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Staff post about: Jack Dorsey Biz Stone and Evan Williams Become an Author

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"Watching Ev really sink his teeth into the role of CEO, take it very seriously," says Stone. "He very genuinely wants to innovate - not just from a product or technology standpoint, but from a company standpoint. For me, I've learned about what it means to focus on a culture, to build social responsibility and the idea of a company as a super-organism." Stone, Williams, and Dorsey are doing just that - trying to build Twitter into more than just a microblogging service, but into a super-organism, into a company that cultivates a healthy work environment and culture as much as it does technological innovation.

"We focus a lot on culture specifically...we don't want to end up like the child actor who found success early and grew up all weird and freaky," says Stone. "We want to remain ok; just because we found success early and in many ways got lucky doesn't mean we're all a bunch of geniuses. It means what it means."

"There's a very healthy acknowledgement that we have to stay focused on what we're working on and not to get too caught up in the spotlight. There's a knowledge that these things go up and they come down again. No matter what, we'll just keep working on trying to make Twitter better," he says. "Some of the cultural things we've got here that we're fortunate to have are just a general level-headed, unassuming, humble, humorous, funny atmosphere. We like to have fun and stay humble."

And just how exactly do they have fun? One way is through their regular Friday afternoon Tea Time. "It's something we kind of stole from Google," explains Stone. "They have something called TGIF - that's when the co-founders and the CEO stand up on stage, greet new hires, talk about what happened that week and take Q&A."

"We took that and flipped it around, so that anyone in the company can talk about what they did that week. It takes about an hour and half to go through it all, but it's a very good culture-building exercise because everyone gets to learn what everyone else is doing - and we make fun of each other."

The Twitter office itself was even designed to cultivate an open and fun work environment. There are brick walls, high ceilings, and no cubicles. Employees work side by side at their stations on modern furniture. Breakfast is catered with everything from soy yogurt to fresh strawberries. Then comes lunch - also catered for employees - including soups, salads and sandwiches.

Thursday at Twitter headquarters is a particularly special day, where a guest speaker - anyone from a businessman to a musician - joins them for lunch. Employees are then encouraged to tweet about the lunch as it happens.

Based on their own personal experiences from working at other companies, the Twitter co-founders decided to place a heavy emphasis on making sure that theirs was a company people want to go to work for every day.

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