to present 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:06.360 this idea to the business owners at Odeo. So Evan 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:08.719 Williams and Biz Stone and kind of say, look, this 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:12.040 is an idea we have for a different kind of product. 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.199 We think that there's a lot of potential here. Our 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:18.679 podcast platform doesn't seem to really be going anywhere. Why 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:22.200 don't we do this because otherwise was our company gonna do? Right? 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.000 And that was in February of two thousand six, and 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:27.960 the product that they were that they were recommending was 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:32.720 specifically called Twitter and that is spelled t W T 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:37.240 t R. Yeah. Yeah, because every single character space is valuable, 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:40.400 So get rid of those vowels. You know. Actually, I've 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:43.320 actually seen some tweets that are written in the style 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.600 as if they were all following that philosophy, just dropping 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.920 all the vowels. It's it's frightening how well you can 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:53.400 start to read those once you practice a little bit. Yeah, 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:55.680 the human brain is terrific, Like, so don't understand that 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:59.280 text speak that the kids are all crazy about. Yeah, lulls. 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:03.520 So anyway, Yeah, February two thousand six, this idea gets 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:06.560 a little bit of traction. And while the response was 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:09.200 not immediately this is what we're going to do from 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:13.240 here on out, essentially, Glass and Dorsey and Webber got 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:17.400 the go ahead to start working on this product, and 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:20.040 so they did and they began to launch it very 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:24.000 gradually once they started building the actual UH technology out. 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:27.480 In fact, Glass says that for a while he was 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:30.720 running the entire service of Twitter off of his laptop, 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:34.160 like it wasn't a server. It lived on his laptop, 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:35.760 and his laptop had to be on and plugged in 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:39.520 and everything and everything was funneled through there. And if 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:42.600 you're not really familiar with especially the early days of Twitter, 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:45.679 keep in mind we're talking two thousand six, that's before 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:49.079 the iPhone comes out, so this is before smartphones. We're 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:52.199 not talking about an app that allows you to UH 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:57.400 to look at Twitter and follow back on that SMS exactly, 0:10:57.440 --> 0:10:59.640 just text messages, the same source stuff you would use 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.600 if you were to text a friend. So you could 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:06.800 either dial in a a special number and send a 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.079 text to that number and then it would just broadcast 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:11.120 out to all of the people who follow you on Twitter, 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.000 or you could post on the web client. You could 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:16.800 go to a web page, which you know people still 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:19.000 do occasionally, they'll still go to the Twitter web page 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:22.120 and type stuff in online on their desktop, But there 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:25.360 wasn't any kind of smartphone app interface at this point, 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:28.960 so it was really early days. So Glass was put 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:34.000 in charge of this project and they kind of worked 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:37.400 on this for a while until about March twenty one, 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:40.240 two thousand and six, when the service was actually ready 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:43.559 to support a tweet, and that's when the very first 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:47.040 tweet was written. It was sent by by Jack at 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:50.079 Jack Dorsey and uh, and here it is, guys. I mean, 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:55.360 if you this rivals the first video on YouTube for 0:11:55.640 --> 0:12:00.560 like colossal importance, Jack's first Twitter was just setting up 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:04.480 my Twitter. That's Twitter, t W T t R. You know, 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:07.040 like we said earlier, there's a period in there too. 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:09.440 Oh yes, yeah he did. He did use the character 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:13.319 of a period as well. So um yeah, so if 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:15.559 you when I made that YouTube joke, that's for anyone 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:18.040 who remembers that the very first video ever uploaded the 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.280 YouTube was a Day at the Zoo. Was one of 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.320 the YouTube founders taking a video at a local zoo 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:27.760 and then uploading it. So yeah, sometimes these these things 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:33.080 that end up having world changing uh reach, start off 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:37.400 kind of modest of the bang. But that's but that's 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.600 okay too. And uh, in case you're wondering, like what 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.160 else is going on around this same time that Twitter 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:47.560 first starts to to to be active. Facebook at that 0:12:47.640 --> 0:12:51.640 time had just earlier that year set up their public 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:54.840 uh entry into Facebook. In other words, you didn't have 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:57.360 to be a college student to get into Facebook. At 0:12:57.400 --> 0:12:59.360 that time. They first started opening it up to a 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:02.520 few of a companies that so, if you're if your 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:06.160 email address had a certain type of private company addressing it, 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:08.560 you could join. And then eventually they opened it up 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:11.160 to the general public. Yeah. Well, well in April of 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:14.160 two thousand six, right, they started opening up that registration 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:18.840 just a month or so after, You're right after, not before. 