Who is Jack Dorsey? The billionaire tech founder and Bluesky boss who ran Twitter before Elon Musk

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As Elon Musk drags Twitter and its customers via an increasing number of turbulence, its founder Jack Dorsey has made a supportive statement from the sidelines.

He posted that “Operating Twitter is difficult” and “it is easy to critique the choices from afar”.

The 46-year-old billionaire left the platform he co-founded in 2006 to launch what he calls a “decentralised” different, which appears loads like Twitter.

However whereas Dorsey rolls out Bluesky Social and continues to sing the praises of Bitcoin, Twitter customers are left on the whim of his former favorite Tweeter.

Right here Sky Information appears at how Twitter’s founder received to the place he’s.

Self-made taxi dispatch developer

Dorsey was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1976. His father developed spectrometers.

By the point he was 14 he’d developed an uncommon curiosity within the software program that dispatches taxis.

He went to the College of Missouri-Rolla at 19 and transferred to New York College two years later, however dropped out a semester earlier than he was resulting from graduate.

As an alternative he moved to California, the place he created his personal firm to ship out taxis, couriers and emergency service autos through the web.

Whereas working as a programmer for the dispatch platform in 2000, he determined he wished to create a messaging service to replace his mates on what he was doing – with out having to sit down in entrance of a pc.

He approached a podcasting firm referred to as Odeo, the place he received a job alongside Christopher ‘Biz’ Stone, Evan Williams and Noah Glass – who would turn out to be his Twitter co-founders.

Though Dorsey had been impressed by instantaneous messaging platforms equivalent to AOL and MSN, he and Stone determined a text-based service would higher go well with his status-update thought.

In two weeks they’d constructed a prototype for Twitter.

When Odeo went out of enterprise in 2006, Dorsey returned to the messaging thought and formally launched ‘Twittr’ in March that yr, making himself chief govt.

In a single day billionaire

Dorsey secured the help of enterprise capitalists and as celebrities signed up the app grew in reputation.

Two years later, Dorsey moved from chief govt to chairman of the board, reportedly having usually left work early to prioritise hobbies equivalent to yoga and style design.

When he was youthful he briefly dabbled with modelling.

In 2009 he courted controversy after becoming a member of a US State Division journey to Iraq. Designed to rebuild tech hopes there after the autumn of Saddam Hussein, the journey itself was pretty uneventful.

However later that yr when the Inexperienced Revolution occurred, Dorsey agreed to reschedule deliberate upkeep to Twitter’s servers so protesters may nonetheless talk.

It was seen as a breach of coverage given President Barack Obama had promised the US wouldn’t meddle in Iraq’s affairs. Dorsey went to Russia on one other State Division delegation the next yr.

In 2011 he invited Mr Obama to Twitter’s first ever city corridor – the place he needed to remind him to maintain his solutions to 140 characters.

Two years later, though it hadn’t been launched with revenue in thoughts, Twitter turned a listed firm, making Dorsey an in a single day billionaire.

Learn extra:
What is Bluesky?
Twitter appoints new chief executive
Musk asks Twitter if he should step down as CEO

When in 2015 the corporate’s substitute chief govt Dick Costolo introduced his resignation, Dorsey returned as interim – however took up the publish on a everlasting foundation in October.

In the meantime again in 2010 Dorsey had begun splitting his time between Twitter and a brand new enterprise – Sq. – know-how that remodeled smartphones and tablets into debit card readers for small companies.

However as rivals launched rival merchandise, it started to wrestle with losses of as much as $100million (£79m).

Dorsey rebranded Sq. ‘Block’ in 2021, in reference to his curiosity in Blockchain, formally giving himself the job title ‘Block Head’ in 2022.

Again at Twitter in 2016, the 140-character restrict was successfully elevated by not together with hyperlinks or images within the depend. The choice was a bid to draw new customers – because the variety of each day tweets had fallen globally.

A yr later it elevated once more – doubling to 280 characters.

Tech shifting quicker than coverage

In 2018, Twitter and different social media platforms started having to reply to the US authorities.

The primary time Dorsey testified, alongside then-Fb chief working officer Sheryl Sandberg, he was quizzed on interference within the 2016 presidential election.

Hours of questioning noticed Dorsey publish an image of his heartrate on Twitter. The platform was additionally accused of anti-Conservative bias, share costs fell, and the choice was made to ban all political promoting the next yr.

Throughout his time in workplace, Dorsey met with President Donald Trump, who had expressed concern his followers had been being eliminated.

Dorsey oversaw misinformation warning labels utilized to a few of Mr Trump’s tweets throughout his 2020 election marketing campaign and the everlasting suspension of his account following the Capitol riots of January 2021.

Mr Trump arrange his personal platform – Reality Social, whereas Dorsey caught by the ban, but in addition expressed issues it set a “harmful precedent”.

He appeared earlier than Congress on two different events as Twitter boss – as soon as in October 2020 and once more the next month.

The primary time, in entrance of the US Senate Commerce Committee, he answered questions alongside Fb and Google executives a few regulation that protects tech corporations for being prosecuted over content material generated on their platforms.

Dorsey stated altering it could “collapse how we talk on the Web”.

The next month he gave proof alongside Fb founder Mark Zuckerberg on how content material was moderated across the 2020 election.

When COVID emerged in 2020 the Twitter founder promised to donate $1bn (£0.79bn) of his whole wealth to reduction programmes.

The next yr when the Delta variant hit India, he donated £15m (£11.8m) to help programmes there.

The pandemic scuppered plans he’d introduced in 2019 to maneuver to Africa. He stated the continent would “outline the longer term (particularly the bitcoin one!)”.

Musk takes Twitter

Dorsey and Musk’s relationship predates his ill-fated takeover.

When in 2020 it was reported that one among Twitter’s traders Elliott Administration was attempting to exchange Dorsey as chief govt, Musk tweeted his help, saying he had a “good coronary heart”.

In return, Dorsey stated Musk was one among his favorite Twitter customers and that his updates “targeted on fixing existential issues and sharing his pondering brazenly”.

The founder added that he loved the “ups and downs” of Musk’s use of his website – one thing he might have later come to remorse – to which Musk replied: “Twitter rocks!”

They shared an enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies, with Dorsey describing Bitcoin – or ‘The B Phrase’ as he calls it – as “direct activism in opposition to an… exclusionary monetary system”.

In late-2021 Dorsey introduced he was leaving Twitter in a employees e mail posted to his account, claiming he wished to maneuver the agency away from its “founding and founders”.

Musk, believed to be the wealthiest particular person on the planet, started shopping for shares in Twitter originally of 2022.

By April he was the most important shareholder, with a 9.1% stake.

He was invited to affix the board of administrators – and regardless of initially turning the function down – then made an unsolicited supply to purchase your entire firm for $44bn (£34.5bn).

By July, Musk had stated he wished to again out of the deal as Twitter had did not uphold its promise of cracking down on spambot accounts.

The transfer triggered authorized motion in opposition to Musk – who simply weeks earlier than a trial was resulting from begin in Delaware – gave in and determined to go forward, closing the deal in November.

Musk started by firing half Twitter’s staff, together with the chief govt, which then triggered mass resignations.

After a tumultuous few months within the job, through which he expressed remorse for purchasing the platform, he has made a number of chaotic adjustments and given up the job of chief executive.