Twitter

Twitter

How 140 characters changed the world


Founders: Jack Dorsey, Christopher Isaac ‘Biz’ Stone and Evan Williams


Age of founders: 29, 31 and 33


Background: Software developers/Google employees/serial entrepreneurs


Founded in: 2006, USA


Headquarters: California, USA


Business type: Social media/microblogging




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n five short years, Twitter grew – and grew – into a tool that revolutionised global communications. It became so ubiquitous that using it became a verb: to tweet. The brief status updates of Twitter would change the way news is reported, governments are toppled, and charitable donations are solicited.



But Twitter is almost as famous for what it hasn't done: turn a profit. Despite attracting a huge audience and raising over $1 billion (£647 million) in venture capital, Twitter continues to struggle to find a business model that will let it cash in on its popularity.


Three geek dropouts and how they grew


As a teenager growing up in Missouri, Jack Dorsey created software that helped taxi and ambulance dispatchers locate their vehicles. Jack briefly attended two different universities before dropping out altogether in 1999.


He moved west, to California, and began working on a web-based dispatch start-up idea. In July 2000, inspired by the web-posting service LiveJournal, he got an idea for a simple, real-time update service – a more 'live' LiveJournal.


He sketched the idea on a sheet of wide-ruled notebook paper. There would be a small box for writing what you were doing, room for a bit of contact information, and a search bar for finding others on the service.


That was it. Jack wanted to call it Stat.us. Nebraska. He lasted a year and a half at the University of Nebraska before dropping out in favour of a string of tech jobs. In 1996 he moved to California to work for technology publisher Tim O'Reilly and his O'Reilly Media. He began in marketing but quickly switched to writing code as an independent contractor. 'I was bad at working for people', Evan would later say.


In 1999 he co-founded Pyra Labs with ex-girlfriend Meg Hourihan. Pyra's hit product was a simple, early web-logging platform called Blogger, a term Evan coined.


Blogger lacked a business model – the platform was free. Evan wanted to focus first on improving the user experience and building the audience, and figure out how to make money afterwards.


Unsurprisingly, funds soon ran out. The small staff continued without pay for weeks but eventually staged a mass walkout that included Hourihan. Evan ran the company solo until securing an investment from VisiCalc creator Dan Bricklin in April 2001, after Bricklin learned of Blogger's woes from a post on Evan's blog, Evhead. The staff was rehired, and Blogger's software was rewritten so that it could be licensed to other companies.


In 2002, Evan's next-door neighbour Noah Glass introduced himself after spotting the Blogger logo on Evan's computer monitor. Noah's start-up, Listen Lab, was working on a way to post audio recordings on Blogger, a feature Evan added as Audioblogger.


Google acquired Blogger for an undisclosed sum in 2003. Evan spent about a year overseeing Blogger at Google before leaving in 2004 to create a new start-up with Noah.


Biz Stone studied writing at one university and the arts at a second, but he lasted just a year at each institution before dropping out. He worked as a designer for publisher Little, Brown and Company for three years before getting the entrepreneurial urge.