Excerpt: CULTS OF THE CULTURE WARS (PART 4). (A.GLASS 2021)

 

"...In September 2006, Glass and his team, who believed in the Twitter concept, presented their workable platform to William’s and the Odeo board of directors, to which William’s continued to play-down Twitter as any profitable venture, however the company maintained work on the project and of the same year he wrote an email, now infamous in its digital history, to the investors that had shares in the company Odeo.  Informing them that he felt the company was going sideways, yet at the same time disclosing to the handful of investors in his small company, of a new project called Twitter, once again down playing it as profitable venture and offering to buyback their share holdings.  To which they all agreed, selling 5 million dollars of their shares back to Williams.   To what many commentators, in retrospect, who have followed the meteoric rise of the social media platform see Williams as a chief hustler of ideas, going back to 2003 when he didn’t fully disclose the sale to Goggle of his platform Blogger, with former employees raising concerns that they weren’t properly compensated from the acquisition.   But business is ruthless and so are the players in the money markets, despite social media platforms touting their open and egalitarian social interactions.   It all comes down to the volume of its uses, Twitter in its early manifestation, even with William’s apparent grift in downplaying the phenomenon, it was Glass the co-founder of Odeo who pushed the idea of a status orientated messaging system aware of the psychology on its potential users, who said, “You know what’s awesome about this thing?  It makes you feel like your right with that person.  It’s a whole emotional impact.  You feel like your connected with that person.”  

In 2011 the 5 million dollars worth of shares that were bought back from the original investors of Odeo in 2006, on the back of Twitter’s success skyrocketed to 5 billion..."

From the article:  CULTS OF THE CULTURE WARS (PART 4). (A.GLASS 2021)