It seems to be brilliant timing. With Twitter’s IPO just around the corner, stories from the company and one of its co founders, Jack Dorsey’s, tumultuous past have started tumbling out. Stories of backstabbing, aiming to join rivals and courting the attention of the likes of Facebook and Microsoft are now becoming public.The revelations come as part of a power-packed excerpt of the book called Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by The New York Times Reporter, Nick Bilton. The story of Twitter’s founding bears an uncanny resemblance to Facebook’s. Just like the latter’s, Twitter’s history is fraught with backstabbing and ego-clashes too.
Drama in Twitter's past quite like Facebook's (Image credit: Reuters)
The excerpts mainly shed light on the unceremonious ousting of one of Twitter’s earliest co-founders, Noah Glass. The man who made some really crucial early contributions to the platform was pushed out surreptitiously by Dorsey. However, Dorsey’s own reign as CEO was marred by complaints from Twitter’s board. Unsatisfied by his performance and having his time divided between running the company, yoga, fitness and even fashion designing, Dorsey was asked to shape up or ship out. Former CEO Evan Williams gave Dorsey an earful and said, “You can either be a dressmaker or the CEO of Twitter. But you can’t be both.”After being kicked out of a high ranking position from his own company, a fuming Dorsey made a phone call to arch-rival Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg who wanted him to join. Dorsey went over several rounds of talks with the company, including one with Facebook VP Chris Coz to discuss a product-focused role for him, but nothing worked out. Dorsey then went on to found payments company Square. That's not all, the book also reveals that at one point in time, Twitter was being chased by the likes of Facebook, Steve Ballmer and even Al Gore for a takeover.Williams, who succeeded Dorsey as CEO too didn’t have a happy ending at the company. He ended up resigning in 2011 after being almost forced out of the board after an alleged behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign by Dorsey. The read promises to be a filling one considering the fact that Twitter is planning to go public soon, despite not being profitable at this point of time.
ReadMore:Android Games
No comments:
Post a Comment