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THE STORY BEHIND THE APP Twitter

JACKSON PETERS

MASON CREST MIAMI

Mason Crest PO Box 221876, Hollywood, FL 33022 (866) MCP-BOOK (toll-free) • www.masoncrest.com

Copyright © 2024 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher. First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN (hardback) 978-1-4222-4783-9 ISBN (series) 978-1-4222-4773-0 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4222-7048-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Peters, Jackson, author. Title: Twitter: the story behind the app / Jackson Peters. Description: Hollywood, FL: Mason Crest, [2024] | Series: Tech titans | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023014415 | ISBN 9781422247839 (hardback) | ISBN 9781422270486 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Twitter (Firm)--Juvenile literature. | Twitter--Juvenile literature. | Online social networks--Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC HM743.T95 P48 2024 | DDC 302.30285--dc23/eng/20230327

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023014415 Developed and Produced by National Highlights, Inc. Editor: Andrew Luke Interior and cover design: Tara Raymo • CreativelyTara Production: Crafted Content LLC Publisher’s Note: Websites listed in this book were active at the time of publication. The publisher is not responsible for websites that have changed their address or discontinued operation since the date of publication. The publisher reviews and updates the websites each time the book is reprinted.

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Story of a Startup . ......................................... 7 Chapter 2: Rise to the Top . ..................................... 21 Chapter 3: Market Domination . ................................. 33 Chapter 4: Beyond the Boardroom . ........................... 47 Chapter 5: On the Horizon ............................................. 61 Series Glossary of Key Terms . ....................................... 74 Further Reading . ................................................ 76 Internet Resources ......................................................... 77 Index . ............................................................................... 78 Author’s Biography & Credits . ..................................... 80 KEY ICONS TO LOOK FOR:

Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills. Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic sports moments, and much more! Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

WORDS TO UNDERSTAND

hearty: substantial; sizeable impediment: something that interferes with or slows the progress of something, i.e. speech development inspiration: someone or something that gives you ideas for doing or creating something

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chapter 1

STORY OF A STARTUP

POWERFUL PRESENTATION Boardrooms in company headquarters across the globe—those high-pressure, high-stakes playing fields of industry—are where the grandest of ideas can flourish or fizzle in the blink of an eye. It was early in 2006 when Jack Dorsey stepped up at Odeo’s headquarters in San Francisco and delivered a powerful, life changing presentation that would launch one of the most successful and widely used apps around the world, transforming how people would communicate and share information for years to come. What made the occasion even more remarkable was that Dorsey had spent the bulk of his childhood waging a fierce fight against a speech impediment that often had him retreating to the safety net of home rather than playing with friends or engaging in social activities at school. Odeo’s executives were impressed by Dorsey’s idea and gave him the go-ahead to pursue it—quickly. Within weeks they had a name—Twitter, a plan, and a hearty appetite for success. What transpired in the years that followed elevated the app to staggering success, with nearly 400 million people now using it globally.

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It may seem strange considering he is the man who helped create one of the world’s greatest methods of communication, but Dorsey had a lot of trouble expressing himself and communicating with others as a young man.

EARLY LIFE As a young boy growing up in St. Louis in the early 1980s, Dorsey struggled to communicate with his family and fellow students due to a speech impediment. “I could pronounce [words] in my head, but they just would not come out,” he explained. This made forging friendships challenging and uncomfortable for him, so he ended up spending most of his time at home with his two younger brothers. As Dorsey grew older, it became apparent that he needed help. His parents brought him to a speech therapist to help him learn how to speak properly. Dorsey seized the opportunity to improve and

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TWITTER

WHY TWITTER?

Although Twitter is mostly known as a social media website, the word also means “a short burst of inconsequential information,” and “chirps from birds.” This explains why the logo for Twitter is a songbird, and the name of a Twitter update is a “tweet.”

Dorsey was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1976, and most of his youth was spent in that region.

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Story of a Startup

combated his shyness by entering contests that required him to give speeches to an audience. Even with all of the help Dorsey was getting, he spent a lot of time at home because he still did not feel entirely comfortable speaking with others. “That has always held me back a little, in terms of speaking up immediately,” he has said. “I want to make sure that every word is perfectly said.” His experiences as a child greatly influenced who he became as he grew older. Even as an adult, Dorsey admits, “I can be silent at some times, which unsettles people a bit because they don’t know what I’m thinking.” MOVING FASCINATION Dorsey’s father was an engineer specializing in medical devices, and he changed jobs frequently. Therefore, Dorsey and his family moved around a lot while he was growing up. Every time his family moved to a new neighborhood, Dorsey pushed himself to go outside and explore his new surroundings. Sometimes he would take public transportation and other times he would walk around for hours at a time. He enjoyed moving around in a variety of ways. He was particularly fascinated with vehicles and the way they moved from one place to another. It was not uncommon for him to bring his younger brothers down to the local train yard just to take pictures of the trains that were parked there. ACCESS GRANTED His father’s job as an engineer gave Dorsey access to computers and other gadgets before most of the kids his age. There was always some piece of tech lying around the house, but it was computers that he liked best. He first began playing with computers at the age

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TWITTER

When Dorsey was young, he loved to keep track of trains and their networks of tracks.

