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Updating the status of the current scenario is one of the leading trends followed by today's generation. The same trend allows people to describe their days, habits, thoughts, and any important message on a larger scale with the help of social media. There are multiple social media platforms available on the web to take the habit on. One amongst them is a bluebird icon platform called Twitter.
Twitter is a microblogging platform along with a place where people can easily interact and share their thoughts in the form of tweets. Initially, it was invented with the thought of sending an SMS to a group of people. Now Twitter stands at the rank of 16th position in the category of most popular social networking sites globally.
The journey covered by Twitter from its start till now is commendable. This article highlights all essential aspects of Twitter such as its business model, revenue model, competitors, funding and more.
Twitter- Company Highlights
| Company Name | |
|---|---|
| Founder | Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Noah Glass |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Industry | Blogging Platforms, Messaging, SMS, and Social Media |
| Revenue | $5.077B (2021) |
| Total Funding | $4.4B (2022) |
| Website | www.twitter.com |
Twitter - About
Twitter - Industry
Twitter - Founders and Team
Twitter - Startup Story
Twitter - Mission and Vision
Twitter - Name, Tagline, and Logo
Twitter - Business Model
Twitter - Revenue Model
Twitter - Employees
Twitter - Funding and Investors
Twitter - Acquisitions
Twitter - Acquisitions
Twitter - Competitors
Twitter - Future Plans
Twitter - About
Twitter is an America-based microblogging platform founded in the year 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and Noah Glass. Twitter has evolved as a social media platform cum microblogging platform giving out information on a range of topics.
People can easily interact with each other based on their interests and can also tweet on the platform to share their thoughts with a larger audience. Twitter was founded by a failed podcasts producing company named Odeo. Earlier it was termed as Twttr and then changed to the normally known name Twitter.
It works as a connecting point for family, friends, and business associates to be in connection and maintain the same bond. Twitter allows users to interact with it and stay in touch with others.
Twitter - Industry
Twitter belongs to the largest growing industry, the Internet. The Internet industry deals with the integration and linking of big data, analytical tools, and a wireless network. The industry is leading the way for a big change in the future due to more and more usage of internet-based platforms. It provides the way for multiple activities to take place without the need for physical appearance. Some of the popular day-to-day activities seen by the internet industry are microblogging, social media, advertising, etc. The future of the Industry can be assumed as bigger, faster, and safer internet growth.
Social media can be considered as a virtual platform that can be used to create, replicate and share information, expression, ideas, and other forms of data to the online community or a particular person. The market size of social media is growing exponentially with the estimated calculation for the US market size in 2022 to be $72.2 billion. Total growth of 15.6% is noted in the US for the social media market. As for the future, according to a report published by statista.com, 4.41 billion users will be expected to use social media by the year 2025.
Microblogging stands for the combination of instant messaging combined with content production. It differs from the natural blogging industry of the limited size of the content delivery. Microblogs include content with specific data ranges. They can be in the form of short videos, audio, or simple texts. The microblogging industry is not up to mark and is in a constantly evolving stage. It is emerging as one of the fastest-growing industries.
Twitter - Founders and Team
Twitter was not founded by a single person or by the efforts of one person. It took the whole group of four people to get together and launch a microblogging platform.
Jack Dorsey
Jack Patrick Dorsey born on November 19, 1976, and a native of the United States was the former CEO of Twitter. He was born and brought up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he went to complete his schooling too. He started programming while being a student only due to his unavoidable interest in programming and computer communication.
He completed his schooling at Bishop DuBourg High School. He was more than interested in the logistics and their working methods. At the age of 15, Jack Dorsey created a dispatch software that was still in use by many taxicab companies for a longer period.
To get a degree, Jack Dorsey went to the University of Missouri. However, due to some unavoidable reason he was transferred to the University of New York. Which he dropped from six months of getting the hold of his degree.
