Here's a little bit of history about startups that may not be well known outside of technology companies. The first versions of popular Android apps like Twitter were built by Google itself. The revelation came via a new podcast with Sara Beykpour, former senior director of product management at Twitter and current co-founder of AI news startup Particle.
In a podcast hosted by Lightspeed partner Michael Mignano, Beykpour reflects on his role in Twitter's history. She explains how she started working at Twitter in 2009. At that time, the company had only about 75 employees. Initially she worked as a tools engineer. Later, Beykpour began working on mobile with her Twitter, at a time when third-party apps were growing in popularity on other platforms such as BlackBerry and iOS. One of them, Loren Brichter's Tweetie, was acquired by Twitter and formed the basis of its first official iOS app.
As for Twitter's Android app, Beikpour said it was provided by Google.
The Twitter for Android client is “a demo app that Google created and provided to us,” she said on the podcast. “They did it with all the social apps that were popular at the time. Foursquare… Twitter… In the early days, they all looked the same because Google created them all.”
Mignano interjected. “Wait, so stand back. Explain this to me. So Google wanted businesses to adopt Android, so they had them develop apps?”
“Yes, that's right,” Beykpur replied.
Twitter then adopted and continued development of the Android app developed by Google. Beykpour said he was his second Android engineer at the company.
In fact, Google detailed its work on an Android Twitter client in a 2010 blog post, but much of the press coverage at the time did not acknowledge the app was Google's work, and it was It was forgotten as part of history. In Google's post, the company explains how it implemented early Android best practices within its Twitter app. Beykpour told TechCrunch that the post's author, Virgil Dobjanschi, is the primary software engineer.
“If I had a question, I should have asked him,” she recalls.
Beykpour also shared other stories from the early days of Twitter. For example, she worked on her Twitter video app Vine (after she returned to Twitter from her stint at Secret), and before Instagram released a video product, she launched her Vine on Android. I was under pressure to release it. She met that deadline by launching Vine about two weeks before Instagram Video, she said.
The latter had a “significant” impact on Vine's numbers, and in Beykpour's opinion, it led to the popular app's demise.
Even though it took years to finally shut down Vine, “that day was the day I wrote it,” she said.
On Twitter, Beykpour led the shutdown of the Vine product — an app that remains so popular that even Twitter/X's new owner Elon Musk has teased bringing it back. But Beykpour believes Twitter made the right decision with Vine, noting that the app hasn't grown and is expensive to operate. She acknowledges that others may see things differently, and she argues that perhaps Vine lacked resources or did not have the support of a mentor. But ultimately, the shutdown was due to Vine's impact on Twitter's revenue.
Beykpour also shared some interesting anecdotes about his work with Periscope. She joined the startup shortly after it was acquired by Twitter after leaving Secret. She remembers having to officially rejoin Twitter under her pseudonym to keep her acquisition a secret for a while.
She also spoke on Twitter about the difficulty of securing resources to develop products and features for power users such as journalists.
“Twitter has had a really hard time defining its users,” she said. Because she was “using a lot of her traditional OKRs and metrics.” But the reality is that only a small percentage of people tweet, and that those few people who tweet are responsible for the content that everyone actually wants to see. Beykpour says it was difficult. Measure.
Now at Particle, her experience building Twitter is influencing the strategy for the AI news app. The goal of the AI news app is to connect people with the news they care about what's happening around them.
“Particle is reimagining the way we receive our daily news,” Beykpour says on the podcast. This app aims to give you a multi-perspective view of the news while also providing access to quality journalism. The startup is looking to find other ways to monetize its reports beyond advertising, subscriptions, or micropayments. However, how Particle does this is still under discussion. The company is currently in discussions with potential publishing partners about how to compensate them for their work.