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Story of a Startup

Computers made dispatchers’ jobs much easier. These dispatchers used short phrases to communicate vital information to people in emergency situations. Their way of communicating would eventually help Dorsey come up with the ideas behind Twitter.

of eight, but merely using the machines was not enough for him; he wanted to understand how they worked. Dorsey taught himself how to build computer programs at a time when his fellow students didn’t even know how to use a computer. His fascination with trains went hand-in-hand with his interest in technology. Dorsey decorated his room with posters of maps and trains, all the while thinking about how the city was connected in one large grid. He began tracking the movement of police cars and other emergency vehicles using public information and a special computer program he wrote himself.

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TWITTER

Monitoring what was happening around town on computer screens was fun, but Dorsey wanted to get to the heart of how vehicles moved and communicated. He used a police scanner to pick up radio signals transmitted from dispatch to emergency vehicles moving through his area of town. The way the people in the vehicles communicated with one another fascinated him. The people Dorsey listened to on the police scanner did not speak in full sentences. Instead, they used short codes to communicate what was happening. He thought this was very efficient and began thinking of ways these short bursts of communication could be used in other areas of life. The signals he listened to through his police scanner later became his first inspiration for the creation of Twitter. COLLEGE AND BEYOND After graduating from high school in St. Louis, Dorsey enrolled at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in 1995, but he did not stay there long. Even when he was still in college, he was already looking at future job prospects. In 1997, he transferred to New York University and moved to New York City. While there, Dorsey found the website of a dispatch company in New York City and thought about applying. Unfortunately, there was just one problem: the public website did not include a way to contact the company. Rather than giving up, he used his skills to get the contact information he couldn’t find on the public webpage. Using a flaw he found in the website’s programming, he entered the website through a backdoor and grabbed the information he needed.

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Story of a Startup

After dropping out of NYU, Dorsey moved west to Oakland, California.

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TWITTER

After Dorsey retrieved some internal email addresses from the website, he notified the company of the weakness he found. The company was so impressed with Dorsey that they hired him a week later. He was only 20 years old at the time, but he was already thinking big. In 1999, he dropped out of college with one semester left and moved to Oakland, California, where Dorsey started his own company that dispatched couriers, taxis, and emergency services using the Internet. He did not make much money, however, and left the failing company to move back to St. Louis. Dorsey began to think about how technology could be used to improve the world. He reflected on the dispatch conversations he listened to as a child and thought of ways to apply that thinking to the Internet, which was now expanding rapidly. He moved back to the Bay Area in 2005 and began working as a low-level coder for a podcasting company called Odeo, which is where his dreams began to take shape. He saw a clear connection between the Internet and the increasing use of cell phones. At the time, smartphones were uncommon and just starting to emerge. If Dorsey wanted to connect everyday people to the Internet through cell phones, he would need to do it through text messages. SELLING POINT Dorsey’s boss at Odeo was its co-founder, tech entrepreneur Evan Williams, who had already sold a previous startup to Google. A few months into his tenure, Dorsey was in a brainstorming session with Williams, who was looking for a new direction for the company after Apple had launched a product that was poised to take all of Odeo’s market share. Dorsey pitched his idea for a microblogging platform based on SMS text messaging, and Williams decided to run with it. Also

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Story of a Startup

Evan Williams speaks with Ezra Klein, Editor-at-Large at Vox, during the 2019 Code Conference.

in that meeting was William’s co-founder Noah Glass, who is credited with coming up with the name. When users received a message from Twitter, it would be distributed from the abbreviation twttr, and the SMS code 40404. Developers of the website hoped the code would be easy for users to memorize and recognize. Dorsey received help for his new project from Biz Stone, Odeo’s creative director, and another contractor named Florian Weber. All three were very talented programmers, and they were able to build the first version of Twitter within two weeks. On March 21, 2006, Dorsey sent out his first Twitter message, known as a tweet. It said, “just setting up my twttr.” Only Odeo employees used the first version of Twitter, as it was not ready to be shared with the world.

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TWITTER