The birth of a money making machine : twitter.com
how twitter started?
The story of Twitter's founding bears a similarity to that of Facebook's. Both have a sort of Hollywood appeal. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July.
In April 2007, the CEO of Obvious, Jack Dorsey, announced that Twitter would be graduating to Twitter, Inc. Twitter gained popularity at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in 2007 where it won the Web award and gained tons of new users.
Williams decided that Odeo's future was not in podcasting, and later that year, he told the company's employees to start coming up with ideas for a new direction Odeo could go. The company started holding official group thinking or group proposing where employees would spend a whole day working on projects. They broke off into groups.
Odeo cofounder Noah Glass gravitated toward Jack Dorsey, whom Glass says was "one of the stars of the company." Jack had an idea for a completely different product that revolved around "status" meaning what people were doing at a given time.
Jack Dorsey writes, “I had an idea to make a more ‘live’ LiveJournal. Real-time, up-to-date, from the road. Akin to updating your AIM status from wherever you are, and sharing it. For the next 5 years, I thought about this concept and tried to silently introduce it into my various projects. The idea has finally solidified (thanks to the massively creative environment my employer Odeo provides) and taken a novel form. We’re calling it twttr”.
"...we came across the word 'twitter', and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was."
One day in February 2006, Glass, Dorsey, and a German contract developer Florian Weber presented Jack's idea to the rest of the company. It was a system where you could send a text to one number and it would be broadcasted out to all of your friends: Twttr.
After that February presentation to the company, Evan Williams was skeptical of Twitter's potential, but he put Glass in charge of the project. From time to time, Biz Stone helped out Glass's Twitter team.
The original inkling for Twitter sprang from Jack Dorsey's mind. Dorsey even has drawings of something that looks like Twitter that he made years before he joined Odeo. And Jack was obviously central to the Twitter team.
In addition no one at Odeo was more passionate about Twitter in the early days than Odeo's cofounder, Noah Glass.
Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter's co-founders, sent the first "tweet" on March 21, 2006. The messaging system was originally only used for internal communications at the podcasting company Odeo. It launched for public use in July 2006.
The first Twitter prototype was used as an internal service for Odeo employees and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006. In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo and all of its assets–including Odeo.com and Twitter.com–from the investors and shareholders
But Twitter didn’t catch fire immediately. Instead, as it slowly began to grow within Obvious, Stone, Williams, and Twitter creator Jack Dorsey decided to spin it off as its own company, Twitter, Inc. And as all of them, including Goldman, began to spend more time on Twitter, Obvious faded into the background. Until now.
Then, one day in September 2006, Odeo's CEO Evan Williams wrote a letter to Odeo's investors. In it, Williams told them that the company was going nowhere, that he felt bad about that, and that he would like to buy back their shares so they wouldn't take a loss.
About twitter, He said: By the way, Twitter (http://twitter.com), which you may have read about, is one of the pieces of value that I see in Odeo, but it's much 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 Odeo certainly holds -- especially since that investment was for a different market altogether.
Many of Odeo's investors appreciated this Williams's gesture."At the time, it was well received as a gracious act," says one individual investor, Don Hutchinson. "
Five years later, assets of the company the original Odeo investors sold for approximately $5 million are now worth at least 1000X more: $5 billion.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone took some time to blog today a bit about his past. He goes back to Xanga, then Blogger/Google, then (though not directly mentioned) Odeo. He talks about how after they failed to sell Odeo, Evan Williams created Obvious, a parent company with the purpose of buying back Odeo from its investors. Around this time, Jason Goldman, another previous Blogger/Google guy, joined them. Among the assets of Odeo was a little side project created during a hackathon, called Twitter.
In April 2011 Noah Glass also came out of hiding and quickly earned the title as "Twitter's forgotten founder. Glass described how he had been in charge of Twitter first with Jack Dorsey, how he had brought on Williams and Stone, and had even come up with the name Twitter
In Jun 2011 Biz Stone, co-founder and the de facto public face of Twitter, is leaving the company after five years to restart Twitter's former parent company, The Obvious Corporation. Now, none of Twitter's three co-founders hold full-time responsibilities at the company.
Stone's departure comes after Jack Dorsey, the third official co-founder and the guy who sketched out the original Twitter interface on a legal pad, left in 2008 in the midst of a leadership shake-up and possibly disagreement with co-founder Evan Williams. When Evan Williams stepped down as CEO on March 2011, Dorsey rejoined the company with an amorphous role. It's kind of a strange story: Twitter co-founders leave Twitter to restart Twitter founding company.
Twitpic founder Noah Everett has unveiled Heello, which is very similar to Twitter. His move comes just a day after Twitter completed the rollout of its photo-sharing service which in turn is a direct competitor to Twitpic.
