hack: a smart solution to a difficult problem (hackathon: a set period where people try to think of ideas to solve a problem)
podcast: a series of online audio recordings that one can subscribe to
passionate: having great interest
investor: a person who lends money in exchange for future profits
microblog: a platform in which people publish short updates regularly
prototype: an example of a future product in the form of a model
Twitter Was Born from a Hackathon
Did you know that the creators of Twitter once worked at Google? In 2005, Biz Stone and his co-worker Evan Williams left Google to start a podcasting business called Odeo. A lot ofinvestors were interested in their business. Unfortunately, Biz and Evan weren’t passionate about it. They knew they couldn’t work on a project that didn’t interest them, so theydecided to have a hackathon. For two weeks, the small group of Odeo employees worked in pair,s and tried to think of a new idea for a business. Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey came up with an idea for a microblogging service. They thought it would be fun to have an online service that let you see a short, simple status update of what your friends were doing. They built a prototype and presented it to the Odeo team. The team wasn’t that excited, but after a while they decided that it was the best idea. They began to work together on building Twitter.
