It's weird to dismiss this as marketing is somehow not a valid reason to do something! The entire IPO process is heavily about marketing yourself - to bankers, to asset management companies, to other investors, to future employees, to analysts, etc. Twilio is an API company, do you know how boring that is to most people? Most people can barely grip the idea of what an API even is, never mind what it does or why on earth you'd want to invest in it. This is an excellent demonstration of what the product does - it's giving physical form and a real world demo to an API company, and that's incredibly meaningful! Not to mention they are all over the news media today - this is their day, and this provides a great TV shot and provides good info to viewers. When Square IPO'd, they brought the readers to show off to viewers. When you have an API company, you have to be a little more creative. It's just a really great idea, don't be so hard on them :)
