Twitter, Inc. is an American social media company based in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. The company operates the
social networking service
A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
. It previously operated the
Vine
A vine (Latin ''vīnea'' "grapevine", "vineyard", from ''vīnum'' "wine") is any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent (that is, climbing) stems, lianas or runners. The word ''vine'' can also refer to such stems or runners themselv ...
short video app and
Periscope
A periscope is an instrument for observation over, around or through an object, obstacle or condition that prevents direct line-of-sight observation from an observer's current position.
In its simplest form, it consists of an outer case with ...
livestreaming service.
Twitter was created by
Jack Dorsey,
Noah Glass
Noah Glass is an American technology entrepreneur, whose early work included launching Twitter and Odeo, a podcasting company that closed in 2017. Glass is credited for coining the name "Twitter", which began as "Twttr".
Biography
Glass grew up i ...
,
Biz Stone
Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone (born March 10, 1974) is an American entrepreneur who is a co-founder of Twitter, among other technology companies. Stone was the creative director at Xanga from 1999 to 2001. Stone co-founded Jelly, with Ben Finkel ...
, and
Evan Williams Evan Williams may refer to:
__NOTOC__ People In sport
* Evan O. Williams (c. 1889–1946), American football and basketball coach
* Evan Williams (footballer) (born 1943), Scottish football goalkeeper
* Evan Williams (jockey) (1912–2001), horse ...
in March 2006 and was launched that July. , more than 100 million users tweeted 340 million tweets a day,
and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion
search queries per day.
The company went
public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...
in November 2013. , Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users.
On April 25, 2022, Twitter agreed to
a $44 billion buyout by
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...
, CEO of
SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...
and
Tesla, one of the biggest deals to turn a company private. On July 8, Musk terminated the deal. Twitter's shares fell, leading company officials to sue Musk in the
Chancery Court of Delaware on July 12.
On October 4, Musk announced his intention to purchase the company as he had agreed, for $44 billion, or $54.20 a share; the agreement closed on October 27.
Following Musk's takeover, Twitter has been criticized for an increase in perceived
hate speech
Hate speech is defined by the ''Cambridge Dictionary'' as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". Hate speech is "usually thoug ...
and biased prioritization of
right-wing
Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authorit ...
content, which were followed by advertiser moratoriums, mass dismissals and mass resignations. After his acquisition of the company, Musk immediately dismissed numerous top executives.
On November 3, Twitter laid off approximately 3,700 employees, or about half of their staff. In the following week, the company's security, compliance, and privacy executives resigned.
On November 16, Musk sent an email to remaining employees outlining a shift in the
work culture
Historically there have been differences among investigators regarding the definition of organizational culture. Edgar Schein, a leading researcher in this field, defined "organizational culture" as comprising a number of features, including a s ...
of the company and requesting employees opt-in or leave by November 17, leading to hundreds of additional resignations.
History
2006–2007: Creation and initial reaction
![Twttr sketch-Dorsey-2006](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Twttr_sketch-Dorsey-2006.jpg)
Twitter origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the
podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...
ing company
Odeo.
Jack Dorsey, then an undergraduate student at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
, introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group.
Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 12:50 p.m.
PST (
UTC−08:00): "just setting up my twttr".
The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as an internal service for Odeo employees. The full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006.
In October 2006,
Biz Stone
Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone (born March 10, 1974) is an American entrepreneur who is a co-founder of Twitter, among other technology companies. Stone was the creative director at Xanga from 1999 to 2001. Stone co-founded Jelly, with Ben Finkel ...
,
Evan Williams Evan Williams may refer to:
__NOTOC__ People In sport
* Evan O. Williams (c. 1889–1946), American football and basketball coach
* Evan Williams (footballer) (born 1943), Scottish football goalkeeper
* Evan Williams (jockey) (1912–2001), horse ...
, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo, together with its assets—including Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the investors and shareholders. Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011. Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.
The
tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007
South by Southwest Interactive
South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Te ...
(SXSWi) conference. During the event,
Twitter usage
Since the launch of Twitter on July 15, 2006, there have been many notable uses for the service, in a variety of environments.
