Twitter is one of the most prominent and most widely-used social media platforms. From laymen to politicians, and organizations, everyone uses this platform. For millions of people, Twitter is where they get all the news about the world. Now if you admire this micro-blogging website, you must praise its maker. Jack Patrick Dorsey is the father of Twitter and is a source of inspiration for many. He made social media more than just entertainment for people. Therefore, studying his story to success is worthwhile for every individual aspiring to do something great.
From Childhood to CEO Chair
Dorsey was born to Tim and Marcia in St. Louis, Missouri. His father Tim worked in a spectrometer manufacturing firm. His mother was of Italian descent and a homemaker. He was raised Catholic and attended Bishop DuBourg High School. Dorsey worked as a fashion model in school.
By the age of 14, he developed an interest in dispatch routing and slowly went deeper into the IT domain. In 1995, Dorsey joined the University of Missouri-Rolla and two years later, moved to New York University. He dropped out of college before graduating and came up with the idea of Twitter while studying.
He soon started working on dispatching as a programmer and moved to California a little later. In 2000, Dorsey kicked off his startup that offered dispatching emergency services, taxis, and couriers. The same year, he got inspired by LiveJournal and AOL Instant Messenger which stoked his desire to create a better communication service.
Initially, Dorsey experimented with the idea of messaging. He contacted Odeo, a podcast publishing and aggregation website to work with him on this aspect of the platform. That’s when he met Biz Stone, the future co-founder of Twitter. They worked on the messaging and status features and developed the prototype of Twitter.
Roadblocks & Achievements
The original version earned praise from Odeo users and eventually attracted Evan Williams, another co-founder of Twitter. All the co-founders of Odeo came together to create Twitter. Jack Dorsey became Twitter’s CEO and led the platform ahead.
After some time, Dorsey lost the top position due to his extracurricular pursuits for which he left office early.
At the same time, he emphasized monetizing the platform and bringing more creativity to the platform. In October 2008, Williams replaced Dorsey as the CEO of the platform. The latter took up the designation of chairman in the meantime and joined State Department delegations in various endeavors.
Dorsey took the reins back as CEO of Twitter on October 5, 2015, following the voluntary resignation of Williams and then, Colosto. After gaining the pole position again, he brought a chain of reforms to the platform. First, he announced that Twitter would free up more space for text by disregarding photos and links in 140-character tweets.
A Person With So Many Facets
In the next few years till his resignation in 2021, Dorsey took various steps that made the platform more prevalent. Under his leadership, Twitter emerged as one of the most popular social media platforms. It became the default platform celebrities, organizations, and politicians used to make big announcements. He also openly endorses Vipassana meditation.