Jack Dorsey instead went to Oakland, California, and started a company offering dispatch software by the medium of the Internet in the year 2000. While working on the dispatch software, he came up with the idea of having a platform that combines instant messaging with his dispatch software for ease.
With the same thought, Jack Dorsey approached the company named Odeo. After the successful talks and some work, in 2006 Twitter was launched successfully with the first tweet done by Jack Dorsey stating "just setting up my Twitter.
In the year 2010, Jack Dorsey co-founded a small business platform that accounts for debit and credit card payments on the mobile device named Square now changed to Block. Jack Dorsey serves as the CEO of Square. In 2021, the name Square was changed to Block to show interest in Blockchain.
Noah Glass
The American Technology Entrepreneur Noah Glass is one of the co-founders of Twitter. He was the co-founder of a failed company called Odeo.
Odeo was a podcasting company that failed after a few years of work and somehow gave rise to what we call today Twitter.
Noah Glass was known to work on multiple projects before founding a podcast company. He was known to work at Industrial Light and Magic. He left work from there to join and co-work with Marc Canter.
Marc Canter was the founder of Macromind. After that, Noah Glass developed an application named AudBlog which earned a partnership from Evan Williams. Together they created the podcasting company named Odeo.
In 2006, while working on Odeo and its failing future the basic idea for Twitter was invented.
Noah Glass is highly acknowledged for giving the name "Twitter" to the newly developed platform with an abbreviated name "Twttr". Noah Glass is considered a forgotten Twitter co-founder who gave a few essential core features and ideas in the development of the platform.
Biz Stone
Co-founder of Twitter named Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone was born on March 10, 1974. Biz Stone completed his graduation from Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He then attended Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts Boston but without getting a degree at both places.
In the year 1999- 2001, Biz Stone was recorded to serve as a creative director at Xanga. For the year 2003-2005, Biz Stone was given the title of senior leadership at Google. In 2006, Biz Stone rolled out Twitter along with other co-founders and holds a patent to Twitter.
In the year 2014, Biz Stone launched a new search engine named Jelly. Jelly was a search engine driven by factors of visual imagery and discovery. Stone served as CEO for Jelly till the time it was acquired by Pinterest. In 2017, Biz Stone returned as the CEO of Twitter.
Few Awards and Recognition of Biz Stone are:
- International Center for Journalists Innovation Award.
- Listed as One of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time.
- Nerd of the Year by GQ.
- Innovation Award by The Economist.
Evan Williams
The fourth Co-founder of Twitter Evan Williams was born on March 31 1972 in Clarks, Nebraska. He went to attend the University of Nebraska–Lincoln for just one and a half years and left with no degree. Evan Clark Williams went out to work at different technology jobs after leaving college. He went to places like Florida, Texas, etc before returning to his family farm.
In 1996, Evan Williams went on to work at O'Reilly Media in the marketing position. Further, in the same firm, he got the promotion to work as an independent contractor writing computer code. This opportunity gave him the chance to work as a freelance coder and he took happily to work at different popular companies such as Intel and Hewlett-Packard.
While working at O'Reilly Media, Evan Williams started his website to post his thoughts. In the year 1999, Evan Williams along with Meg Hourihan co-founded an initial blogging software named Pyra Labs. In 2005, Evan Williams along with Noah Glass went to co-found a podcast company named Odeo. In 2006, Evan Williams along with other co-founders gave rise to social media platform named Twitter. In 2012, Evan Williams led to the launch of a publishing platform named Medium.
Few Awards and Recognition for Evan Williams are:
- In 2003, Evan Williams was given the recognition of MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators of the World under the age of 35.
- In 2004, He received the Recognition of "People of the Year" by PC Magazine.
Team:
- Bret Taylor (Chair)
- Parag Agrawal (CEO)
- Ned Segal (CFO)
Himaya Presthitha
Twitter - Startup Story
Twitter is one of the successful platforms for now. However, the origin of Twitter lies in the ashes of another failed startup. The idea behind starting an instant messaging platform was taken from Jack Dorsey. And the name for the platform was given by Noah Glass.
