Scandal and Betrayal: The Story of How Twitter Started

hi welcome to another ColdFusion video Twitter today is how hundreds of millions of people communicate it's how the news today breaks eighty-three percent of world leaders are on Twitter in a way it's actually the most instant communication network on the planet it's augmented the internet and how information is disseminated but the story of how Twitter started is one filled with betrayal and controversy here's a Twitter account owned by a man named Noah gloves his bio reads I started this if I was to tell you that Noah the owner of this Twitter account with only 38 thousand followers helped start Twitter but was kicked out of the company before it got off the ground you may not believe me but that is true so why doesn't anyone know about Noah and why did he get kicked out well it's partly because of this man Evan Williams but also because of this man Jack Dorsey it was a coup within the company to rid Noah not only this but co-founder of Twitter Evan Williams may have cheated investors out of hundreds of millions by bluffing so let's explore how one of the most recognizable social media companies has such a controversial beginning most people think that the story of Twitter starts with Jack Dorsey or Evan Williams but its story actually begins with Noah and that's where we'll start you are watching ColdFusion TV our story starts in San Francisco in the early 2000s Noah glass had created a product where a user would dial a number and the service would turn your voice message into an mp3 message which would be hosted on the Internet remember these are the early days of the web where everything was relatively new and people were throwing around crazy business ideas Noah would turn this online voice mail idea into a company called OTO one of the early investors in OTO was a former Google employee friend and also neighbor of Noah Evan Williams Evan had recently sold his company called blogger to Google and he had a ton of cash the idea turned from hosting voice messages as mp3s to a podcasting platform the company moved into an office and started hiring more employees one of these employees was a quiet on-again off-again web designer and university dropout by the name of Jack Dorsey the 29 year old was shy after battling a speech impediment as a child he was living in a tiny San Francisco apartment and had recently been turned down for a job at a shoe store around this time before smart phones iPods were the hottest thing and everyone had one in 2005 Apple announced that iTunes would include a podcasting platform built into every one of those tens of millions of iPods in people's pockets the employees of odio began to realize that Apple had just crushed them without warning in addition to this they just didn't listen to podcasts as much as they thought they would Evan Williams who by now was the odio CEO knew that oh do as a podcasting platform was doomed he contemplated shutting down the company but Noah thought that it was best to see what the employees could come up with Evan agreed and in a last-ditch effort he told the company's employees to start coming up with ideas for a new direction for odio employees would break into groups and spend the whole day working on projects after a hard day's work the office crew would often see live music shows and drink late into the night usually talking about technology during this time Jack Dorsey and Noah glass really hit it off and soon they were inseparable back at work when looking at what the staff was working on to save OD oh no a glass gravitated towards Jack he thought of him as one of the best stars in the company Jack had an idea for a completely different product that revolved around status statuses or a popular idea in the 2000s Facebook featured them heavily and Foursquare was based totally around that not to mention the Bourbon app which would later become Instagram he is no explaining it further quote I got the impression jack was unhappy with what he was working on a lot of cleanup work on audio he started talking to me about this idea of status and how he was really interested in statuses I was trying to figure out what he found so compelling about it Noah goes on to describe a moment when he and Jack were talking in his car after a night of drinking it was about 2:00 a.m. and raining outside Jack said that he wanted to quit the tech world altogether and become a fashion designer Noah was taken aback and he pushed Jack to explain his status idea further quote there was a moment when I was sitting with Jack and I said oh I do see how this could really come together to make something really compelling it all fit together for me one day in February of 2006 Noah and Jack presented the idea to the rest of the company it was a system where you could send a text to the number four zero four zero four and the text message would be broadcasted to all your friends they would receive an SMS of what you wrote and you could add more friends via text message so what would they call this thing after dismissing the word twitch for a name they would call it Twitter Noah would take charge of the Twitter project while Jack did the coding the original Twitter was a social network anchored around text messaging it sounds weird today but back then the technology that was widely adopted wasn't capable in to have instant social media with you this kind of service was the closest thing interestingly they weren't the only ones a service called dodgeball was another SMS social media network with Twitter though instead of just text messages users could post Envy messages via the Twitter website after the February to the company Evan Williams were skeptical about Twitter's potential but regardless