Twitter is 5 years old today!

But before I pop the cork on my bottle of sparkling cider to drink to my overtly extroverted current existence, I wanted to pour a little out for our friend who isn’t here- Odeo.

You see, Odeo was launched into a world of promise. Founded by some of the brightest minds in the nascent field of social media. To capitalize on a new form of social expression. With an all-star roster of investors. In a sizzling hot market Web 2.0-ified market. And it failed.

Now, we all know Twitter was born from that failure, but what would have happened had Odeo not failed? Would we be talking about the democratization of information or would we be poking people and throwing sheep on Facebook? Would we be discussing ambient intimacy or would we be blinging out our MySpace pages? Did we dodge an Odeo shaped bullet?

Every time I pass on an investment, every time one of our portfolio companies hears “no” from a key hire I have to wonder whether we each, collectively, dodged a bullet.  Some companies would have been worse off if they’d taken funding, some people would be better off working at other companies, and some ideas would have never happened if others had worked. 

So Happy Birthday Twitter and thank you Odeo. If you’d have succeeded, Twitter would never have been. I, for one, am glad we dodged that bullet.