(With all of the troubling news coming out of Twitter since Elon Musk took over, my thoughts go back to a simpler time when the company was still small and the occasional silly, serendipitous thing would happen. I first published a version of this piece on 7x7 in 2010, when Twitter was still a toddler.)
My friend Carrie (a pseudonym) works as a social media specialist. She doesn’t like to just sit around when there’s a problem that needs fixing. Thus when a bug blocked all of her (and many others’) Twitter followers one day, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
Using Google, she located the Twitter office on Folsom Street and set out for a visit, stopping by a local bakery along the way to buy several dozen cookies in the hope that they might help her gain entrée to one of the hottest companies on the planet.
When she showed up at the social networking site’s front door, it was locked, but by lucky coincidence, someone just leaving the office held the door open to let her in.
Once inside, she stood in the entryway wondering what to do next.
Then, in another stroke of good fortune, co-founder Biz Stone arrived in the office. He asked Carrie if she was there to speak to anyone in particular, and she blurted out "tech support."
He disappeared for a moment and then a young lady showed up to ask what was troubling her. Hearing the answer, she nodded and wrote down Carrie’s Twitter handle on the box of cookies and went back inside for a few minutes.
When she returned, she smiled and said, "We fixed your account. Everything should be okay now," but then she added: "Don't tell anyone about this. We can't have everyone showing up with boxes of cookies!"
Of course, San Francisco is home for many of those who have shaped web 2.0 but most of these pioneers live and work among us in relative anonymity, and their companies – although world famous – don’t tend to have flashy signs or dramatic architecture to advertise their presence.
So it still comes as a surprise to many San Franciscans that the headquarters offices for Twitter, Wikipedia, and Wired, among many others, are all down in SOMA, in unpretentious buildings they’ve walked past hundreds of times without ever realizing what’s going on inside.
Twitter, for example, by my count has now reached at least 334 employees. At least a few dozen of them like chocolate chip cookies.
LINKS:
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