Jack Dorsey: The Man Who Introduced The World To ‘Microblogging’

Jack was tech-savvy even as a teen and around the age of 14 created an open-source software in the area of dispatch logistics that is still used by some taxicab companies.  He started his career in 2000 after dropping out from his graduate programme in the New York University a month short of completion, to form a company in Oakland to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the Web.

Dorsey came up with the idea of Twitter at a session named “Daylong Brainstorming Session” which was held by the board members of Odeo, a podcasting company. He was then an undergraduate student at New York University. The idea finally came into being in March 2006 when Dorsey co-founded Microblogging platform Twitter with Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams launched it in July 2006.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri to devout catholic parents, Jack was tech-savvy even as a teen and around the age of 14 created an open-source software in the area of dispatch logistics that is still used by some taxicab companies.  He started his career in 2000 after dropping out from his graduate programme in the New York University a month short of completion, to form a company in Oakland to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the Web. Before long Jack Dorsey had the idea for a Web-based real-time status/short message communication service which was in parts inspired by AOL Instant Messenger and LiVEJOURNAL, a Russian social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal or diary.

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Soon after Dorsey was joined by Biz Stone, and once they decided that SMS text suited the status-message idea best, the prototype for Twitter was built in two weeks. Twitter then attracted investment from Evan Williams, a co-founder of that firm in 2005 who had left Google after selling Pyra Labs and Blogger.

The name for the platform “Twitter” originated from its original project code name which was, “twttr”. It was inspired by “Flickr” and the five-character length of American SMS shortcodes. The team started working on the project from March 21, 2006. Dorsey published the first Twitter message "just setting up my twttr" at 9:50 p.m. (Pacific Standard Time).

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In 2008, Dorsey was transitioned to the chairman of Twitter’s board. In 2011, he returned to Twitter as executive chairman and four years later in 2015 was named the permanent CEO of the company.

He has also invested in Foursquare and launched a payment startup named “Square”. Square lets small business owners accept credit card payment through a smartphone attachment. Dorsey owns stock in both Twitter and Square, and Forbes currently puts his net worth at $7.7 billion. This year, in April Dorsey plegded to give away $1 billion to support Covid relief and other causes.

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Dorsey was named as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35 MIT Technology Review TR35 in 2008. He received the "Innovator of the Year Award" for technology by The Wall Street Journal. Dorsey was named “Founder of the year” at the 5th Annual Crunchies Awards in 2012.

On February 29, 2020, when news floated that activist hedge fund Elliott Management led by billionaire Paul Singer was looking to oust Dorsey from Twitter's board, Dorsey received support from entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, among others. The ousting never happened.

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Dorsey is also known for his philanthropic work and an eccentric lifestyle that includes him walking five miles to work every day.

Indian land, Nepal Parliament, India

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