In law enforcement
Many police officers use Twitter to provide details on their daily routine and appeals for informat ...
increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000. "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
''s
Steven Levy. "Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it." Reaction at the conference was highly positive. Blogger
Scott Beale said that Twitter was "absolutely ruling" SXSWi. Social software researcher
danah boyd said Twitter was "owning" the conference.
2007–2022: Growth
In April 2012, Twitter announced that it was opening an office in
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
, with the aim of working with automotive brands and advertising agencies. Twitter also expanded its office in
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
. On December 18, 2012, Twitter announced it had surpassed 200 million
monthly active users
Active users is a measurement metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from visitors within a relevant range of time (daily, weekly and m ...
. Twitter hit 100 million monthly active users in September 2011.
The company had its
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
on the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...
on November 7, 2013.
In September 2016, Twitter shares rose 20% after a report that it had received takeover approaches.
Potential buyers were
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
(the parent company of
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
),
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
,
Salesforce.com,
Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...
,
and
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
. Twitter's board of directors were open to a deal, which could have come by the end of 2016.
However, no deal was made, with reports in October stating that all the potential buyers dropped out partly due to concerns over abuse and harassment on the service. In June 2017, Twitter revamped its dashboard to improve the new user experience.
In April 2021, Twitter announced that it was establishing its African headquarters in
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
.
In January 2022, Twitter finalized the sale of MoPub to
AppLovin. The deal was first announced in October 2021, and the selling price was reported at $1.05 billion.
2022–present
Acquisition by Elon Musk
Business magnate
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...
revealed that he had bought 9.1% of Twitter for $2.64 billion on April 4, 2022.
In response, Twitter's stock rose by as much as 27% and Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday surge since Twitter's IPO in 2013. Musk was appointed to Twitter's board on April 9, under a deal that prohibited him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company.
Musk made an unsolicited offer on April 14 to acquire Twitter for $43 billion and take the company private.
Publicly, Musk expressed that his offer was motivated by concerns with how the company was managed, emphasizing his concern that policies he described as
censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
were leading to a lack of
free speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The rights, right to freedom of expression has been ...
on the platform. Twitter's board introduced a "
poison pill" strategy on April 15, which would allow shareholders to buy additional stock should a
hostile takeover occur as a means to block Musk's takeover. On April 20, Musk secured $46.5 billion in funding as a
tender offer
In corporate finance, a tender offer is a type of public takeover bid. The tender offer is a public, open offer or invitation (usually announced in a newspaper advertisement) by a prospective acquirer to all stockholders of a publicly traded corpo ...
, which the board accepted on April 25.
On July 8, Musk announced he was unilaterally terminating the proposed acquisition, claiming in a regulatory filing that Twitter was in "
material breach
Breach of contract is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other party' ...
" of several parts of the agreement by refusing to comply with Musk's requests for spambot account data and dismissing high-ranking employees. In response, Twitter
board chair
Board or Boards may refer to:
Flat surface
* Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat
** Plank (wood)
** Cutting board
** Sounding board, of a musical instrument
* Cardboard (paper product)
* Paperboard
* Fiberboard
** Hardboard, a ty ...
Bret Taylor
Bret Taylor (born July 10, 1980) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He is most notable for co-creating Google Maps and his tenures as the CTO of Facebook (now Meta Platforms), the chairman of Twitter, Inc.'s board of directors p ...
pledged to pursue legal action against Musk at the
Delaware Court of Chancery with the goal of completing the acquisition. On July 12, Twitter opened a lawsuit against Musk to force the sale to proceed. On September 13, 2022, Twitter shareholders voted to approve Elon Musk's takeover of the company.
On October 4, 2022, it was reported that Musk offered to proceed with the deal at the original offer price of $54.20 per share. The deal closed on October 27, 2022, with the merger between Twitter, Inc. and X Holdings II, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of X Holdings I, Inc., wholly owned by Musk,
and Musk took control of the company, paying $54.20 per share, or about $44 billion.
