Future Tense

The Best Part of Twitter’s IPO Filing Involves Mario Batali, Gavin Rossdale, and Some Basil

Gavin Rossdale makes the dreamiest tomato sauce.
Gavin Rossdale makes the dreamiest tomato sauce.

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

With Twitter going public, some are worried that the microblogging platform will lose its inherent weirdness. But if the company’s S-1 financial disclosure statement is any indication, that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

These filings tend to be dry exercises in accounting. Twitter’s is peppered with examples of tweets that Twitter believes demonstrate its potential as an advertising platform and a global public square. Among them are the famous Obama victory tweet and that wildly overrated Oreo tweet. But the most amusing—and the most illustrative of what makes Twitter weird—comes on page 97. That’s where the company touts the opportunity it provides for people around the world to interact directly with celebrities and public figures. From the filing:

For example, when a Twitter user sought cooking advice from chef Mario Batali (@Mariobatali), the user received a response from @Mariobatali and musician Gavin Rossdale (@GavinRossdale) joined the conversation and provided some advice of his own.

Wait, did that really happen? It did.

I’ve asked the aspiring cook how the tomato sauce turned out and will of course update if she replies.

Hat tip: Bobby Finger