Author: fat ratio ter garage’s meow
Jack Dorsey is the founder of social media Twitter and one of the very few people in the Internet giant who publicly supports Bitcoin. His various behaviors also make it a few Internet leaders accepted by the currency circle (please see the current status of Xiaoza classmates).
Also under the tide of the Internet, Jack ’s other company, Square, which was compared to Alipay by many humans, was born in 2009 and developed into 24 million active users in 10 years and became a bitcoin in Bitcoin. Businesses have impacted the rising stars of cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase and Gemini.
However, let us forget everything first and return to 2009.
This year, after Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper, the Bitcoin genesis block was born.
This year, Jack Dorsey established the payment company Square (then called Squirrel).
What if …
How to simplify things to their essence.
One day in March 2009, designer Robert Anderson received an email from Jack (Jack Dorsey) and agreed to have lunch at Blue Bottle in Mint Square, San Francisco. Jack showed Anderson the exciting payment product he had in his mouth, even though Robert just wanted to know whether “it” should be called Seashell, Seanote or what?
If you have been in contact with (or you are) an idealist, you will be familiar with the mantra “what if …” that they often hang on their lips, which is also most vividly displayed on Jack.
“What if we can let people transfer money to each other by email?” Jack suddenly stopped, heralding the climax of this self-talking speech.
Anderson is a bit incomprehensible, why is it email? This increasingly obsolete media form; and why is it “cash”? This is synonymous with “continuous devaluation” in people’s eyes.
Although full of doubts, Anderson was still impressed by Jack’s infectious live demo, and Fartty went home holding the computer to start. Before leaving, Jack said we should call it Squirrel first.
“It’s pretty fashionable, probably because animal mascots are so popular in the technology world.” Anderson thought.
Squirrel and acorn
Squirrel’s goal is not necessarily to replace the tools people use every day, but to make them more useful.
Jack
A few days before meeting with Anderson, Jack was on vacation by the sea and kept thinking about the name of the payment product. Is there a sexier name than seashell, the most primitive exchange coin used by humans 5000 years ago? This is already the 147th shell that Jack picked up and threw away today, and he seemed a little impatient.
At this time, a ?️ slipped away from his feet, running around on the rough sand, collecting acorns everywhere.
“If people transfer money to each other, it’s as simple as squirrels collecting acorns.” See, such a far-fetched analogy turned out to be no violation at this moment!
“Maybe we should design an acorn-shaped credit card reader next.” Jack was a little excited for his whimsy.
Anderson
“We want to develop immersive products on the basis of e-mail. Users do n’t need to download any applications, even user names and passwords. They only need to copy (cc) @Squirrel when transferring money Imagine using cash in real life. Who wants to enter a password when transferring money to a friend? “
Although he convinced himself, Anderson and his team were still unable to explain their ideas.
But the truth seems reasonable. After all, everyone has a smartphone, a debit card, and at least one email. You don’t need to be taught how to use a new app, you can use what you have and what you are familiar with, and we will be responsible for connecting them.
MOMA
The best design is no design
After struggling for a few days, Anderson walked into Jack’s office and took out the first sketch of the UI design of the website. At this time, Jack was playing with the acorns he grabbed from the squirrel on the beach.
“Don’t work anymore. I happen to have a MOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) ticket. I don’t have time to go today. Go around.” Jack glanced at the sketch and looked up to Anderson.
A polite and friendly way to deny designer work is to send them a ticket to the museum to see the exhibition.
Mark Tansey’s “The Occupation”-1984
Anderson put down the job at hand and walked a few blocks, during which he kept thinking about the problem of his own design. To tell the truth, if he had n’t been there many times, he did n’t know how he got to the museum.
He walked from room to room and stumbled upon Mark Tansey’s surreal oil painting “The Occupation”, which depicts the scene of soldiers on city streets. The detail of this painting is vivid and rich, but the tone is single and completely covered by red. Anderson stopped in front of this picture for a long time, and then rushed back to the office, taking some pictures on the street with his iPhone on the road. As soon as he got back to the computer, he installed color filters on the lens, tinkered for a few minutes, and showed it to Jack. “I’m pretty good,” Jack said. “I love it.”
Square official website designed by Anderson
In Jack ’s mind, Squirrel is not used to buy things from merchants, nor is it like PayPal that requires additional steps to transfer the money received to the bank, not to mention that Venmo also adds a social function to encourage users to send when paying Circle of friends: Hey, I just successfully transferred an account.
It is most suitable for person-to-person cash transfers.
2012.9.12 Square sketch in Jack’s apartment
email graph? Or a social graph?
What is the difference between email graphs and social graphs?
No need to add friends.
One comment said: As the Internet has matured to this age of profit-oriented technology, it is difficult to imagine the rise of any social media that can provide the same value as email, and it is everywhere. Every device, every network, every system, everybody has it. Anything can be constructed to accept e-mail, and everyone can be reflected online through a unique e-mail identity.
If a media is intended to expand human knowledge and possibilities, how good can you not get it freely?
“E-mail would be a good choice,” Jack hinted at himself.
Jack Dorsey’s Twitter homepage
But I don’t know when since, Jack found a better choice.
writing background
The above stories are based on historical interviews with Jack Dorsey by TechCrunch and Robert Anderson’s memories of the time.
Two days ago, I saw Twitter and creative director Robert Anderson of the Square company founded by Dorsey tweeted, announcing his career in Cashapp (a payment app owned by Square), and reviewing his knowledge of Dorsey and the original Square logo. Design concept story.
Anderson mentioned in the review of the Twitter stream that he is starting to build a design company, and temporarily named it 1.0.
Frankly speaking, I’m not very familiar with Jack Dorsey’s experience, but I have seen several of his Twitter and know from some fragmented articles that he is a staunch supporter of Bitcoin. But this is exactly what I have always wondered, because this is really counter-intuitive in the world of the Internet. Who would want to arbitrarily support things that will kill you?
Another explanation is that this may be the appearance of the ideal product in his earliest mind.
So I think maybe his thoughts, attitudes, and even the influence on those around him may reflect something. Twitter and Square may prove to be “the right product” at some point in history, but Jack as the creator does not seem to stop, still looking for the ideal product, economy or world in his heart. Of course, it’s probably my imagination 🙂
Besides Anderson, as the creative director of Square, if you open Twitter of Cash App, you will never think that this is a payment company.
I thought I was looking at creative design and it was all over the screen.
“We discussed how many techniques inspired childlike miracles, so I started sketching wooden blocks. It sounds crazy, but this is the origin of the logo.” Anderson wrote in a farewell memory.
So to summarize, I do n’t know why I wrote this article. Maybe I just want to talk about Bitcoin.
