Meet Jack Dorsey
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Jack Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American web developer and businessman widely known as the creator of Twitter and as the founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company. In 2008, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35 for 2012 . the Wall Street Journal gave him the "Innovator of the Year Award" for technology.
Well Jack Dorsey is the man behind the first-ever tweet. Originally from St. Louis, Jack's early fascination for mass-transit and how cities function led him to Manhattan and programming real-time messaging systems for couriers, taxis, and emergency vehicles. Throughout this work, Jack witnessed thousands of workers in the field constantly updating where they were and what they were doing; Twitter is a constrained simplification designed for general usage and extended by the millions of people who make it their own every day. After a brief stint at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, Dorsey transferred to New York University. In the tradition of computer science entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, he dropped out of college before receiving his degree. Instead, Dorsey moved to Oakland, California, and in 2000 started a company offering his dispatch software through the Web. Shortly after starting his company, Dorsey came up with the idea for a site that would combine the broad reach of dispatch software with the ease of instant messaging. Dorsey approached a now-defunct Silicon Valley company called Odeo to pitch the concept. "He came to us with this idea: 'What if you could share your status with all your friends really easily, so they know what you're doing?'" said Biz Stone, a former Odeo executive. Dorsey, Stone and Odeo co-founder Evan Williams started a new company, called Obvious, which later evolved into Twitter. Within two weeks, Dorsey had built a simple site where users could instantly post short messages of 140 characters or less, known in Twitter parlance as "tweets." On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey posted the world's first tweet: "just setting up my twttr." Dorsey was named the company's chief executive officer. He removed his nose ring in an attempt to look the part of a mature Silicon Valley executive, though he kept his boyish, mop-like haircut and abstract, forearm-length tattoo whose shape represented, among other things, the human clavicle bone. Co-founder Evan Williams replaced Dorsey as Twitter's CEO in October 2008, with Dorsey staying on as company chairman. In 2010, Twitter had more than 105 million users who together tweeted some 55 million times a day. Dorsey, however, had set his sights on other projects. He became an investor in the social networking company Foursquare and launched a new venture, Square, which allows people to receive credit card payments through a tiny device plugged in to their mobile phone or computer. Twitter may have already revolutionized the way that people communicate, but Dorsey isn't done yet. "In terms of technology, we're going to see a better and more immediate experience around the everyday things we do in life," Dorsey said. |
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