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:22.240 Thank you, Lauren for keeping us honest. But yes, so 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:25.560 this is early days in the social networking world. Now. Granted, 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:28.520 even in those early days, Facebook still had a pretty 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:31.080 decent headstart, because yeah, it's not like they were new 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:33.120 at that point at all. Yeah, they had had a 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:36.040 lot of colleges involved in that program, and at that 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:40.120 point they had something like six million users. Twitter, after 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:42.679 a few months of it being live, had fewer than 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:48.040 five thousand users. So big big gap there, you can, 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:51.240 you could say, although people were interested in it. In 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:54.840 July two six, there was a really interesting coverage of 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:58.560 Twitter from tech Crunch something. Yeah, Michael Arrington wrote about it, 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.960 and uh, in the the article they talked about it 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.679 being a group send SMS service. So again this idea 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:08.840 of being able to broadcast out the message to your friends. Now, 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:10.560 this is kind of interesting because if you think of 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:13.200 what Twitter has become, it's a little bit different from 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:16.440 what was how it was first envisioned. Like back in 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:19.040 the day, it might have been something like, you want 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:21.800 to hold a party on the weekend, and you're like, 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:24.400 who wants to go to the pizza party thing? I 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:26.520 want to throw and you just send it out to everybody. 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.120 In that way, you don't have to individually send out 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:33.920 text messages to everyone. And that's really how everyone was 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:36.360 billing Twitter as being. You know, this is this is 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:38.560 the way that Twitter should be used. It totally makes sense, 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:41.880 but it's interesting because the way people actually use Twitter 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:44.680 would end up being very different from that. Uh and 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:47.360 in various ways. I mean, a lot of people like 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.720 to tell you what they're eating still to this day. 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:52.840 That was a big joke on Twitter for a long time, 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:56.120 but it's I did it recently, took a picture of 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:59.760 a delicious omelet idia and I had to send it out. 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:03.280 But um, yeah, so and then of course we're using 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:05.440 it now for news, and we're using it to uh 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:09.360 to follow celebrities or even interact with people that we 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:13.040 admire when you never would have had that that conduit 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:15.560 open before, or if you're just up to the minute 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.280 um networking with with all kinds of people who you 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:21.400 might have never had a chance to talk to. Oh yeah, 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:25.480 I've I've actually been contacted via Twitter to do cool 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:28.080 stuff like to to do a guest appearance on a show, 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:31.680 or to have people give me interesting ideas for shows 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:35.520 that we do. So it's definitely evolved. But what's interesting 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:39.720 is that none of that was really at that point. 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:42.920 Even Mike Arrington, who is, depending upon your point of view, 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:47.280 really good at predicting what's going to work in technology. Uh, 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:50.280 he didn't really touch on that in his article at all. 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:53.520 He actually did compare Twitter to another service that was 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:56.600 called Dodgeball. Now that I think is a little weird 0:15:56.640 --> 0:15:59.440 because Dodgeball was more of a location based service and 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:03.000 less of a broadcast a message out service, and Dodgeball 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:07.120 would eventually be acquired by Google. Right. Um it was 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:09.480 it was similar in the way that people were using 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:13.640 it for, uh, for a quick, unobtrusive way to get 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:17.600 in touch with people about something small. Yeah, it's it's 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:19.640 related in the same way that you could say like 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.320 MySpace and Facebook were related and that they did similar things, 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:25.920 but they had very different approaches. In fact, maybe even 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:29.680 more different than my Space and Facebook were. But those founders, 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:32.160 after Google bought them out, would go on to create 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:36.320 four Square. All of them left Google. They I hear 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:38.880 a very similar story from the folks who used to 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:41.160 be a blogger and the folks who used to be 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:45.400 with Dodgeball in that once Google acquired the company, satisfaction 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:48.360 kind of dropped out. They just it wasn't a good culture, 0:16:49.120 --> 0:16:52.000 it wasn't a mixed Yeah. So they ended up leaving 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:55.200 and founding four Square, which by the way worked out 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:58.800 for them. Um. And then there was another similar service 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:01.800 And anyone who was around in the early days of 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.680 Twitter probably has heard of this called Jaiku. It's supposed 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:08.640 to be the combination of the words Japanese and haiku. 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.320 It was founded by a couple of Finnish developers, as 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:15.960 in from Finland. Not that they were done, they weren't 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:20.480 finished developers, they were Finnished. I'm just trying to explain. 