Sources:
TheAtlanticWire
Wired.com
latimes.com
Huffingtonpost
Biz Stone
wiki.answers
CrunchBase
Business Insider
answers.com
140Characters
en.wikipedia
how twitter started?
The story of Twitter's founding bears a similarity to that of Facebook's. Both have a sort of Hollywood appeal. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July.
In April 2007, the CEO of Obvious, Jack Dorsey, announced that Twitter would be graduating to Twitter, Inc. Twitter gained popularity at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in 2007 where it won the Web award and gained tons of new users.
But still, how this all took place?
Odeo cofounder Noah Glass gravitated toward Jack Dorsey, whom Glass says was "one of the stars of the company." Jack had an idea for a completely different product that revolved around "status" meaning what people were doing at a given time.
Jack Dorsey writes, “I had an idea to make a more ‘live’ LiveJournal. Real-time, up-to-date, from the road. Akin to updating your AIM status from wherever you are, and sharing it. For the next 5 years, I thought about this concept and tried to silently introduce it into my various projects. The idea has finally solidified (thanks to the massively creative environment my employer Odeo provides) and taken a novel form. We’re calling it twttr”.
One day in February 2006, Glass, Dorsey, and a German contract developer Florian Weber presented Jack's idea to the rest of the company. It was a system where you could send a text to one number and it would be broadcasted out to all of your friends: Twttr.
After that February presentation to the company, Evan Williams was skeptical of Twitter's potential, but he put Glass in charge of the project. From time to time, Biz Stone helped out Glass's Twitter team.
The original inkling for Twitter sprang from Jack Dorsey's mind. Dorsey even has drawings of something that looks like Twitter that he made years before he joined Odeo. And Jack was obviously central to the Twitter team.
In addition no one at Odeo was more passionate about Twitter in the early days than Odeo's cofounder, Noah Glass.
Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter's co-founders, sent the first "tweet" on March 21, 2006. The messaging system was originally only used for internal communications at the podcasting company Odeo. It launched for public use in July 2006.
The first Twitter prototype was used as an internal service for Odeo employees and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006. In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo and all of its assets–including Odeo.com and Twitter.com–from the investors and shareholders
But Twitter didn’t catch fire immediately. Instead, as it slowly began to grow within Obvious, Stone, Williams, and Twitter creator Jack Dorsey decided to spin it off as its own company, Twitter, Inc. And as all of them, including Goldman, began to spend more time on Twitter, Obvious faded into the background. Until now.
Then, one day in September 2006, Odeo's CEO Evan Williams wrote a letter to Odeo's investors. In it, Williams told them that the company was going nowhere, that he felt bad about that, and that he would like to buy back their shares so they wouldn't take a loss.
About twitter, He said: By the way, Twitter (http://twitter.com), which you may have read about, is one of the pieces of value that I see in Odeo, but it's much 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 Odeo certainly holds -- especially since that investment was for a different market altogether.
Many of Odeo's investors appreciated this Williams's gesture."At the time, it was well received as a gracious act," says one individual investor, Don Hutchinson. "
Five years later, assets of the company the original Odeo investors sold for approximately $5 million are now worth at least 1000X more: $5 billion.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone took some time to blog today a bit about his past. He goes back to Xanga, then Blogger/Google, then (though not directly mentioned) Odeo. He talks about how after they failed to sell Odeo, Evan Williams created Obvious, a parent company with the purpose of buying back Odeo from its investors. Around this time, Jason Goldman, another previous Blogger/Google guy, joined them. Among the assets of Odeo was a little side project created during a hackathon, called Twitter.
In April 2011 Noah Glass also came out of hiding and quickly earned the title as "Twitter's forgotten founder. Glass described how he had been in charge of Twitter first with Jack Dorsey, how he had brought on Williams and Stone, and had even come up with the name Twitter
In Jun 2011 Biz Stone, co-founder and the de facto public face of Twitter, is leaving the company after five years to restart Twitter's former parent company, The Obvious Corporation. Now, none of Twitter's three co-founders hold full-time responsibilities at the company.
Stone's departure comes after Jack Dorsey, the third official co-founder and the guy who sketched out the original Twitter interface on a legal pad, left in 2008 in the midst of a leadership shake-up and possibly disagreement with co-founder Evan Williams. When Evan Williams stepped down as CEO on March 2011, Dorsey rejoined the company with an amorphous role. It's kind of a strange story: Twitter co-founders leave Twitter to restart Twitter founding company.
Twitpic founder Noah Everett has unveiled Heello, which is very similar to Twitter. His move comes just a day after Twitter completed the rollout of its photo-sharing service which in turn is a direct competitor to Twitpic.
Sources:
TheAtlanticWire
Wired.com
latimes.com
Huffingtonpost
Biz Stone
wiki.answers
CrunchBase
Business Insider
answers.com
140Characters
en.wikipedia
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