Twitter was started as a side project of the company handled by Evan Williams. The podcast company was not doing well in terms of popularity and hence, the staff of computers comprising a total of 14 would do the task of searching for ideas and will work on new ideas in a group. At such time, the concept of instant messaging popped up.
Jack Dorsey was an employee of a podcast company named Odeo. He gave his suggestion for starting an instant messaging platform. The initial idea of Jack Dorsey was to combine instant messaging with a wide range of dispatch systems for easy outputs. Jack Dorsey gave the idea of creating an instant messaging platform that can help an individual to send an SMS to a group of people.
With this thought, the process for the platform was started and within two weeks the draft was ready. And next step was to name it. The initial name for the platform was "Twttr" an abbreviated version of the current name. It took six months for the name change to occur. The reason given by the founders of Twitter behind its name change was majorly abe unavailability of the domain name under Twitter.
Twitter initially remained as the messaging platform to be used by the employees of Odeo. The full version of Twitter was introduced on July 15 2006 and was made available to the people.
Twitter - Mission and Vision
Mission- "To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers".
Vision- "To be the world's most diverse and inclusive company".
Twitter - Name, Tagline, and Logo
Name
The initial meaning of the name Twitter means "a short burst of inconsequential information" or "chirps from birds".
The initial thought for the name was "status". However, after going through the Dictionary, Jack Dorsey came across the name Twitter and instantly liked its definition. As he felt, the definition of the word is what they were doing. However, the domain under the name Twitter was not available for purchase and they have to go with its abbreviated version.
After six months of launch, the domain name Twitter was purchased and the platform was renamed. The credit behind naming Twttr and Twitter goes to Noah Glass.
Tagline
Life's not about a job, it's about purpose.
Logo
The original name of the Twitter Bird is "Larry The Bird". The bird was named after a basketball player Larry Bird. Biz Stone can be said as the major reason behind selecting the logo for Twitter. He studied from a school outside Boston and hence had the same craze for basketball players who won three NBA championships for three years from 1981-to 1986. In the year 2012, the bird was given a haircut and started resembling a mountain bird.
For the current time, the logo of Twitter consists of just a blue-coloured bird on white background with no text attached to it.
Twitter - Business Model
The business model of Twitter is a platform business model. A platform business model can be defined as a business model that creates value by facilitating exchanges between two or more two people and groups of people, especially in the case of consumers and producers. The majority of social media works on the same platform.
Twitter has the same working pattern as other social media platforms. The user needs to register with a username and password for the use of Twitter. Unregistered users can also use Twitter but only to read tweets. Only registered users are allowed to tweet on its platform. A registered user can share text with 280 characters or a video of 140 seconds with their size ranging not more than 1 GB.
Twitter allows its users multiple benefits such as the user can make their thoughts reach a global audience. The advertisement done on it can also reach a large audience. The data partners can easily search and navigate information from Twitter to create insights.
Twitter's business model is created in a way that allows advantages to its users, advertisers, and data partners.
Twitter - Revenue Model
The annual revenue of Twitter for the year 2021 was noted to be $5.077 billion. There was a whopping increment of 36.63% in the revenue from the year 2020.
Twitter generates its revenue from advertising and providing data access and licensing to businesses. Advertisement is the major source of revenue for Twitter constituting 89% of the revenue collected in 2021. The total amount of revenue collected by the means of advertisement for the year 2021 was about $4.5 billion.
Another source of revenue generation is by providing data access and licensing to businesses. An approximate 11% of revenue was recorded by data accessing with the amount of $571.8 million.
Twitter - Employees
Twitter consists of 7,500 Tweeps (December 2021). Twitter employees are given the special tag "Tweep". Just the way messages posted on Twitter are called tweeps, the person working for Twitter is termed a Tweep.
