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Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind
Author:
Stone, Biz
Biographee:
Stone, Biz
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Class:
Biography
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: HM743.T9
Print Run: 75000
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ISBN-13: 9781455528714
LCCN: 2013047280
Imprint: Grand Central Publishing
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Pub Date: 04/01/2014
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $26.00
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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xvi, 224 pages ; 22 cm
H 8.625",
W 6",
D 1",
0.81 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
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Bibliographies:
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Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction, 16th ed.
Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction, 17th ed.
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Awards:
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Starred Reviews:
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TIPS Subjects:
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Telecommunications
Business
Psychology/Self-Help
Biography, Individual
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BISAC Subjects: |
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Business
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
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LC Subjects:
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BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Business
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Entrepreneurship
Businesspeople, United States, Biography
COMPUTERS / Web / Social Networking
Entrepreneurship, United States, Anecdotes
Internet industry, United States
Online social networks, United States
SELF-HELP / Creativity
Stone, Biz
Success in business
Twitter
Twitter (Firm), History
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SEARS Subjects: |
Businesspeople, United States
Entrepreneurship, United States, Anecdotes
Internet industry, United States
Social networking, United States
Stone, Biz
Success
Twitter
Twitter (Firm)
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Publisher Annotations | 12/20/2013 |
| Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, discusses the power of creativity and how to harness it, through stories from his remarkable life and career. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 04/01/2014 |
| Biz Stone is cocky. Charming. A self-described genius. In Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind, he offers readers a glimpse of how he got that way. If his name doesn't ring a bell, consider that the "little bird" he's referencing is the Twitter logo--he's the co-founder of the site, and the reason we now think in 140-character phrases. The stories here are funny and insightful. In school, Biz couldn't hold down a job and keep up with homework, so he established a "no homework" policy--and convinced his teachers to go along with it! When Twitter's success earned him an appearance on "The Colbert Report," a gift card in the show's swag bag led to amazing things. Each of these yarns has a point for would-be entrepreneurs, encouraging creativity, collaboration and making your own opportunities rather than waiting for them to appear. Stone is generous in his assessments of others and almost never snarky, so his story of meeting with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg stands out. Neither Stone nor Twitter co-founder Evan Williams wanted to be acquired by Facebook, so they tossed out an obscenely high value for their company, then bailed when they found themselves stranded in an unmoving cafeteria line. (They were later offered the amount they'd requested, but still turned it down.) Stone is social to his core, so Zuckerberg's notoriously flat affect--he's described here as pointing to some people and saying, "These are some people working"--was clearly not a love connection in the making. If you have big ideas, or a sense that you could have big ideas if only (fill in the blank), Things a Little Bird Told Me can help you fill in that blank and bring your personal genius to the masses. It's a wise and generous book, and also a lot of fun. Heather Seggel. 240pg. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
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| Booklist | 04/01/2014 |
| Twitter cofounder Stone dropped out of college to design book jackets, just one of the quirky turns of fate that set him on a nonlinear path to social-media entrepreneurship. He recounts having enough chutzpah to call himself a genius when he suffered lack of confidence and direction, enough audacity to ask for a job at Google on the strength of his experience as a blogger when he lacked a college degree, never mind a PhD in computer science. He and Evan Williams, who joined Google after selling Blogger, later left the relative safety of Google to start several ventures, most of which failed, before developing Twitter. While chronicling his setbacks and successes, Stone offers solid advice and inspiration: opportunity can be manufactured, creativity is a renewable resource, embrace constraints, failures can be assets, asking questions is free, empathy is essential to success. Readers will enjoy the tales of the ups and downs of Silicon Valley among major players, from Google to Apple to Facebook, as well as the insightful advice that can be applied to any career or enterprise. Bush, Vanessa. 240p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 04/01/2014 |
| The co-founder of Twitter shares wisdom on the business of success. Tech pioneer Stone (Who Let the Blogs Out?: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs, 2004, etc.) has the best intentions when he counsels readers to develop and challenge the ideas we prize most. By "merging your abilities with your ambitions," he writes, the keys to becoming successful entrepreneurs are within reach. His book, an effective hybrid of memoir and motivational guidebook, charts Stone's own triumph from humble beginnings spent tirelessly cultivating Xanga, his first startup web company, which struggled but never did anything but plunge him and his girlfriend deep into debt. It did, however, familiarize him with fellow tech wunderkind Evan Williams. That association would place him on Google's doorstep in 2003, vying for a position developing Williams' program Blogger. Dipping into podcasting and a few smaller startup ideas kept Stone focused once he'd separated from Google, but the brainstorming (what he dubs "the two-week hackathon"), which became the impetus for Twitter, is both exciting, ingenious and exciting to read about. Specifics on this Silicon Valley success story were soon drafted, such as the 140-character limit ("constraint inspires creativity"), how to troubleshoot its numerous platform failures, and how to further Twitter's public appeal and functionality ("the mechanics of flocking"). Twitter's explosion onto the tech map would bring about a proposal from Facebook honcho Mark Zuckerberg, described in deliciously vicarious detail by Stone, who's obviously not a fan. More personal insights on his veganism and altruism follows, all written with a chatty, amiable sensibility that makes Stone emerge as one of the more benign web-app execs to burst from the California tech gold mine. Perceptive, motivational advice for geeks and nongeeks alike, all interwoven with the true story of how Twitter found its flock. 240pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 10/21/2013 |
| Billed as a memoir, this book is as much a guide to thinking differently, staying creative, and making one's opportunities-good advice as reflected through the author's life. And since Stone cofounded Twitter, you can bet folks will want to hear what he has to say. More good news: he's an experienced writer, having turned out books and articles on the new technology in its early days. With a 75,000-copy first printing. 336p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 02/24/2014 |
| The way to succeed in business is to gamble your future, follow your bliss, and save the world, according to this effusive but callow memoir-cum-motivational manifesto by the co-founder of Twitter. Stone narrates a classic Silicon Valley romance: shoe-string startup with a crazy yet banal idea; explosive network growth; avalanche of wealth that leaves its recipient modest, , and abrim with grandiose theories about "human flocking." Unfortunately, his picture of Twitter--aka "a triumph of humanity"--is sketchy and idealized. We learn little about how the company makes money when it's not undermining tyrannies and giving to charity, and Stone's own role is vague: he brainstorms Twitter's bird logo and troubleshoots with irate customers, but his main job description seems to be "embodying and communicating the spirit of the thing" and "buil a moral compass and a righteous soul into the company." He distills his life experiences into self-help sermonettes that talk loudly but tread lightly. ("e willing to die to achieve your goals. Figuratively, of course.") Stone often writes with considerable self-deprecating charm--his portrait of Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg as a humorless noodge is priceless--but when he dilates on his philosophy of thrill-seeking entrepreneurship, one longs for a 140-character limit. (Apr.). 240p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
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