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The Success Story of Twitter Co-Founder: Jack Dorsey

November 8, 2021

Jack Dorsey, an American Businessman and a web developer, is also known as Co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square, a mobile payment company. 

Sometimes even the most stunning ideas can be a great business opportunity. An example is "Twitter" from a desire of a young programmer Jack Dorsey. He was a pioneer in establishing microblogging, and we can see how it works today. 

Early Life

He was born in St. Louis (Missouri, USA) on November 19, 1976. In his teenage, he loved computers and spend hours studying versions of IBM. He wanted to draw a live map of New York City, which would display small moving dots in real-time: ambulance, cars, police crews, fire brigades, cabs, and many more. 

His passion for cities and towns can be explained because of the constant travel of his father, Tim Dorsey, to different cities. He was an engineer in medical equipment and received many offers across America. His family managed to change few houses in its native St. Louis, as well as to settle in Denver, CO. Whenever they moved to a new city, Jack would buy a local map and walk around the city until late at night. 

Intern, Massuer, Programmer

In the summer of 1991, Jack joined Mira Digital Publishing Company as an Intern. After few months, he was leading a team of programmers in their thirties. 

After leaving their native place St. Louis, Jack Dorsey entered the Missouri University of Science and Technology, but later on, moved to New York. Jack wanted to get his moving dots on the map to communicate with each other and share where they are and what they are about to. 

Dorsey joined Dispatch Management Company. From his biography, we learned that Jack hacked the security system of the company's website and emailed DMSC's top manager Greg Kidd on how to patch the hole created by him. Despite the threat of being arrested, he was hired by the company. He learned about a short messaging system (SMS) and how to track the movements of couriers in real-time mode. 

For several years Jack worked on building software on taxi and ambulance cars and played a crucial role in the promotion of a new project of Greg Kidd called dNet.com. However, in 2000, the project failed, and he was left unemployed. 

Twitter Development

The first entry in the microblogging service Twitter appeared on March 21, 2006. Jack Dorsey wrote on his account: "Just setting up my twttr." The first public version of the service in June 2006. In less than a month, Jack needed to think about how to raise funds for Twitter and run it as a separate company.

Fred Wilson offered him not only sponsorship but also become the strategic consultant of Twitter. Despite the tough schedule, Fred always found time for a piece of guidance. However, with the development of smartphones, it has become easier for Twitter to grow its business. According to the SimilarWeb Analytic tool, Twitter has 2.2 billion visits monthly. 

In 2007, company employees manage to install multiple screens, displaying real-time tweets for the users. These helped twitter to increase daily tweets from 20k to 60k. Just a year later, a billion messages were sent using Twitter.

On October 5, 2015, Jack Dorsey was appointed as permanent CEO of Twitter. Today Jack Dorsey combines his time with Twitter and the development of Square, Inc.