Who owns twitter?
Trends, tweets... That’s the common terms we can easily associate with twitter. Do you what the first message to be posted on twitter was?
Twitter was born in 2006. It was later released to the public on July 15. Since then, twitter has grown tremendously to be more of a news site than a social networking service provider. By 2010, it handled over 700 tweets that were being tweeted every second. Its effectiveness with news was felt during the 2016 US general election, it was a reliable source of developing stories about the elections.
Thus it compels one to ask of twitter, who owns it?
In 2006, Odeo, a podcast service provider had its employees think their way through to make a product. The team included Jack Dorsey, an undergraduate student who was pursuing his degree at New York University.
He approached Evan Williams, a worker at Odeo about an idea he had. Supposedly, a user can send a text message to communicate to a group of people. Williams bought the idea and approached another co-worker, Noah Glass.
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They ventured to realize the product.
This called for Jack, Williams, Biz Stone and a few members of the Odeo to have the urge to acquire Odeo, the parent company to twitter. They did form a corporation in October 2006; Obvious Corporation with which they acquired Odeo with it, so was twitter. Unfortunately, Glass was axed from the group and the rest ventured into getting twttr, later twitter, to the public.
Who owns shares in twitter?
The initial funding of the company came a large part, from the co-founders. Thus one would not be wayward in making the cofounders as those who owns twitter. Evan Williams played a big role in its financial infancy.
Before the company went public in 2013, it had acquired a few angel and venture investors to lift the company off its financial crisis.
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These are the people who own twitter stock;
Since Williams played a huge role in financing twitter at its tender age, he is the majority individual shareholder. At 12% of twitter’s stock, this makes him the largest shareholder of twitter. More yet, he has the voting rights to the company as he acquired Jack’s voting rights before the company went public.
Following at the second is Saudi Arabia Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. Joint shares of twitter with his company Kingdom Holding, he controls 5% of twitter.
Steve Ballmer, a former CEO at Microsoft who stepped down in 2014 after 14 years in office. He owns quite a value at twitter. An estimated 4% puts his stock at the service provider higher than the company’s CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey.
Jack Dorsey holds an estimated 3% of twitter. He is a co-founder and current CEO of twitter.
Then, there are the venture capitalists, Benchmark. Peter Fenton, who is a director and a partner at Benchmark, owns $3.7 million worth of shares at twitter.
Jack Dorsey is the first person to tweet. On March 21, 2006, his tweet read “just setting up my twttr”
Links to source;
https://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitter-stock-ownership-takeover-acquisition-challenges.
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Source: YEN.com.gh
