On Tuesday evening more than 300 confidential Twitter documents and screenshots landed in our inbox. We said we were going to post a handful of them only, and we’ve spent much of the last 36 hours talking directly to Twitter about the right way to go about doing that. WeРІР‚в„ўll have more to say on that process in a couple of days.
The documents include employment agreements, calendars of the founders, new employee interview schedules, phone logs and bills, alarm settings, a financial forecast, a pitch for a Twitter TV show, confidentiality agreements with companies such as AOL, Dell, Ericsson, and Nokia, a list of employee dietary restrictions, credit card numbers, Paypal and Gmail screen shots, and much more.
These are the last two documents we are going to share: a subset of the detailed notes from a set of executive meetings that took place between February 12 and June 9, 2009. Much of the information in these notes is either personal in nature (new hires, etc.) or too sensitive to share. WhatРІР‚в„ўs interesting of the rest we are posting here with our commentary. These notes include never-before revealed discussions between Twitter and Google, Microsoft, and others, as well as details of product planning, company goals, employee retention, and new proposed terms of service and APIs. Even acquisition targets such as CoTweet and Twitpic are discussed (and sometimes dismissed). ItРІР‚в„ўs important to note that we have been given the green light by Twitter to post this information - They arenРІР‚в„ўt happy about it, but they are able to live with it, they say (more on why they did that in our later post).
One other caveat - as weРІР‚в„ўve said before, these documents are rough meeting notes, not polished documents meant for broad consumption. There are lots of typos and outdated information. But on the plus side, the rawness of it shows the dedication and deep commitment of this team to making Twitter into a world-class company.
Finally, there are some details about partner discussions, particularly around Google and Microsoft, that we are just not going to publish. Twitter has been in negotiations with both companies around a broad set of transactions for months. But we arenРІР‚в„ўt going to go into great detail about exactly what has been discussed, or TwitterРІР‚в„ўs strategies toward those negotiations. So while it looks like there is a lot of detail around those discussions below, the most sensitive stuff has been removed.
LetРІР‚в„ўs start with a key strategy meeting which took place on February 25, 2009. One of the audacious goals laid out in the notes of the strategy meeting is for Twitter to become the first Web service to reach one billion users. The notes are laid out in bullet points with each one reading like a Tweet: “If we had a billion users, that will be the pulse of the planet.” In the meeting itself, Stone tries to put his finger on what Twitter is by calling it more of a “nervous system” than an alert system.
A lot has happened since February. TwitterРІР‚в„ўs site has gone from an estimated 4 million visitors in the U.S to 20 million, and nearly double that worldwide. However, the notes provide a rare view into the strategic thinking of the company just before it entered its current phase of hypergrowth.
Dealing With Google: Much of the discussion at Twitter meetings throughout the past six months revolved around dealing with Google and Facebook. In a March 13, 2009 management meeting, for example, during a discussion of a search deal with Google, the fear is expressed that “Google would kick our ass at finding the good tweet.” But almost immediately afterwards, someone asks, “Can we do to google what google has done to others?”
In a May 7 management meeting, Twitter’s search syndication strategy with Google is discussed, as is the desire of “every tech company” to gain access to “Hosebird,” an API Twitter is working on to deliver its full stream of Tweets to search partners and others. The attitude towards Google is cautious: “Playing with fire here where we know that Google is building the competitive product.”
But by June 9, things seem to have progressed with Google. After an earlier two hour meeting with Google executives, the Twitter leadership had decided that an “agreement for some period of time makes sense - with our parameters.” But at the same time, they resolved to that Twitter’s own “search results page needs to be great - better than the landing pages on Google.”
