You would think that a meeting between the founders of the world’s most popular social networks would be a fun affair, with conversation revolving around funding, investments and who has the bigger userbase. In reality, it appears it is a much more dour experience, at least if Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is to be believed.
In November 2008, Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams jumped into a car and ventured over to Facebook to meet Mark Zuckerberg, in a meeting which we recognise as the time when Facebook tried to buy Twitter.
Talking in an interview with NPR’s Peter Sagal, Stone reveals the awkward meeting with Zuckerberg, thanks largely to the Facebook founder’s apparent lack of humour.
When asked whether Twitter’s founders were members of “incredibly luxurious club “you and Zuckerberg and the guys from Google all get together and you sit in these, like, solid gold armchairs and you all just stare at your smartphones and never talk to each other,” Stone admits it wasn’t far from the truth:
Stone: I had a meeting once with Zuckerberg, and every joke I said landed like a dead fish on the ground.
Sagal: Really?
Stone: So I said…
Sagal: He just stared at you like a Vulcan.
Stone: Yeah.
The Twitter boss also recalls the uncomfortable moment when they initially entered the meeting room:
Stone: Evan and I walked into the room. He walked in first, sat in a chair. There was a loveseat left. It was a small room. I walked in next, sat on one side of the loveseat. Ev walked in third and Ev said, oh, do you want me to close the door or leave it open? And Zuckerberg said, “yes.”
"So Ev said, 'Oh, well I guess I'll just close it this much.'" This probably loses some humour in the telling but it was greeted with much laughter by the audience, who presumably were fans of door-related humour.
How well the gang get along might be moot, as according to Stone Twitter is not courting a suitor. When they met Zuckerberg asked the Twitter founders for a price and Stone said $500m as it was a "ridiculous" figure.
Things seemed to get worse after that as Stone apparently does not like queuing for food, something that is apparently part of the culture at Facebook.
"The worst moment was he was like 'Hey, do you guys want to go have lunch at our cafeteria?' So we had to wait on this huge line for lunch. Evan (Williams) was like, 'Aren't you the boss? Can't you like kind of cut the line a little bit here?,'" he added. "And he's like 'That's not how we do things here.'"
After this Stone "bailed", because, he said, "We don't like to be queued up."
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