Post-acquisition
On October 28, immediately following Musk's acquisition, he fired CEO
Parag Agrawal
Parag Agrawal (; born 21 May 1984) is an Indian-American software engineer who was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from November 2021 to October 2022. He was fired, along with three other top executives, on October 27, 2022, following Elon Musk’s Ac ...
and CFO
Ned Segal. Twitter's stock was suspended from trading prior to the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...
opening the next day and was
delisted
In corporate finance, a listing refers to the company's shares being on the list (or board) of stock that are officially traded on a stock exchange. Some stock exchanges allow shares of a foreign company to be listed and may allow dual listing, sub ...
on November 8. On October 31, Musk announced in a security filing that he had dissolved the board of directors and would serve as the CEO of the company.
In January 2023, he also fired an employee who criticized him.
On November 4, Twitter laid off about half of its 7,500 employees, leaving several internal departments, including communication and core engineering teams understaffed.
Some of the employees were later asked to return, with Twitter stating that they were "laid off by mistake". Several current and former Twitter employees sued the company for violations of the
Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 due to failures to provide a 60-day notice prior to mass firings.
Top security, compliance, content moderation, and sales executives resigned due to Musk stating that employees must either work longer hours or resign from the company.
On November 16, Musk issued an "ultimatum" to all remaining Twitter employees warning that workers could expect "long, intense hours of work" if they decided to stay, a decision that was ordered to be made by the following day, with news sources reporting numerous employees leaving on the same day.
''
The Verge
''The Verge'' is an American technology news website operated by Vox Media, publishing news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts.
The website launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media' ...
'' reported that multiple critical engineering teams "completely or near-total
yresigned", increasing internal fears of a collapse of Twitter.
Within a week of Musk's acquisition and subsequent internal instability of the firm, including layoffs of Twitter's trust and safety teams, large advertisers including
General Mills
General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
,
Pfizer
Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfizer ...
,
Volkswagen
Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German Automotive industry, motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a ...
, and
General Motors
The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...
announced an advertising pause.
Advertising agencies, including
IPG and
Omnicom Media Group
Omnicom Group Inc. is an American global media, marketing and corporate communications holding company, headquartered in New York City.
Omnicom's branded networks and specialty firms provide services in four disciplines: advertising, customer re ...
, advised clients to pause ad spending on Twitter temporarily until the platform can sufficiently assure
brand safety Brand safety is a set of measures that aim to protect the image and reputation of brands from the negative or damaging influence of questionable or inappropriate content when advertising online.
In response to ads being placed next to undesirable c ...
concerns. Apprehension over increased hate speech made advertisers leave in large numbers. Impersonator accounts had increased following errors in the blue tick scheme for verified users causing concerns. Musk said Twitter was experiencing "a massive drop in revenue" causing losses of $4 million per day, which he attributed to "activist groups pressuring advertisers," adding that "nothing is working" to lure advertisers back.
According to a November 2022 report from
Media Matters for America, Twitter had lost half of its top 100 advertisers, which spent $750 million on ads in 2022. Advertising research firm Standard Media Index said advertiser spending on Twitter declined 55% in November year-on-year, and declined 71% in December, despite those holiday months typically seeing higher ad spending.
By December 2022, Musk's
family office
A family office is a privately held company that handles investment management and wealth management for a wealthy family, generally one with at least $50-$100 million in investable assets, with the goal being to effectively grow and transfer w ...
privately sought to sell new shares valued at his original acquisition price of $54.20, amid turmoil among users and advertisers, and debt payments approaching. Musk's money manager wrote to investors that in recent weeks the family office had received "numerous inbound requests to invest in Twitter." ''The Wall Street Journal'' reported in January 2023 that talks had been held to raise up to $3 billion to pay down some of the $13 billion in bank debt incurred in the deal, which includes a $3 billion high interest rate
bridge loan. Musk denied the report, saying, "corpo media shills clearly have their marching orders to write hit pieces on me these days."
Services
Twitter
Twitter is a
social networking service
A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...
on which users send and respond publicly or privately texts, images and videos known as "tweets".
