Narrator: On an October morning in 2010, Evan Williams, the CEO of Twitter, was kneeling by a garbage can in his office, physically ill with anxiety. He was about to be forced out of the company he had co-founded and poured his life into. The public announcement would be framed as his own decision, a carefully crafted blog post stating he had "decided to ask" his COO, Dick Costolo, to take over. But the reality was a brutal boardroom coup, a story of betrayal that marked just one chapter in a saga of backstabbing, ambition, and fractured friendships. While the world was celebrating Twitter as a tool for global revolution, a different kind of revolution was happening inside its walls, one that was far more personal and destructive.

This chaotic, human drama is the core of Nick Bilton's book, Hatching Twitter: How a Fledgling Start-Up Became a Multi-Billion Dollar Business and Accidentally Changed the World. The book dismantles the sanitized myth of Silicon Valley genius to reveal the messy, unpredictable, and often ruthless story of how a simple side project became a global phenomenon.

Narrator: The book reveals that Twitter was never the product of a grand vision; it was an act of desperation. Its story begins not with a brilliant idea, but with a failing company called Odeo. Founded by Noah Glass and funded by his friend Evan Williams, Odeo was a podcasting platform with a fatal problem: in 2005, Apple announced it was adding a free, native podcasting feature to every iPod. In an instant, Odeo was rendered obsolete.

The team was lost. One rainy night in late February 2006, a drunken and despondent Noah Glass sat in a car with Jack Dorsey, a quiet programmer at the company. Both were feeling isolated—Noah’s marriage was collapsing, and Jack felt unfulfilled. In that moment of shared loneliness, Jack mentioned an old idea he had for a service that would let people share their "status" with friends via text message. Initially, Noah was dismissive, but as they talked, a light went on. He saw its potential not as a utility, but as a way to combat loneliness, to feel connected to people's lives in real-time. He became the idea's most passionate champion, even coming up with the name: Twitter. It wasn't a calculated business pivot; it was a lifeline thrown out in a moment of personal and professional crisis.

Narrator: As the small team began building Twitter, the platform’s creation was marked by intense collaboration and equally intense conflict. While Jack Dorsey wrote the first lines of code and sent the first tweet—"just setting up my twttr"—it was Noah Glass who drove the project with manic energy and passion. He saw its potential to connect the world. However, his passion soon morphed into erratic and controlling behavior.

The breaking point came at a party for dying tech companies. A drunk and emotional Noah cornered a prominent tech blogger, Om Malik, and prematurely revealed the secret project, signing him up on the spot. The resulting blog post credited Noah as the visionary, enraging the rest of the team. The tension between Noah and Jack became unbearable. Jack delivered an ultimatum to Ev Williams, who was now effectively in charge: "If Noah stays, I’m going to leave." Ev was forced to choose. In a heartbreaking scene, he met Noah on the green park benches outside their office and fired his friend, the man who had championed the idea of Twitter from the very beginning. Noah was written out of the company's history, the first of the founders to be pushed from the nest.

Narrator: With Noah gone, Ev Williams made Jack Dorsey the first CEO of the newly formed Twitter, Inc. The platform exploded in popularity, largely thanks to a breakout appearance at the 2007 South by Southwest (SXSW) conference, where massive screens displaying a live feed of tweets captivated attendees. But this rapid growth came at a cost. The site's infrastructure, hastily built, couldn't handle the load. The "Fail Whale," an illustration that appeared during outages, became an infamous symbol of Twitter's unreliability.

While the site was constantly crashing, Jack seemed increasingly detached. He was leaving work early for yoga classes, sewing lessons, and art courses. His vision for the company felt limited to a simple status-update utility, while Ev saw its potential as a global news and information network. The frustration boiled over in a tense meeting where Ev confronted him, saying, "You can either be a dressmaker or the CEO of Twitter. But you can’t be both." The board, led by Ev, saw Jack as an ineffective leader who was failing to solve the company's most critical technical problems. His reign as CEO was destined to be short-lived.

Narrator: In 2008, the cycle of betrayal turned on Jack. The board, with Ev Williams at the helm, decided to oust him. The move was swift and brutal. Jack was informed of the decision and demoted to a silent chairman role. He was devastated, feeling betrayed by Ev, the man he once saw as a mentor. His final act before the news broke was to send a tweet that captured his shock and isolation: "Calling my parents." Ev Williams took over as CEO, finally in full control of the company.

But the story doesn't end there. As Bilton documents, Jack, now an outsider, began a quiet and calculated campaign to rewrite history and reclaim his throne. He started crafting a new narrative, positioning himself as the sole inventor of Twitter, a visionary in the mold of Steve Jobs who had been pushed out by less imaginative partners. He cultivated relationships with journalists and influential figures, slowly building his myth. This set the stage for the final, dramatic coup. As the company grew and faced new pressures, Jack worked behind the scenes with board members who were growing dissatisfied with Ev's leadership. In 2010, the cycle completed itself. Ev Williams, the man who had ousted two of his co-founders, was himself forced out in a boardroom coup orchestrated, in part, by the very man he had fired.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Hatching Twitter is that world-changing technologies are rarely born from a single, clean moment of genius. Instead, they often emerge from a chaotic storm of human emotion, ambition, friendship, and betrayal. Twitter wasn't the product of a master plan; it was an accident that survived its own creators. The platform that connects billions was built by a small group of people who, in the end, could barely stand to be in the same room.

The book serves as a powerful antidote to the sanitized myths of Silicon Valley. It forces a reflection on the true nature of innovation and the human cost that often accompanies it. It leaves us with a challenging question: Does it matter that a tool that has sparked revolutions and connected the world was forged in such a crucible of conflict? Or is that messy, human chaos an inseparable, and perhaps even necessary, part of creating something truly new?