Nick Bilton · 299 pages
Rating: (10.8K votes)
“People don’t invent things on the Internet. They simply expand on an idea that already exists.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“The press pass and the a title of “journalist” had been replaced by a smart phone and a Twitter account.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Some people are destined for greatness; others fall up a hill to get there.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“In the past, history was always written by the victors. But in the age of Twitter, history is written by everyone.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“It was a testament to the resilience of humanity. Give a man a tree and he will make it into a boat; give him a leaf and he will curve it into a cup and drink water from it; give him a rock and he will make a weapon to protect himself and his family. Give a man a small box and a limit of 140 characters to type into it, and he will adapt it to fight an oppressive dictatorship in the Middle East.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Give a man a tree and he will make it into a boat; give him a leaf and he will curve it into a cup and drink water from it; give him a rock and he will make a weapon to protect himself and his family. Give a man a small box and a limit of 140 characters to type into it, and he will adapt it to fight an oppressive dictatorship in the Middle East.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“When people ask Biz about his wealth, he tells them that money rarely changes people; it often just magnifies who they really are.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“A similar sound, especially light, tremulous speech or laughter.” This is it, he thought. “Agitation or excitement; flutter.” A verb. Twitter.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“It could be a technology that would erase a feeling that an entire generation felt while staring into their computer screens.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“The idea was that while one person wrote code, the other programmer would massage his or her shoulders; then they would switch.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“When Taylor had called Mark to explain the situation, Facebook's CEO had given clear instructions to shut Twitter down the second it tried to launch.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Jack and Ev looked at each other for a moment in the boardroom. At that moment neither realized that they were both fundamental to what Twitter had become. The perfect equilibrium of two different ways of looking at the world: the need to talk about yourself, compared with the need to let people talk about what was happening around them. One could never have existed without the other. That balance, or battle, had created Twitter. A tool that could be used by corporate titans and teens, by celebrities and nobodies, by government officials and revolutionaries. A place where people with fundamentally different views of the world, like Jack and Ev, could converse.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Fred wasn't convinced, telling Charlie that such a service would never work and that other companies that had tried to make Twitter-like products had all failed.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“What do you think your valuation is right now?" Mark asked as they both sat uncomfortably across from and below him, peering up at a boy who could, hypothetically speaking, quite happily buy them or murder them, all with the same exact expression on his face.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“This status thing could help connect people to those who weren’t there. It wasn’t just about sharing what kind of music you were listening to or where you were at that moment; it was about connecting people and making them feel less alone. It could be a technology that would erase a feeling that an entire generation felt while staring into their computer screens. An emotion that Noah and Jack and Biz and Ev had grown up feeling, finding solace in a monitor. An emotion that Noah felt night after night as his marriage and company fell apart: loneliness.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“money rarely changes people; it often just magnifies who they really are.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Loneliness is not so much where you are, but instead is your state of mind" - Commander Hadfield”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Loneliness is not so much where you are, but instead is your state of mind - Commander Hadfield”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Even on the Internet, the elephant that never forgets, memories are still forgotten.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“But the mood wasn’t jovial. There was no laughing. There was only tension that could have been sliced with a tweet and sadness, even among the winning team.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“If there is no X to mark the spot, there is no spot.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Jack had continued to see Twitter as a way to talk about what was happening to him. Ev was starting to see it as a view into what was happening in the world.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Ev had known all along that it had never been about the money. A billionaire still throws up into a garbage can. It was about making a dent in the universe.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“July had already been a busy month as Twitter had also moved into new offices: a fancy, modern, loftlike space with lots of windows and room to grow. Among the fun features they had added to the office (a living-room setup with a couch and video games, a large red phone booth, and a fully stocked kitchen with cereal and other snacks), Jack had suggested putting in a Radiohead room. “It can play Radiohead twenty-four hours a day!” he said excitedly when suggesting the idea.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“No, you didn’t invent Twitter,” Ev replied. “I didn’t invent Twitter either. Neither did Biz. People don’t invent things on the Internet. They simply expand on an idea that already exists.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“All forms of technology, with the exception of paper, are strictly forbidden inside any high-level Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information, or TS/SCI area,”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Hey, Ev,” Blaine yelled, his long, pin-straight hair hanging down over his shoulders. “Don’t take less than a hundred million dollars!”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
“Commander Hadfield wrote. “Loneliness is not so much where you are, but instead is your state of mind.”
― Nick Bilton, quote from Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
Nick Bilton
Born place: Darlington, The United Kingdom
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“We have good news and bad news. The good news is that the dismal vision of human sexuality reflected in the standard narrative is mistaken. Men have not evolved to be deceitful cads, nor have millions of years shaped women into lying, two-timing gold-diggers. But the bad news is that the amoral agencies of evolution have created in us a species with a secret it just can’t keep. Homo sapiens evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably sexual. Lusty libertines. Rakes, rogues, and roués. Tomcats and sex kittens. Horndogs. Bitches in heat.1 True, some of us manage to rise above this aspect of our nature (or to sink below it). But these preconscious impulses remain our biological baseline, our reference point, the zero in our own personal number system. Our evolved tendencies are considered “normal” by the body each of us occupies. Willpower fortified with plenty of guilt, fear, shame, and mutilation of body and soul may provide some control over these urges and impulses. Sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. But even when controlled, they refuse to be ignored. As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out, Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.) Acknowledged or not, these evolved yearnings persist and clamor for our attention. And there are costs involved in denying one’s evolved sexual nature, costs paid by individuals, couples, families, and societies every day and every night. They are paid in what E. O. Wilson called “the less tangible currency of human happiness that must be spent to circumvent our natural predispositions.”2 Whether or not our society’s investment in sexual repression is a net gain or loss is a question for another time. For now, we’ll just suggest that trying to rise above nature is always a risky, exhausting endeavor, often resulting in spectacular collapse. Any attempt to understand who we are, how we got to be this way, and what to do about it must begin by facing up to our evolved human sexual predispositions. Why do so many forces resist our sustained fulfillment? Why is conventional marriage so much damned work? How has the incessant, grinding campaign of socio-scientific insistence upon the naturalness of sexual monogamy combined with a couple thousand years of fire and brimstone failed to rid even the priests, preachers, politicians, and professors of their prohibited desires? To see ourselves as we are, we must begin by acknowledging that of all Earth’s creatures, none is as urgently, creatively, and constantly sexual as Homo sapiens.”
― Christopher Ryan, quote from Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
“Uxuriousness may be the last refuge of the honest man,”
― Mario Puzo, quote from Omerta
“Never say 'I can't.' 'I can't' is a limit, and life is about breaking through limits. Say 'I will' instead.”
― Heather Vogel Frederick, quote from Pies & Prejudice
“Why can men be boys all of their lives, but we women must grow old while we are yet young?”
― Sylvia Day, quote from Seven Years to Sin
“Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.”
― Susan Orlean, quote from The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession
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