According to the official story circulating online, former Googler Evan Williams owns a podcast startup called Odeo. Evan invited his friend Biz Stone to join. However, when Apple launched the podcast on iTunes, Evan and Biz and another Odeo employee, Jack Dorsey, decided to switch directions and found Twitter. Investors didn’t see the potential of Odeo, so Evan bought back all of the shares, the rest belongs to history. Twitter gradually became popular and achieved great success as it is today.
However, according to interviews with early employees and investors, the story of Twitter is far more complicated and thrilling, with the participation of an entrepreneur named Noah Glass, who gave birth to Odeo in Odeo. his apartment.
It all started 16 years ago…
The True Origin of Twitter
According to Odeo employee Ray McClure, Noah’s product allows calling a phone number, turning messages into MP3 files stored on the Internet. One of the early investors in Odeo was former Google employee Evan Williams. Williams is more involved in Odeo than any other investor. In fact, Odeo has moved from Noah’s apartment to Williams’s.
Next, Odeo moved into the office and hired more staff, including Web designer Jack Dorsey and engineer Blaine Cook. Eventually, Evan Williams became the CEO of Odeo.
By 2005, Odeo developed a podcast platform. But, in the fall, Apple introduced iTunes for the first time, including a podcast platform built into 200 million iPods. At that time, Odeo employees were demoralized because they realized they weren’t listening to podcasts as much as they thought they would.
At that time, Odeo had 14 full-time employees. CEO Williams asked employees to think of a new direction for Odeo. The company organizes a hackathon, where employees split into separate project teams for 1 day. Jack Dorsey, the “star” of Odeo, comes up with a completely new idea, around status updates.
Glass was impressed with Jack and even sat together to discuss in the car in the rain. One day in February 2006, Glass, Dorsey, and developer Florian Weber presented the idea to the entire company. It’s a system to send messages to one phone number and spread to all other friends: Twttr.
It was Noah Glass who came up with the name “Twttr”. Later, Twttr changed to Twitter.
Evan Williams was skeptical of Twitter’s potential but kept Glass in charge of the project. His friend, Biz Stone, helped with Glass’s Twitter team. Everyone agrees that the idea for Twitter came from Jack Dorsey. Dorsey even sketched out something akin to Twitter a few years ago when he joined Odeo. He is also the center of the project. However, all of Odeo’s employees and early investors agree that no one at Odeo, not even Jack, is more passionate about Twitter than Noah Glass. Blaine Cook calls Glass the “spiritual leader” of Twitter. Even the early Twitter service ran on Glass’s laptop.
Glass stressed that he was not the only founder of Twitter, but felt betrayed that his role was essentially removed from the company’s history. “Some people get credit, some don’t. In fact, this is a team effort. I didn’t create Twitter myself. It is born out of dialogue. I know that without me, Twitter wouldn’t exist.”
In March 2006, Odeo had a Twitter prototype. That August, a small earthquake shook San Francisco and people quickly spread the news on Twitter. By the fall, Twitter had thousands of users. At that time, engineer Blaine Cook commented that it felt like there were “two companies” at Odeo, which are Twitter and Odeo.
Evan Williams
At the Odeo board meeting in the summer of 2006 , Noah Glass introduced Twitter to the Odeo executives but went unnoticed. In September 2006, Evan Williams wrote to Odeo’s investors saying that the company was going nowhere, so he wanted to buy back all of the shares so they wouldn’t lose money.
Evan has bought all the shares of Odeo, which means owning Odeo and Twitter. The amount was never disclosed. According to investors, they have put about 5 million USD into Odeo. Five years later, the fortune they sold to Evan has grown at least 1,000 times, to $5 billion. Currently, Twitter’s capitalization reaches more than 50 billion USD.
Investors are a bit sour when thinking about Williams’ behavior. They felt somewhat deceived by William. Was Evan tricking them into thinking Twitter wasn’t worth that much despite the fact that Twitter would be a “gold mine”?
Evan Williams is seen as a sharp man. Many Odeo shareholders and employees use the word “calculation” when describing him. An old article in the New York Times covered allegations that Williams did not adequately compensate Blogger employees when he sold the company to Google in 2003. Blogger co-founder Meg Hourihan once said: “I don’t think he cares. care about the people who helped him get to where he is today.” Williams is said to have said, “All successful businessmen make enmities.”
The truth is we may never know what Williams was thinking when he downplayed Twitter in front of investors.
Shock and betrayal
The first thing Evan Williams did when he bought Odeo from investors was to change its name to Obvios. What came next, even more shocking, was the firing of Odeo founder and Twitter’s most fervent supporter, Noah Glass. Why is this news so shocking? It is all agree that Twitter could not be born without Glass.
Odeo engineer Evan Henshaw-Plath calls Glass, Dorsey, and Florian Webb the real three founders of Twitter.
The reason Williams fired Glass may have been opposite personalities. Glass was loud, and Williams was calm. Noah is always talking, and Williams is always thinking. Also, Noah is a bit impulsive.
Others suggested that the reason Glass was fired was that he overreacted about wanting to run Twitter. Glass wants to spin off Twitter into its own company and become CEO. One said Evan Williams was able to run Twitter because “Evan has enough money to buy shares, and Noah doesn’t.”
According to Glass, the whole mess left him feeling betrayed by his friends, his company, people he trusted, and his efforts to create something. He spent a lot of time on Twitter, sometimes even working alone in exchange for being “ousted” out of the company he started.
Williams later updated on Twitter, admitting that “it is true that Noah was never credited for the original role at Twitter. He came up with a really brilliant name.”
The friendship between Williams and Jack Dorsey also faded with the growth of Twitter. The two clashed to such an extent that Williams convinced shareholders that Jack was inexperienced enough to lead Twitter to narrow his friend’s role away from the company. However, Dorsey has his own way of dealing with it. During this time, he founded another payment company called Square, and contacted the media to polish his name and win people’s sympathy. In the end, Jack won the trust of shareholders and succeeded in taking the CEO seat of Williams. In early 2011, Williams left the Twitter board.