he put Noah in charge of the project twitter is a social texting service based in the contents of your mind it works with your cell phone and shortcode for Oh 404 and it then goes to H in every one of your many many actionable friends Noah was passionate about Jack's idea and understood it by March of 2006 odyo had a working twitter prototype in July TechCrunch covered Twitter for the first time their conclusion was as follows quote if this was a new startup I'd give it a thumbs up for innovation and good execution of a simple but viral idea but the fact that this comes from odio makes me wonder what is this company doing to make their core offering compelling how do their shareholders feel about side projects like Twitter when their primary product line is besides the excellent design a total snoozer the tech community couldn't see why oh do a podcasting platform would dabble in something so weird regardless later that year oh do employees became so obsessed with Twitter that they racked up monthly SMS bills totaling hundreds of dollars it seemed like Twitter was an interesting and fun toy for the employees but nothing more it would take an earthquake to change all of that in August a small earthquake shook San Francisco and word quickly spread through Twitter suddenly the whole company realized what the usefulness of the platform was News Twitter was a fresh form of instant years both on a macro and personal level it was an information network not a social network by fall of that year to to have thousands of users back at odio the company was splitting into two those who worked on Twitter and those who worked on the legacy audio stuff Evan Williams early investor in Noah's idea and now CEO of o dó was an interesting character he stated that quote all successful business people make enemies along the way according to Business Insider former audio investors and employees use the word calculating to describe him there are allegations that Evan Williams failed to properly compensate bloggers employees when he sold the company to Google in 2003 his blogger co-founder Meg hariom said quote I don't think he took care of the people who got him to where he was later in 2006 at a board meeting for Odie oh no a glass presented Twitter - Oh Dios directors they couldn't care less they didn't see what the point of it was then one day in September 2006 Evan wrote a letter to ODS investors in it he told them that the company was going nowhere and he felt bad about it Evan convinced the investors that they should cut their losses and sell all their stock back to him they agreed and he bought back Oda but this included Twitter five years later assets of the company that the original Odia investors sold for approximately five million were now worth at least 1,000 times more five billion the question is did Evan ever know that Twitter was going to be a hit his email hints at this in the letter to audios investors Williams wrote about Twitter quote by the way Twitter which he may have read about is one of the pieces of value I see in ODI but it's too early to tell what's there almost two months after launch twitter has less than 5,000 registered users I will continue to invest in Twitter but it's hard to say it justifies the venture investment Oda certainly holds especially since that investment was for a different market altogether on the one hand he may have just thought that Twitter was a waste of time and he felt bad about that but on the other hand did Evan Connelly investors surely when the OTO employees racked up hundreds of dollars in SMS bills he must have seen the potential Business Insider spoke to a few of these investors some are okay with it some are jaded others think that they were conned had Evan tricked them into thinking Twitter wasn't worth much when he knew that he was sitting on a goldmine it's impossible to know what he was thinking but one former employee who wished to remain anonymous said this quote Williams decided there was something interesting enough in Twitter that he wanted to buy all the assets and by everyone out what chance basically is I bought the assets of the company from the investors and basically we wanted to pursue a different path that then we were on with oh do the two personalities of Noah glass and Evan Williams started to clash Noah he had now designed some of the core features of Twitter wanted to stay at the helm very early on Noah wanted to split twitter off into a separate company from odio and become the CEO in fact he had already done the paperwork the thing was if Evan Williams wanted to take control of Twitter he could do so at any time Noah was nervous about Evan and confessed his fears to jack-jack sympathized and said that things would be okay one day Evan asked Noah to go with him for a walk and was here that Noah's worst fears were realized Evan told Noah that he was fired all was not as it seems though Jack Dorsey who no abundant with and thought of as a friend was actually the person who wanted Noah out Jack had recently met with Evan Williams and threatened to quit if Noah wasn't let go the reasons for why exactly has never been revealed unaware of what Jack had done behind his back Noah and Jack would meet at a bar later that night a defeated Noah would drink late into the night at one point Noah told Jack that he'd been fired Jack acted dumbfounded and blamed Evan as the night came to a close Noah hugged his friend and walked home Jack soon became CEO of Twitter and Evan went to the chairman position [Music] according to many employee and investor accounts Twitter would not have been created without no alas everyone was shocked at the decision Noah expresses how he felt quote I feel betrayed by my friends by my company by the