Was it about ego, or was it about others?
2014-01-12
整本书的情节之紧凑让人欲罢不能，这对于一本non-fiction来说实在不容易。不过最让我感慨的不是Twitter壮大过程中的爱恨情仇，而是两位创始人Ev和Jack对于Twitter存在价值的不同看法。Jack信奉推友的表达应当以自我为中心，在这个产品问世的初期，“此时你在做什么”是推友创作140字短文的指导。而Ev则认为推友的表达应该更关注身边的人和事，而非自己。在他完成政变，从Jack手中夺走CEO位置之后，Twitter网站上的引语“what are you doing？”被更换成了“what’s happening？”而当Ev被流放，Jack重新夺权之后，网站又一次改版，这次引语变成了中性的“Compose new tweet”，当然，这也是因为现如今人们都明白了Twitter的玩法，不需要创始人们再作任何引导。
六、七年前，博客是大家各抒己见的平台，碎碎念型和知识共享型的博客齐头并进，MSN Space的推出将这把火烧得更旺。但如今，很少还有人在坚持碎碎念型的博客创作了，中文博客界仍活跃着的博主多是关注“what’s happening”而非“what are you doing”。从这点来看，Ev是有远见的，一个纯粹树洞一般的网站，其对新用户的吸引依靠的纯粹是网络效应——注册是因为朋友们都在用。但当热潮过去，当下一个Web2.0新宠出现时，仅仅注重社交性的用户便会被带走。相反，如果受众是因为该网站上的信息而产生粘性，那么在网站本身的运作方式还没有被完全取代前，它还能维持一定的访问量。
说到这里，不能不提微博的所谓没落和微信的崛起。关于微博与微信之争，一个朋友说得好，“就凭朋友圈这么点信息量和闭塞的性质，是不可能和微博信息资源的流动自由相比的。只要有那么一点关心窗外事的sense，就不可能以微信来代替微薄。”
就我自己而言，朋友圈多是发“what am I doing”的内容，而微博则是“what’s happening”。微信的厉害之处在于，朋友圈（原创）feeds被朋友们读到的可能性极高，所以对于社交而言是完美的，而微博的feeds会迅速被新信息盖过，已经不太适合作朋友间的互动。不过作为用户来讲，在微博上偶尔刷刷屏，发点于大多数followers都没有共鸣的东西也不会被诟病太多，所以微博的使用宽容度比较高。
其实看这本书的时候还想到了饭否和Path，日记本（树洞）的需求始终存在，但恐怕这不是Ev感兴趣的点，他现在的Medium关注的依然是有高质信息的分享。
不知道作者的立场到底有多客观，在他的笔下，Jack Dorsey算是被黑得体无完肤了，Ev的形象有褒有贬有血有肉，Noah最凄凉（去看了他的推特bio，简单一句话“I started this.”，尽在不言中），Biz则成为形象最高大的一位。看完书后的第一件事就是去Twitter上关注这些人。
摘抄若干：
Jack had always seen Twitter as a status updater, a way to say where he was and what he was doing. A place to display yourself, your ego. Ev, who was shy and had been shaped by his days building Blogger, saw it as a way to share where other people were and what other people were doing.
Was it about ego, or was it about others? In reality, it was about both. One never would have worked without the other. A simple status updater in 14-0character posts was too ephemeral and egotistical to be sustainable. A news updater in 140-character spurts was just a glorified newswire. Though they didn’t realise it, the two together were what made Twitter different.
Mark started talking, pausing slightly as he spoke from a script in his head. Every word was calculated, every sentence plotted, every comma mapped out; he was like an army general meeting on the battlefield to discuss merging armies.
Ev saw Blogger, Odeo and now Twitter as serving a much more important purpose than just becoming big businesses. These start-ups he had helped build were all designed to give people across the planet an equal voice, to help those without power stand up to those who abused power.
At that point Ev had received more offers to buy Twitter than he could count. Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, a former vice president, celebrities, and rappers had all made overtures toward Twitter, and each time Ev had said no. But it wasn’t the money that made him turn down Facebook’s proposal. It was that Twitter and Facebook were two completely different companies, with different goals and, as Ev saw it, vastly different morals. Twitter’s ideals had been cemented when Ev started Blogger almost a decade earlier, forming his resolute belief that blogging, and now Twitter, should offer people a microphone that allowed them to say whatever came to mind. It was the same reason Ev had hired Amac, who had become a staunch proponent of free and open speech on the Internet while at Google. The same reason Goldman worked there. The same reason Biz was so important to Twitter’s moral fabric. They all believed that these technologies, first and foremost, should be a mouthpiece for everyday people.
Facebook had a completely different approach to free speech and tracking, often infringing people’s privacy and sometimes removing content that violated its strict terms of service. Facebook also demanded people use their real names and dates of birth on the site. Twitter, on the other hand, was as open as a public swimming pool. That was the way Ev liked it. Push-button publishing for the people, now in 140 characters.
Ev had finally changed the question in the Twitter box, from Jack’s “What are you doing?” (which he’d always seen as a question about ego) to “What’s happening?” which he believed gave Twitter more of a bloglike feel. It was a win by Ev in the debates between the two founders in the early days, with Jack’s saying that Twitter was about your status, Ev’s touting it as being about status of the events taking place around you.
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