Topic
33 facts from 14 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2008
Facebook tried to buy Twitter for about $500 million in an early acquisition attempt, years before Twitter had revenue.
“The first, I think, was before you joined when Facebook tried to buy Twitter for 500 million. This was years before any revenue.”
2010
Dick Costolo joined Twitter as chief operating officer in 2009 and became CEO in 2010.
“So in 2009, you finally make the jump from angel investor to executive. You join Twitter as COO. And then in 2010, you became the CEO.”
2010
Twitter made its ads into tweets that could be injected into any feed, which Costolo describes as the birth of the feed-based ad.
“we'll make the ads tweets and we'll just inject them into the feed, whether it's a syndication feed or a third party feed or our own site.”
2010
Stanford visiting professor Ashish Goel proposed charging for Twitter ads based on engagement with the tweet ad.
“we had this visiting professor at Stanford, Ashish Goel. And Ashish really came up with the idea of using the tweet ad engagement as that'll be the way we charge.”
2010
Adam Bain ran Fox Interactive and had built its ad platform before Costolo recruited him to lead revenue at Twitter.
“Adam Bain was running Fox Interactive and had built their whole ad stack and ad platform at Fox Interactive.”
2010
Twitter recruited Alex Redder from Google to run ads engineering and build its ad platform.
“The person who ended up running ads engineering, Alex Redder, and built that, we recruited out of Google.”
2010
Costolo says Twitter's engineering reputation suffered from frequent outages shown by the 'fail whale' error page, which made recruiting difficult.
“Twitter engineering had a horrible reputation. Why? Because of the fail whale. The site couldn't keep the site up.”
2010
When the site crashed during Russian president Dmitry Medvedev's visit, an engineer hardcoded his tweet to Barack Obama into the database.
“one of the engineers fake wrote a back end for the tweet that Medvedev sent from the iPad on stage at the Twitter headquarters and rewrote it and inserted it into the database.”
2010s
Twitter engineers refactored its monolithic backend, nicknamed the monorail, into a service-based architecture while still scaling.
“refactoring back ends and doing all the work to get us off the monorail, we used to call it, because it was a monolithic back end into a more robust service-based architecture”
2010
Costolo says Bill Gross's Idealab bought third-party Twitter clients such as TweetDeck to aggregate its own network, prompting Twitter to restrict third parties.
“Bill realized smartly, look, if you guys aren't going to own your own network, I'm going to go aggregate it myself.”
2010
Krikorian's infrastructure team at Twitter migrated much of its code base from Ruby on Rails to the JVM around 2010-2011.
“my team was the team that did the transition from Ruby on Rails to the JVM for a lot of the code base.”
2011
Twitter's first year of ad revenue, 2011, exceeded $100 million, and revenue roughly tripled the next year.
“the first year of ad revenue in 2011, Twitter did over $100 million in revenue and then 3x that the next year.”
2011
In early 2011 Andreessen Horowitz bought an estimated $80 million or more of pre-IPO secondary shares in companies like Facebook, Twitter and Groupon.
“they deploy what was I think like over 80 million dollars into buying pre IPO secondaries in these companies.”
2012
Costolo says Twitter tried to buy Instagram in March 2012, just before Instagram raised a round at a $500 million valuation led by Greylock.
“March 2012, when I tried to buy Instagram, it was before they had raised the $500 million valuation round from, I think, Greylock.”
2012
Costolo recalls that at the time of the deal Instagram had about 30 to 35 million monthly active users and Twitter about 140 million.
“Instagram is like 30 million MAU. It's not 500. It's not 200. It's like 30 to 35. And Twitter is like 140 million MAU at this point.”
2012
After the acquisition, Mark Zuckerberg told Costolo that Instagram photos would stop appearing inside Twitter feeds and would show only as links.
“The Instagram team has decided that Instagram photos need to be viewed on Instagram.”
2013
Twitter acquired Vine in January 2013, before Vine launched its product.
“And so they acquired the company in January, 2013, before they launched the product and Vine, I'm sure lots of our U S listeners will remember this.”
2013
Vine, which Twitter acquired before launch, was the number one iOS App Store app for about eight weeks.
“It launched. It was number one in the App Store on iOS for like eight weeks in a row.”
2013
After heavy roadshow demand, Twitter priced its 2013 IPO at $26 per share, above the $13 to $16 range in its S-1.
“Go out on the roadshow. Crazy demand. 70 times oversubscribed or something like that. So the night before, we're like, okay, we're going to price this at $26.”
2013
Costolo says that after its IPO Twitter was judged mainly on monthly active user growth rather than its financial results.
“It became clear after the first quarterly call that we were going to be judged almost exclusively on user numbers quarter to quarter on the big MAU number that was in the S1.”
2015
Costolo says Twitter's revenue went from zero to a run rate above $2 billion a year by the time he left in July 2015.
“to a run rate of over $2 billion a year when I left in July 2015”
2015
Twitter acquired Periscope, founded by Kayvon Beykpour, before its launch, a few weeks before Meerkat appeared.
“Periscope was another company, again, that Kayvon Bakepore had founded. Once again, we bought that before it launched.”
2021
Packy McCormick's Twitter following rose from 78,000 to 106,500 between mid-October and mid-November 2021.
“you went from 78,000 followers to 106,500 followers”
2022
Ben Gilbert noted that Elon Musk's takeover offer for Twitter was priced at $54.20 per share.
“if you think that Elon is actually going to close this deal and pay out every single Twitter shareholder at $54.20 per share.”
2022
Host Steven Bartlett says Elon Musk bought Twitter with a stated mandate of free speech.
“Elon Musk bought Twitter, and his real mandate has been this idea of free speech.”
2022
Nathan says Twitter had about 7,500 employees when Elon Musk took over and that headcount fell to roughly 1,000 to 1,500 at its lowest.
“it's something like 7,500 employees was what they had when he took over. He took that down to something like a thousand”
2023
Sam Altman says the Silicon Valley Bank run was much faster than the 2008 collapse because of Twitter and mobile banking apps.
“speed with which the SVB bank run happened because of Twitter, because of mobile banking apps”
Undated
Evan Williams added Kevin Rose and Chris Sacca to Twitter's manually curated suggested user list from his phone at a TED conference bar.
“And so he pulls out his phone and he literally does it right there on his phone.”
Undated
Kevin Rose met his wife, Daria, after a retweet that followed his addition to Twitter's suggested user list.
“And it was my now wife, Daria. And it was all because Ev added me to the suggested user list.”
Undated
Ben Thompson says Twitter began devaluing tweets that contained links, which he believes hurt sharing and the product.
“Twitter famously really started devaluing tweets with links a few years ago”
Undated
Alison Beard cites a Peter Thiel quote complaining that the tech industry promised flying cars but delivered 140 characters.
“there's the famous Peter Thiel quote. We wanted flying cars, they gave us 140 characters, and now it's more like we want climate change solutions”
Undated
Bret Taylor led Twitter's board during Elon Musk's takeover and became chairman of OpenAI's board after Sam Altman was fired and rehired.
“he led Twitter's board during Elon Musk's takeover and became chairman of the OpenAI board after the firing and rehiring of Sam Altman”
Undated
Angie Jones worked with Jack Dorsey at Twitter, and he then brought her to Block.
“So I worked with Jack at at Twitter, and then he brought me over to Block when they when they started”
Episodes