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Lesson #1: “Creativity comes from constraint”

Article Overview: When asked whether they had anticipated just how big Twitter would be when they first launched it, Stone replied, “Yeah, we knew Barack Obama was going to use it.” Williams followed with, “I knew I was going to be on Oprah in two years.”

Lesson #1: “Creativity comes from constraint”

When asked whether they had anticipated just how big Twitter would be when they first launched it, Stone replied, "Yeah, we knew Barack Obama was going to use it." Williams followed with, "I knew I was going to be on Oprah in two years." The pair might have been joking, but Twitter's success is no laughing matter.

After Google acquired Blogger, Williams stayed with the company for some time. He even sent a note to Stone, a former competitor, asking him to join him at Google. "It was a chance for me to get behind the screen again," says Stone.

After re-launching Blogger in 2004, Williams and Stone gave up their Google stock options, left the company, and started their own. With that, Odeo, a podcast company, was born. In late 2006, Williams, Stone, and several Odeo employees formed Obvious Corporation, while Odeo was acquired by Sonic Mountain.

One of Obvious' first projects was Twitter. Dorsey, who was also newly fascinated with instant messaging, approached the company to see if there was room for collaboration. The team began a "daylong brainstorming session," where Dorsey proposed the idea of using an SMS service to communicate with a small group of people.

"The working name was just ‘Status' for awhile," says Dorsey. "It actually didn't have a name. We were trying to name it, and mobile was a big aspect of the product early on...We liked the SMS aspect, and how you could update from anywhere and receive from anywhere."

Within just two weeks, Dorsey and Stone had created a prototype of Twitter.

Twitter was launched as its own company in April 2007, with Dorsey as CEO. Dorsey saw the young startup through two rounds of venture capital funding. In 2008, Williams would become CEO of Twitter, with Dorsey taking on the role of Chairman of the Board.

Although criticized for lack of a business model, by February 2009, Twitter had become the third most-used online social network, with over 55 million monthly visits. The trio had not designed Twitter to earn money, and for the moment, were happy spending their time and energy on improving uptime rather than turning a profit, namely by focusing on simplicity, constraint, and craftsmanship.

Today, the entrepreneurial trio continues to make waves in the online world. BusinessWeek called Dorsey one of technology's "Best and Brightest," while MIT's Technology Review ranked him in the TR35 - an outstanding innovator under the age of 35. Stone and Williams have received similar accolades.

Twitter, meanwhile, has grown from being just a social networking site to an important news distribution tool that gets listened to around the world. People are no longer using it just to update friends on their meals of the day. Twitter's popularity spiked, for instance, during the Iranian elections, with news of events being reported on the site before mainstream media found out. The U.S. Government even asked the company to postpone a 90-minute scheduled maintenance outage during the elections in order to ensure people could continue to use it to share updates.

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Article Tags: barack obama, blogger, brainstorming session, business model, chairman of the board, competitor, dorsey, google, instant messaging, laughing matter, odeo, oprah, prototype, role of chairman, small group, sms service, sonic mountain, stock options, twitter, venture capital funding



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