Some of the key Tweeps are:
- Parag Agrawal- CEO
- Leslie Berland- CMO
- Kayvon Beykpour- GM of Blue Bird
- Dalana Brand- CPDO
- Nick Caldwell- GM of Core Tech
- Jack Dorsey- Founder
- Bruce Falck- GM of Goldbird
- Vijaya Gadde- Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust
- Lindsey Iannucci- VP of Operations
- Sarah Personette- CCO
- Ned Segal- CFO
Twitter - Funding and Investors
Twitter has raised $4.4 billion in 19 funding rounds.
| Date | Transaction Name | Money Raised | Lead Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 4, 2022 | Post-IPO Equity | $2.9B | Elon Musk Revocable Trust |
| Mar 1, 2021 | Post-IPO Equity | - | - |
| Jan 5, 2020 | Private Equity Round | - | - |
| Jan 1, 2015 | Secondary Market | - | - |
| Nov 1, 2012 | Secondary Market | - | - |
| Oct 10, 2012 | Venture Round | - | Elon Musk Revocable Trust |
| Dec 20, 2011 | Venture Round | $300M | Alwaleed Bin Talal |
| Sep 8, 2011 | Secondary Market | $400M | - |
| Aug 2, 2011 | Series G | $400M | DST Global |
| Feb 9, 2011 | Secondary Market | $80M | - |
Twitter - Acquisitions
Twitter has acquired about 67 organizations. Acquisitions made by Twitter in 2021 are:
| Firm Name | What the company does |
|---|---|
| Breaker | A social podcasting application |
| Ueno | A Creative agency for product design and user experience |
| Drive Scale | A data infrastructure firm |
| Revue | A newsletter company |
| Sphere | A group chat application |
| Threader | An application for easy complication and sharing of threads |
| Quill | A business-focused messaging service |
Twitter - Acquisitions
Twitter enjoys 217 million monetizable DAU (Q4 2021). Twitter measures its user base by the metric called monetizable daily active users (mDAU). monetizable daily active users (mDAU) is defined as the total number of user accounts that were logged in and accessed Twitter on any given day.
Twitter - Competitors
Twitter has several Competitors in the same industry but all with different features. Some of them are:
Facebook is an American online social media and social networking Service owned by Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Facebook enjoys 2.85 million active users per month (31 March 2021).
Pinterest is an image-sharing and social media service platform headquartered in San Francisco. It was invented in 2009 by Paul Sciarra, Evan Sharp, and Ben Silbermann. Pinterest is an image discovery tool mainly consisting of pins and boards. Pinterest currently enjoys 431 million active users globally (February 2022).
Snapchat
Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app. It was introduced by Snap Inc in the year 2011. Snapchat is more popular for its ability to share images and videos with the addition of filters. Snapchat enjoys active users of about 319 users per year (2021).
Twitter - Future Plans
Twitter has more things on its platter as compared to other competitors. Twitter is in a constant evolving phase. The probability of Elon Musk buying out Twitter and Twitter accepting the poison pill method. All these are not easy to deal with at the same time. However, irrespective of the situations Twitter has a very clear agenda for the future, i.e. 2023.
Twitter wants to double the number of its active users till the time of 2023. The Twitter team wants Twitter as a safe platform where people can easily share their thoughts without the worry of backlash or similar uncertainty. Twitter also plans to expand its marketing performance with better innovation and ad creation.
Twitter plans to increase its daily users to 315 million users and the revenue to be doubled to about $7.5 billion by the year 2023.
Twitter plans to launch new features for more users to gain its attention.
Sarika Anand
Twitter- FAQs
Who is the founder of Twitter?
Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and Noah Glass.
When was Twitter founded?
Twitter was founded on 21 March 2006 in San Francisco, California, United States by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and Noah Glass.
Who is the CEO of Twitter?
Parag Agrawal is the current CEO of Twitter.
Source :- https://startuptalky.com/ Author :- Bhoraniya Huda Hifzur Rehman Date :-April 18, 2022 at 03:52PM