Former services
Vine
On October 5, 2012, Twitter acquired a video clip company called Vine that launched in January 2013. Twitter released Vine as a standalone app that allows users to create and share six-second looping video clips on January 24, 2013. Vine videos shared on Twitter are visible directly in users' Twitter feeds. On October 27, 2016, Twitter announced that it would disable all
uploads, but that viewing and
download would continue to work.
On January 20, 2017, Twitter launched an Internet archive of all Vine videos that had ever been published. The archive was officially discontinued in April 2019.
Periscope
On March 13, 2015, Twitter announced its acquisition of Periscope, an app that allowed live streaming of video. Periscope was launched on March 26, 2015. Due to declining usage, product realignment, and high maintenance costs the service was discontinued on March 31, 2021. However, past Periscope videos can still be watched via Twitter and most of its core features are now incorporated into the app.
Crashlytics and Fabric
Twitter acquired Crashlytics, a crash reporting tool for developers, on January 28, 2013, for over US$100 million, its largest acquisition at the time.
Twitter committed to continue supporting and expanding the service.
In October 2014, Twitter announced Fabric, a suite of mobile developer tools built around Crashlytics. Fabric brought together Crashlytics, Answers (mobile app analytics), Beta (mobile app distribution), Digits (mobile app identity and authentication services), MoPub, and TwitterKit (login with Twitter and Tweet display functionality) into a single, modular
SDK, allowing developers to pick and choose which features they needed while guaranteeing ease of installation and compatibility. By building Fabric on top of Crashlytics, Twitter was able to take advantage of Crashlytics' large adoption and device footprint to rapidly scale usage of MoPub and TwitterKit. Fabric reached active distribution across 1 billion mobile devices just 8 months after its launch.
In early 2016, Twitter announced that Fabric was installed on more than 2 billion active devices and used by more than 225,000 developers. Fabric is recognized as the #1 most popular crash reporting and also the #1 mobile analytics solution among the top 200 iOS apps, beating out
Google Analytics,
Flurry, and
MixPanel
Mixpanel is a business analytics service company. It tracks user interactions with web and mobile applications and provides tools for targeted communication with them.
Data collected is used to build custom reports and measure user engagement an ...
. In January 2017,
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
acquired Fabric from Twitter and later integrated it into their
Firebase
Firebase is a set of hosting services for any type of application (Android, iOS, Javascript, Node.js, Java, Unity, PHP, C++ ...). It offers NoSQL and real-time hosting of databases, content, social authentication (Google, Facebook, Twitter an ...
platform.
Revue
Revue was a service which lets writers create email
newsletter
A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of int ...
s and offer free or paid subscriptions to them. Revue was founded in the Netherlands in 2015 and acquired by Twitter on January 26, 2021.
On December 14, 2022, Twitter announced the service would be discontinued on January 18, 2023, at which point all user data would be deleted.
Acquisitions
On April 11, 2010, Twitter acquired Atebits, developers of the Twitter client
Tweetie
Tweetie was a client for the social networking website Twitter. There is a mobile version that runs on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, and a desktop version runs on Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion (respectively 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7).
Both t ...
for the
Mac and
iPhone.
On January 28, 2013, Twitter acquired
Crashlytics
Crashlytics was a Boston, Massachusetts-based software company founded in May 2011 by entrepreneurs Wayne Chang and Jeff Seibert. Crashlytics helps collecting, analyzing and organizing app crash reports.
Its main product is a software develop ...
in order to build out its mobile developer products.
On August 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Trendrr, followed by the acquisition of MoPub on September 9, 2013.
On June 4, 2014, Twitter announced that it would acquire
Namo Media
Namo Media was a technology startup providing in-stream advertisements for mobile applications. It was acquired by Twitter in June 2014 for between $50M and $100M.
It was founded by former Google employees Gabor Cselle, Nassar Stoertz, and Tur ...
, a technology firm specializing in "
native advertising" for mobile devices. On June 19, 2014, Twitter announced that it had reached an undisclosed deal to buy SnappyTV, a service that helps edit and share video from television broadcasts. The company was helping broadcasters and rights holders to share video content both organically across social and via Twitter's Amplify program.
