<p>There is no founding genius in this story, for Twitter's invention was not, in Bilton's account, the kind of great leap forward one associates with the light bulb or the iPhone. In 2006, the four founders were working for a dying start-up named Odeo when they launched Twitter as a side project and something of a Hail Mary pass. Based on a brainstorming session, they decided to build a mobile-phone version of the "status updates" popularized by AOL. Twitter's subsequent growth into a global publicity machine seems to have happened almost by accident, as users found purposes the founders never envisioned, muddying the question of who invented Twitter as we know it.</p><p>If there was a visionary moment, it might have been coming up with the name, chosen by Glass, who was fired early on. Thinking about brain impulses led Glass to look up "twitch" in the dictionary; he kept going until he found "twitter," described as "the light chirping sound made by certain birds," which came with the verb form "to tweet." Nor is Twitter's story one of elegant execution; at least as Bilton tells it, the company lurched from one operational fiasco to another, though one does suspect that management must have been doing more things right than the book lets on.</p><p>If there is little sign of genius or invention in Bilton's tale, there is even less of virtue. Schoolchildren were taught to revere Bell and Edison, but it is hard to imagine anyone wanting to emulate the Twitter founders, with the exception of the even-keeled Stone. As Bilton sees him, Glass is an erratic moper given to panicked screaming at work, drunken media leaks and hijacking of engineering time. Williams gets some credit for his free-speech principles and for hiring general counsel Alex Macgillivray, who resisted government intrusions and safeguarded Twitter's role as a tool for dissidents. Yet Williams is also depicted as a slow and indecisive leader, who spends months debating whether to buy the Tweetdeck platform, costing the firm millions. He cannot appreciate his ineffectiveness and has no awareness of the plot to oust him.</p><p>But it is Dorsey who is cast as the book's villain, a shameless schemer and desperate narcissist whose fame, Bilton suggests, is premised on deceptions. As Twitter's first chief executive, he is incompetent and inept "like the gardener who became the president," committing such basic operational errors as failing to ensure that the site had a backup. Given three months to prove himself, Dorsey, instead of fixing constantly crashing servers, decides to invest in a fancy 2008 election Web site.</p><p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-hatching-twitter-by-nick-bilton/2013/12/19/50bd594a-5609-11e3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story.html">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.wired.com/business/2013/12/twitter-book-to-television/">Twitter&#039;s Origin Story Will Soon Be a TV Series</a> (Wired)</p><p><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/casting-twitter-nick-biltons-hatching-twitter-lionsgate-tv/story?id=21269060">Casting Twitter: Who Should Play Twitter&#039;s Early Team in Future TV Series</a> (ABC News)</p><p><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/lionsgate-tv-developing-hatching-twitter-666617">Lionsgate TV Developing Twitter Origin Story</a> (Hollywood Reporter)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dcXhhUODqtB1EXM8ldPMiJJMNmvdM&ned=us">106 additional articles.</a></p>