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:23.520 Lauren just In case people misunderstand me. Um, but yeah, 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:25.800 it used a very similar approach. I mean it was 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:30.960 essentially a a almost identical service, and I actually used 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:35.080 both for a while. Jaiku also would eventually get shuttered. 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.480 It would not it would not stand the test of time. 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:39.719 It was just that too many people were using Twitter 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:42.840 and not enough people were using Jaiku, and while the 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.320 services were very similar, there wasn't any real reason to 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:51.439 use both, Like, especially at the limited range that Twitter 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:53.640 was operating at the time, it was really only being 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.680 populated by um kind of kind of high level, well 0:17:56.680 --> 0:18:00.520 connected Silicon Valley sort of types. Yeah, if if you 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:03.320 were around in the very early days of Google Plus, 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:06.520 very similar Like I remember I got invited into the 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:10.160 Google Plus beta like within the first week or two 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:12.800 that it went live, and for a while it felt 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:17.479 like it was just technology owners and technology journalists and 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:21.439 it was awesome. Uh it's still I still very much 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:25.800 enjoy Google Plus, but you know, there's something a little 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:30.920 enticing about being part of this exclusive club. I think 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:33.960 ultimately it's better that it's not exclusive, but you know, 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:36.119 at the same time, it's kind of cool to be 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:39.760 one of the cool kids for like a week, so yeah, 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:41.919 so it's a relatively small scope at the time, and 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:43.960 in fact, the scope was so small that one of 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:46.639 the founders would do something shocking. But we'll get to 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:52.639 that after we take a quick break and thank our sponsors. So, Lauren, 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:56.040 you alluded to something kind of radical that one of 0:18:56.080 --> 0:19:00.320 the founders of odio would do, and it upen in 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:04.360 September two thousand and six. It was something that again 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:08.919 another controversial decision in hindsight, At the time, it didn't 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:12.439 seem that controversial, but now it surely does. Which is 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:16.200 that Evan Williams sent out a message to Odio investors 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:18.880 and said that he wanted to buy back the company's 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:22.320 stock from the investors because he didn't see the company 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:26.200 having any real direction. At that point, the podcast platform 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.080 had fallen flat and Twitter was still a very young 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:32.639 service a right, only a fewer than five thousand people 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:35.359 had registered for the service and the two months that 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:39.159 it had been available so far. Right. So eventually Williams 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:43.840 convinced the investors to accept the buy back. And so, uh, 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:47.720 there's not really a publicly available figure for how much 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:51.199 this buyback cost Williams out of his own money, but 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:54.720 the estimations are somewhere around the five million dollar mark, 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:58.160 because that's about how much funding Odeo had received earlier, 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:01.719 So five million dollars. But now the question, and it 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:03.960 wasn't the question then, but the question now is did 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.359 Williams have any idea how big Twitter was going to become? 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:10.639 And did he make that buying back in anticipation for 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:14.640 this crazy popular service? Was it earnest or was he 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.920 plotting ahead? And here's the thing. People describe Williams as 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:25.600 being incredibly uh, methodical, thoughtful, very quiet, very Some would 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:29.680 even use the term mackea Bellian. Uh, but that's quite 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.600 a term. It is quite a term. Yeah, that's that's 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:36.400 that's saying something very specific right there. But I think 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:41.000 I think everyone agrees that what Williams said was perfectly honest. 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:44.440 That the service did have fewer than five thousand users. 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:47.080 So there was no way of knowing at that moment 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:50.640 if those five thousand would ever be larger, Like there's 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:52.480 no way of knowing if if they would you know, 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:56.359 top out at twenty. But they did know that people 0:20:56.400 --> 0:20:58.840 were using it a lot, and they were using it, 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:01.880 you know, obset Slee is probably being too strong, let's 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.840 say frequently but that that people were and and people 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:08.440 inside the company were using it so unlike that that 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:11.240 podcast platform that no one was using. People in the 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:14.320 company were using it so much that Odio had changed 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:18.480 its UH employee agreement to actually pick up their text 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:22.080 messaging fees because people were racking up four D text 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:24.320 message at the time. That was that was a big deal. 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:26.320 That was huge. I mean, no one had unlimited text 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:29.359 plans because who was going to send that many texts? 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:34.080 And they weren't saying necessarily anything, you know, profound. This was, hey, 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:37.439 I had an awesome waffle today, like that kind of stuff. 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:40.720 So there was there's at least some indication that the 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:43.760 service was compelling. Whether or not he knew that the 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:46.720 service was ever going to take off is still up 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:50.199