In July 2014, Twitter announced that it intended to buy a young company called CardSpring for an undisclosed sum. CardSpring enabled retailers to offer online shoppers coupons that they could automatically sync to their credit cards in order to receive discounts when they shopped in physical stores. On July 31, 2014, Twitter announced that it had acquired a small password-security startup called Mitro. On October 29, 2014, Twitter announced a new partnership with
IBM. The partnership was intended to help businesses use Twitter data to understand their customers, businesses and other trends.
On February 11, 2015, Twitter announced that it had acquired Niche, an advertising network for social media stars, founded by
Rob Fishman and Darren Lachtman. The acquisition price was reportedly $50 million. Twitter announced that it had acquired TellApart, a commerce ads tech firm, with $532 million stock. In June 2016, Twitter acquired an
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
startup called Magic Pony for $150 million.
On January 26, 2021, Twitter acquired Revue, an email newsletter service to compete with platforms like
Substack.
In November and December 2021, Twitter acquired and immediately shut down two competitors: threader.app, a service to transform Twitter threads into
accessible
Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i.e ...
web pages, and Quill, a messaging service. Threader.app users were directed to instead purchase the
Twitter Blue
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
service, which at the time was available only in some countries.
Leadership
![Jack Dorsey - TechCrunch Real-Time Stream Crunchup - 2009](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Jack_Dorsey_-_TechCrunch_Real-Time_Stream_Crunchup_-_2009.jpg)
As
chief executive officer
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
, Dorsey saw the startup through two rounds of capital funding by the
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
ists who backed the company.
On October 16, 2008, Williams took over the role of CEO, and Dorsey became chairman of the board. On October 4, 2010, Williams announced that he was stepping down as CEO.
Dick Costolo
Richard William Costolo (pronounced: ) (born September 10, 1963) is an American businessman. He was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from 2010 to 2015; he also served as the COO before becoming CEO. He took over as CEO from Evan Williams in October 2010 ...
, formerly Twitter's
chief operating officer
A chief operating officer or chief operations officer, also called a COO, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, composing part of the "C-suite". The COO is usually the second-in-command at the firm, especially if t ...
, became CEO. On October 4, 2010, Williams made an announcement saying that he will stay with the company and "be completely focused on product strategy".
According to ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', "Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Costolo forged a close relationship" when Williams was away.
According to ''
PC Magazine
''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present d ...
'', Williams was "no longer involved in the day-to-day goings on at the company". He was focused on developing a new startup, and became a member of Twitter's board of directors, and promised to "help in any way
e could
E, or e, is the fifth letter and the second vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''e'' (pronounced ); plura ...
" Dorsey rejoined Twitter in March 2011, as executive chairman focusing on product development. At that time, he split his schedule with
Square (where he is CEO), whose offices are within walking distance of Twitter's in San Francisco.
In September 2011, board members and investors
Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet resigned from Twitter's board of directors. In October 2012, Twitter announced it had hired former Google executive Matt Derella to become their new director of business agency development. Twitter named former Goldman Sachs executive Anthony Noto as the company's CFO in July 2014, with an "annual salary of $250,000 and one-time restricted stock options of 1.5 million shares ... valued at $61.5 million". On June 10, 2015, Twitter announced its CEO
Dick Costolo
Richard William Costolo (pronounced: ) (born September 10, 1963) is an American businessman. He was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from 2010 to 2015; he also served as the COO before becoming CEO. He took over as CEO from Evan Williams in October 2010 ...
would resign on July 1, 2015. Noto was said to be considered a potential replacement for outgoing CEO Costolo. On October 14, 2015, former Google chief business officer
Omid Kordestani
Omid R. Kordestani ( fa, امید کردستانی; born 1963) is an Iranian-American businessman who was the Executive Chairman at Twitter from October 2015 to June 2020 and a board member of the company until October 2022. He was a Senior Vic ...
became executive chairman, replacing Dorsey who remains CEO. On January 26, 2016,
Leslie Berland
Leslie Berland is the former CMO of Twitter.
She was also Head of People at the company. Prior to that she spent over a decade in executive roles at AmEx establishing the financial service company’s initial social media strategies. (She also h ...