people around me I trusted and I worked hard to create something with I was a little shell-shocked so I spent a lot of time by myself and working on things alone in any case Evan Williams remained at the helm of one of the premier online companies and Noah glasses name was largely erased from the history books it still wasn't obvious to everyone that Twitter would be a huge hit until the next year in 2007 Twitter completely dominated the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin Texas Twitter employs strategically placed to 60-inch Plasma screens in the conference hallways exclusively streaming Twitter messages attendees used Twitter to find out what was happening at the conference panelists and speakers would often mention the service which put it into the public eye during the event Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000 Twitter staff received the festival's web Award prize all the while Noah glass sat in the audience filming was never on stage from here Twitter began to pick up steam and became the platform to instantly know what was happening on the 15th of January 2009 a US Airways flight crashed on New York City's Hudson River a photo posted on Twitter broke the news before the traditional media highlighting Twitter's role in breaking news in November of 2013 Twitter went public with shares being valued at $26 as the market opened and $44 when it closed in October of 2012 Twitter bought vien which they released as a standalone app in January of 2013 it was hugely popular but eventually closed down in 2016 leaving the door wide open to tick-tock the next year in 2017 Twitter would finally make a profit Twitter currently has three thousand nine hundred employees and made 3.4 billion dollars in revenue in 2019 a total of 1.3 billion accounts have been created with 330 million monthly active users and 145 million daily users 22% of Americans are on Twitter and of those 10% of users write 80% of the tweets interestingly almost nobody uses Twitter in Australia where I live it just doesn't make a lot of sense to people here they view it as a social media platform 83% of the world's leaders are on Twitter and journalists make up 24.6% of verified accounts Barack Obama has the most followers with over 111 million followed by Katy Perry and Justin Bieber there are 6,000 tweets every second and a day's worth of tweets would fill a 10 million page book Twitter is becoming useful for brands the last two years have seen a 250 percent increase in consumer service conversations on Twitter on the 7th of April 2020 dosa donated 1 billion dollars to fund covert efforts that's 28 percent of his net worth it's a very noble move and it does show that jack has some good character but I just can't help but wonder what Jack thinks of Noah's position today what's your version of the creation you know there's there's so many yeah I mean there's so many different stories that it's not really the most important thing anyway so would you say now I founded Twitter or we found Twitter it's it's always been weak it's always been with was that frustrating to you though to hear other people have different versions of the Twitter creation it's I mean it's not it's not surprising if we focus too much on that we're not going to move forward the past is the past the past is the past stories will be written the situation with noah glass is undoubtedly sad he got kicked out of the company that he helped build and betrayed by someone who he thought was his friend noah has slipped into obscurity and is almost nowhere to be found on the internet these days usually there's a lesson to be learnt at the end of these episodes but with Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams teaming up against him there was almost nothing that Noah could do though I hope that this video does bring some recognition for his role in the foundation of Twitter who invented Twitter well it certainly wasn't just Jack Dorsey alone the real Genesis I think came from Noah glass and Jack Dorsey and it was one night in the car they were drunk and they've been out drinking and dancing which was a typical affair you know when you're in your late 20s out in San Francisco and Noah glass was going through a really terrible divorce and he and his company was failing and he was talking to Jack and Jack had this idea of the status update away you could update your status and your friends would be able to see what you were doing but it was very simple it was very simplistic and and Noah had this realization being how lonely he was with his divorce and everything that if you could use it to connect to people and feel quote/unquote less alone that you would actually be able to use the service in a completely different way they accidentally built Twitter and as a result completely tore their friendships apart and some of them ended up as billionaires as we saw today and some of them ended up with actually next to nothing so thanks for watching this video if you do want to follow me on Twitter I'll leave it up on the screen if you want to see the stories of a few different social media networks I've done one on Instagram another one on myspace which was very interesting and one more and how Facebook has changed Society alright so my name is to go to-- and you've been watching cold fusion and i'll see you again soon for the next episode in the next episode we're going to check out the hidden links between Google and the CIA cheers guys have a good one cold fusion is are you thinking [Music] [Music]

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 900,713

Rating: 4.9430461 out of 5

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: p8N0xN0ihMA

Length: 19min 50sec (1190 seconds)

Published: Thu May 21 2020