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Overview
When Biz Stone and Evan Williams created Twitter, they had no idea it would be so popular. They didn’t even think it would be a success. People couldn’t imagine that one day all members of Congress or the President of the United States would have their own Twitter account. No one could’ve imagined that Twitter was going to become an important tool in Egypt’s revolution. In Things a Little Bird Told Me, co-founder Biz Stone tells many entertaining stories about creating Twitter and shares some insights he learned during its development.
In this article, you’ll learn how to unlock your creativity by limiting yourself and using the worst-case scenario approach. You’ll also learn how hashtags came about, as well as Twitter’s role in helping college students. The authors will share their experiences with Mark Zuckerberg and why they turned down his offer of $500 million for Twitter.
Big Idea #1: Limitations inspire creativity by forcing you to look for innovative solutions.
Think back to when you were in school and had to write a paper. You probably didn’t know where to start, so you stared at the blank page for hours until you finally began writing.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, limitations can often inspire creativity. For example, teachers would give students a direction to follow in their work like “draw a rainbow” or “write a short story.”
When we are given limitations, it forces us to be creative. This is because when there are restrictions on a task that we’re trying to accomplish, we abandon our usual approach and have to come up with a new way of doing things.
Everyone has constraints when it comes to making decisions. For example, the director of Jaws envisioned using an animatronic shark for a scene in his movie. However, he was not able to do so due to financial reasons. This forced him to find another way around the problem and come up with a creative solution.
His solution was to shoot the shark’s perspective.
The result? Jaws was more terrifying than it would’ve been had Spielberg used an animatronic shark, and the film became a megahit. Furthermore, his POV technique subsequently became very popular in horror films.
Constraints can be a powerful force for creativity. Twitter, for example, limits users to 140 characters per tweet. It’s also considered a valuable skill to craft tweets that are exactly 140 characters long – known in the Twitter community as a “twoosh” – which helps spark creativity.
Big Idea #2: Even before you have an idea, believe in yourself and make your own opportunities.
In 2008, Mark Zuckerberg offered to buy Twitter for $500 million. Evan Williams and Biz Stone said no because they thought their idea was worth more. Twitter’s value skyrocketed after that offer and is now worth about $15 billion.
What can we learn from this story? If you believe in yourself and your product, others will notice how confident you are. This confidence will seduce them into believing in the product too. But how can you effectively signal to others that you’re self-confident? One way is by branding yourself as a genius or exaggerating about deals. For example, Biz Stone had business cards with “Genius” printed on them before Twitter was created. He also exaggerated about deals he’d made when trying to get a job at Google.
Sometimes, you might have difficulty getting noticed by people. Therefore, you must be creative and get their attention.
For example, if you’re in a competitive field and your skills aren’t unique, you have to find ways to stand out.
For example, if you’re not well-known in a school that is already filled with good players, what can you do to get noticed? You could encourage the school to offer a new sport so that it’ll be easier for you to stand out because there will be less competition.