, former executive vice president of global advertising, marketing, and digital partnerships at
American Express
American Express Company (Amex) is an American multinational corporation specialized in payment card services headquartered at 200 Vesey Street in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The company was found ...
, was named chief marketing officer. In November 2016, COO Adam Bain announced his resignation and CFO Anthony Noto took over Bain's role. A month later, on December 20, 2016, CTO Adam Messinger announced that he too was leaving.
In February 2020, it was reported that
Elliott Management Corporation had acquired a stake in Twitter, with
activist shareholder
An activist shareholder is a shareholder who uses an equity stake in a corporation to put pressure on its management. A fairly small stake (less than 10% of outstanding shares) may be enough to launch a successful campaign. In comparison, a full ta ...
and
Republican Party
Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party.
Republican Party may also refer to:
Africa
*Republican Party (Liberia)
* Republican Part ...
supporter
Paul Singer expected to seek the removal of Dorsey as CEO. Twitter agreed to appoint a new independent director and two new board members, and to perform $2 billion in share buybacks.
On November 29, 2021, Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO. He was replaced by CTO Parag Agrawal. On October 27, 2022,
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...
closed a deal to purchase the company and fired Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, chief legal officer
Vijaya Gadde
Vijaya Gadde (born 1974) is an American attorney, who served as general counsel and the head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter. Her role included handling issues such as harassment, misinformation, and harmful speech. She is known for her ...
, and general counsel Sean Edgett.
Musk replaced the prior board as the sole director of Twitter and appointed himself as the CEO.
List of chairmen
#
Jack Dorsey (2008–2015)
#
Omid Kordestani
Omid R. Kordestani ( fa, امید کردستانی; born 1963) is an Iranian-American businessman who was the Executive Chairman at Twitter from October 2015 to June 2020 and a board member of the company until October 2022. He was a Senior Vic ...
(2015–2020)
#
Patrick Pichette
Patrick Pichette, is a Canadian businessman and executive. He was senior vice president and chief financial officer of Google from 2008 until 2015. He then became a venture capital fund manager, and is a director for several companies and a fo ...
(2020–2021)
#
Bret Taylor
Bret Taylor (born July 10, 1980) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He is most notable for co-creating Google Maps and his tenures as the CTO of Facebook (now Meta Platforms), the chairman of Twitter, Inc.'s board of directors p ...
(2021–2022)
List of CEOs
#
Jack Dorsey (2006–2008); first term
#
Evan Williams Evan Williams may refer to:
__NOTOC__ People In sport
* Evan O. Williams (c. 1889–1946), American football and basketball coach
* Evan Williams (footballer) (born 1943), Scottish football goalkeeper
* Evan Williams (jockey) (1912–2001), horse ...
(2008–2010)
#
Dick Costolo
Richard William Costolo (pronounced: ) (born September 10, 1963) is an American businessman. He was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from 2010 to 2015; he also served as the COO before becoming CEO. He took over as CEO from Evan Williams in October 2010 ...
(2010–2015)
#
Jack Dorsey (2015–2021); second term
#
Parag Agrawal
Parag Agrawal (; born 21 May 1984) is an Indian-American software engineer who was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from November 2021 to October 2022. He was fired, along with three other top executives, on October 27, 2022, following Elon Musk’s Ac ...
(2021–2022)
#
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...
(2022–present)
Finances
Funding
Twitter raised over US$57 million from
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
ist growth funding, although exact figures are not publicly disclosed. Twitter's first A round of funding was for an undisclosed amount that is rumored to have been between US$1 million and US$5 million.
Its second B round of funding in 2008 was for US$22 million and its third C round of funding in 2009 was for US$35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and
Benchmark Capital along with an undisclosed amount from other investors including
Union Square Ventures,
Spark Capital
Spark Capital is a venture capital firm in the United States, responsible for early-stage funding startups of consumer, commerce, FinTech, software, frontier, and media sectors. It has branches in San Francisco, Boston, and New York City.
Hi ...
, and
Insight Venture Partners
Insight Partners (previously Insight Venture Partners) is an American venture capital and private equity firm based in New York City. The firm invests in growth-stage technology, software and Internet businesses.
