Google led the way in creating innovative social apps for Android, including Twitter and others.
Anything can happen in the world of technology these days. The Meta Gadget Blogs always brings some new updates for you. This article gives you a little information about startup history, which you can never get comprehensively except in technology companies. Perhaps you all know that the first version of popular social apps (Android apps) like Twitter was created by Google itself. The revelation came via a podcast by Sarah Bekpour, Twitter’s former senior director of product management. Sara Bekpour is currently the co-founder of AI news startup Particle.
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Michael Mignano’s Podcast with Sarah Bekpour on Twitter Social Apps
Beykpour spoke for the first time about her role in Twitter’s history in a podcast hosted by Lightspeed partner Michael Mignano. In this podcast, she tells how she started working on Twitter in 2009. She worked as a Tool Engineer in her initial days. At that time there were only 75 people in the company. Later, Beykpour explains that she started using Twitter social apps on mobile when third-party apps like BlackBerry and iOS started gaining popularity.
As for Android’s social apps like Twitter, Bekpour said it came from Google.
Through this podcast, she said that Twitter was a demo app for the Android client. Google did this with almost all the popular social apps of that time. For example Foursquare, Twitter etc. In the initial days, all these apps looked almost the same. This was because Google wrote all of these.
In this podcast, Mignano interrupted and said, “Wait, come back. Explain this openly. Google did this because Google wanted all companies to adopt Android, so it created all these apps?”
Beykpour replied, “Yes.”
After this, Twitter adopted the Android apps made by Google and started developing them continuously. She said that at that time Beykpour was the second Android engineer in the company.
In fact, in 2010, Google described work on an Android Twitter client in a blog post, but most of the press did not cover the topic or give Google credit for the job. With changing times it became a forgotten part. In that post from Google, the company explains how they implemented Android practices within apps like Twitter. Bekpour tells popular websites like TechCrunch that the author of this post was Virgil Dobzhanshi, the company’s chief software engineer.
Through this podcast, Beykpour also shared some other stories from the early days of Twitter. She said that she has also worked on Twitter’s video app Vine. She explained in the podcast that there was pressure to launch Vine about two weeks before the Instagram video, and they accomplished it on that deadline.
Beykpour explains how the latter significantly affected the number of Vine users and why this led to the demise of the popular app. However, it took many years to shut down the app. Bekpour led the call to shut down Vine’s production on Twitter. This app is so liked that Twitter/X owner Elon Musk still keeps teasing to bring it back. But according to Beykpour, the decision Twitter took with Vine was the right one. This is because running this app was expensive and this app was not growing. The shutdown of Vine had a huge impact on Twitter’s bottom line.
Beykpour shared another interesting anecdote from working at Periscope. She says she joined the startup after it was acquired by Twitter and left Secret. She recalls that she had to officially rejoin Twitter under a pseudonym to keep the eclipse a secret for a while. This was indeed a very interesting story. On Twitter, she talked about the difficulties in getting resources and developing facilities.
According to Beykpour, Twitter struggled to define its users. Twitter uses a lot of traditional OKRs and metrics. It is a real fact that only a small number of people tweet and that subgroup is responsible for the content that everyone wants to see. She says it was very difficult to measure.
In the podcast, Beykpour explains that her experience building Twitter at Particle is now informing the AI news app strategy. Its main goal is to connect them to the news going on that they care about.
Beykpour said on the podcast that Particle is a re-imaging of how you intake your daily news. The app aims to provide a multi-perspective view of news with high-quality journalism. The startup is looking for a new way to earn money through reporting beyond ads, subscriptions or micropayments. It will be interesting to see how the startup negotiates compensation for working with potential publishers.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Who is the CEO of the Twitter?
Elon Musk has taken complete control of Twitter, now known as ‘X’. As the new owner, he dismissed Parag Agarwal after making a high-profile transaction in 2022, keeping an eye on the then-current operations. Before this, the CEO of Twitter was Parag Aggarwal. Linda Yaccarino is the current CEO of Twitter appointed by Elon Musk in June 2023. Here is the list of Previous Twitter CEO’s:
Jack Dorsey: 2006 – 2008 and 2015 – 2021
Evan Williams: 2008 – 2010
Dick Costolo: 2010 – 2015
Parag Agrawal: 2021 – 2022
Elon Musk: 2022 – 2023
Linda Yaccarino: 2023 – Present
Who is the founder of Twitter?
Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass in July 2006. it was created in March of that year but Launched in July.
For how much did Elon Musk finalize the deal for the Twitter social app?
According to sources, Elon Musk had closed this deal for approximately $44 billion.
Considering marketing strategy, which social app is better, Instagram or Twitter?
Looking at the marketing strategy, if we talk about social apps, then Facebook comes first, then YouTube and later Instagram. However, Twitter is also a very good social app that sends messages to the target customer quickly through a special tool.
Conclusion
In conclusion, through this article, we want to say that through this podcast, Beykpour presented to us some aspects of social apps like Twitter which were hidden from us to date. In these changing times, we can see only what is shown to us, but there are some experiences and stories which we are not able to know. Having such an important personality like Beykpour in this podcast of Michael Mignano was an amazing experience and we got to know many things hidden from us to date.