What a Little Bird Taught Me
a Twitter follow-up
Hi, friends, and happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating. I don’t do the turkey dinner because it’s too much work, and I try to have an attitude of gratitude every waking moment, but if Thanksgiving weren’t on a Thursday, I’d probably celebrate it like I do July 4th. Thematically, they’re my two favorite American holidays.
So on this quiet Thursday afternoon, I’m anxiously awaiting the release of the hostages tomorrow. (Well, some of them anyway. May Hashem save them all.) Naturally, I’m continuing my prayers and Torah study. But today’s post won’t feature any Torah ideas. I still have more to say about Twitter. Now that I’ve deleted my accounts, I figured I should at least acknowledge and share some of the insights I gained from its original founders. Everything I’m writing today was gleaned from two books I read a bunch of years ago: Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton and Things a Little Bird Told Me by Biz Stone. As you see, I’ve adapted the title of Stone’s book into the title of this post.
From left to right, these are Twitter’s founders: Jack Dorsey (who didn’t have his signature beard yet), Evan Williams, Christopher “Biz” Stone, and Noah Glass. If you do a Google search on “Twitter founders,” you probably won’t find Noah. . . unless you know to look for him. The other founders, especially Dorsey, gave him the shaft even though the concept behind Twitter was his idea. That’s the central story of Hatching Twitter.
Like so many computer geeks in the dot com boom, these four guys moved to Silicon Valley to seek their fortune. Ev Williams and Biz Stone met while working at Google, and they quit to form their own start-up. They hired Noah and Jack as employees.
Noah’s Story
One night when Jack and Noah were having drinks after work, Noah brainstormed about a tool that could keep people in touch with all their friends, all the time. Instantaneous social media as we know it didn’t exist yet. Mark Zuckerberg was working on Facebook contemporaneously. But what’s notable about Noah’s vision is that he had it while he was in the middle of a divorce. Downhearted and needy, he wanted to apply his tech skills to solve that very human problem: loneliness.
Obviously, he was onto something because the majority of the world population has since become hooked on social media, but as we all know, it doesn’t usually deliver the connection we seek. We look at it when we’re bored, and sometimes it helps, but sometimes it makes us feel worse, especially now that it’s been weaponized to keep us arguing with each other. At the end of Hatching Twitter, after Noah’s colleagues successfully pushed him out of the company and took credit for his idea, we see him in a new job, home, and marriage. He even had a kid. But he quit using social media, and he planned to keep his kid away from it, too. The social connections he once dreamed of finding via computer are better when built in real life. His story is a cautionary tale. . .but it has a happy ending.
The Wisdom of Biz Stone
Despite the negative portrayal of Noah’s colleagues in Hatching Twitter, somehow, I ended up reading the memoir of his co-founder Biz Stone. Naturally, Biz’s account of events differs. He practically glosses over Noah, crediting him only for coining the name “Twitter.” But the tone of the book is too casual to sound defensive or polemical. It’s more of a cross between a memoir and a self-help book. As a result, he seems quite likable.
Biz’s life story is similar to Will’s in “Good Will Hunting.” Raised by a single mom, there wasn’t enough money for him to attend an elite university, despite his brains and talent. He had to hold down a part-time job to get himself through college. His job was almost as unglamorous as Will Hunting’s janitorial job. Biz was packing boxes in a book publishing firm. He knew his bosses were looking at designs for a new book cover, so one day when nobody was around, he turned on one of the computers, designed a cover, and added it to the pile of designs under consideration. When his was chosen, he was offered a full-time job. He quit college and accepted, figuring he’d just landed what he’d been aiming for with the degree, and he did it three years before graduation.
That is the main lesson I got from Biz Stone. He’s a big advocate of risk-taking, giving the usual business advice that if you want the big pay-off, you have to take big risks. The difference is, unlike other business writers, he actually explains how to do it intelligently. He gave the example of learning to do a back flip. When he was taught how to do it, he was shown the point in the execution where accidents are most likely to happen. So instead of just “visualizing yourself succeeding,” as so many people advise, Biz suggests you also envision yourself failing. Embrace the worst-case scenario. If you’re willing to live with the possible consequence of falling on your back, you’re ready to take the risk.
Personally, I’m pretty risk-averse, but I still consider those words to live by. And I think Noah was right, too: real life beats social media any day. But here I am, spending my whole day composing a post for online consumption. If it gets “likes” or introduces me to new readers I’ve never actually met, I’ll be thrilled. But Substack is more than just social media. It’s content creation. And so, after the “disruptive” mess caused by Twitter, perhaps the new trend will be to go back to long form blogging, which, ironically was pioneered by Twitter founder, Ev Williams.
Perhaps it’s just me, but social media itself is coming full circle. Computer scientist Jaron Lanier, author of Ten Reasons to Delete Social Media, says that tech took a wrong turn, so perhaps Substack is the corrective he’s been advocating for. It fits the bill on one point that he often makes. It allows writers to monetize their content instead of the social media companies monetizing us. But to me, the most important of his ten reasons is that we’re all turning into a***-holes. So perhaps, when we’re not limited to 280 characters, we’ll express ourselves better. I certainly hope that’s the new trend. Above all, may G-d help us to improve. May all of us remember to fight less.
Happy Thanksgiving and Shabbat Shalom.