History
Insight Partners was fo ...
.
Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and
Bezos Expeditions
Bezos Expeditions is an American investment firm based in Mercer Island, Washington. It serves as a family office for Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos by managing his personal investments. The firm invests in early stage ventures, late stage venture ...
.
The company raised US$200 million in new venture capital in December 2010, at a valuation of approximately US$3.7 billion.
In August 2010 Twitter announced a "significant" investment led by
Digital Sky Technologies
VK, known as Mail.ru Group until 12 October 2021, is a Russian technology company. It started in 1998 as an e-mail service and went on to become a major corporate figure in the Runet, Russian-speaking segment of the Internet.
VK operates an e-m ...
that, at US$800 million, was reported to be the largest
venture round
A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the ...
in history. In December 2011, the
Saudi Saudi may refer to:
* Saudi Arabia
* Saudis, people from Saudi Arabia
* Saudi culture, the culture of Saudi Arabia
* House of Saud
The House of Saud ( ar, آل سُعُود, ʾĀl Suʿūd ) is the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia. It is c ...
prince
Alwaleed bin Talal
Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud ( ar, الوليد بن طلال آل سعود; born 7 March 1955) is a Saudi Arabian billionaire businessman, investor, philanthropist and royal. He was listed on ''Time'' magazine's Time 100, an annual list of the hu ...
invested US$300 million in Twitter. The company was valued at US$8.4 billion at the time.
Stock launch and tax issues
On September 12, 2013, Twitter announced that it had filed papers with the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...
(SEC) ahead of a planned
stock market listing. It revealed its
prospectus in an 800-page filing. Twitter planned to raise US$1 billion as the basis for its stock market debut. The
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
(IPO) filing states that "200,000,000+ monthly active users" access Twitter and "500,000,000+ tweets per day" are posted.
In an October 15, 2013, amendment to their SEC
S-1 filing, Twitter declared that they would list on the
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), quashing speculation that their stock would trade on the
NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
exchange. This decision was widely viewed to be a reaction to the botched
initial public offering of Facebook. On November 6, 2013, 70 million shares were priced at US$26 and issued by lead underwriter
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...
.
On November 7, 2013, the first day of trading on the NYSE, Twitter shares opened at $26.00 and closed at US$44.90, giving the company a valuation of around US$31 billion. Consequently, executives and early investors marginally increased their capital, including co-founders Williams and Dorsey who received a sum of US$2.56 billion and US$1.05 billion respectively, while
Costolo's payment was US$345 million. On February 5, 2014, Twitter published its first results as a public company, showing a net loss of $511 million in the fourth quarter of 2013.
In November 2017, the
Paradise Papers
The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper'' Süddeutsch ...
, a set of confidential
electronic documents relating to
offshore investment, revealed that Twitter is among the corporations that avoided paying taxes by using
offshore companies
The term "offshore company" or “offshore corporation” is used in at least two distinct and different ways. An offshore company may be a reference to:
* a company, group or sometimes a division thereof, which engages in offshoring business pro ...
. Later ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported that Russian-American billionaire
Yuri Milner had strong
Kremlin
The Kremlin ( rus, Московский Кремль, r=Moskovskiy Kreml', p=ˈmɐˈskofskʲɪj krʲemlʲ, t=Moscow Kremlin) is a fortified complex in the center of Moscow founded by the Rurik dynasty, Rurik dynasty. It is the best known of th ...
backing for his investments in Facebook and Twitter.
See also
*
Timeline of social media
This page is a timeline of social media. Major launches, milestones, and other major events are included.
Overview
Timeline
(*) Such launches are not initial launches, but rather relaunches.
See also
* Timeline of Facebook
* Timeline of I ...
References
External links
*
*
*
{{Authority control, state=expanded
2006 establishments in California
2006 in San Francisco
2013 initial public offerings
2022 mergers and acquisitions
American companies established in 2006
Companies based in San Francisco
Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Elon Musk
Internet properties established in 2006
Multinational companies headquartered in the United States
Privately held companies based in California
Social media companies of the United States
South of Market, San Francisco