Former Facebook CTO Bret Taylor joins Twitter board
Social networking platform Twitter has roped in Facebook's former Chief Technology Officer, Bret Taylor, to its board. Omid Kordestani, Twitter's Chairman, said that Taylor's addition to the board would help bring in innovation and ideas targeting consumer products. Bret Taylor was the co-founder of FriendFeed, which was later acquired by Facebook. He later departed Facebook to join as CEO for mobile word-processing company Quip.
Twitter : How it all started
Twitter started out as an idea that was based out of sending SMS's to a group of people, and was launched in July 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass. It soon gained massive audience, with 2012 seeing around 100 million active users, and this year a whopping 310 million active users. The San-Francisco-based company currently sees revenues over $2 billion.
How did the name 'Twitter' come about?
When the idea for creating the networking platform came into being, the project was named 'twttr', which was inspired by the many short forms used while messaging. They later purchased the domain twitter.com for launching Twitter.
Jack Dorsey named Twitter CEO
Jack Dorsey, one of the co-founders of the messaging platform Twitter, was named as Chief Executive Officer of the company after having him as interim CEO for four months. He would be working alongside Adam Bain, who was named as Chief Operating Officer for the company. Jack Dorsey is also the CEO of Square, a payment processing company that he co-founded in 2009.
Twitter is available in over 33 languages
The social networking portal allows users across the globe to interact in over 33 different languages, and in 2012 saw the platform open access to languages such as Farsi, Arabic, Hebrew and Urdu with the help of over 13,000 volunteers.
Twitter's shares take a plunge, reports show fall in users
Earlier this year, reports showed the social networking platform's shares take a downhill plunge, falling by over 41% after Dorsey took over the reins of the company. In January 2016, the share prices took a further hit when it was announced that four of the company's senior management executives were to leave. Twitter was further left battered when reports showed a fall in users.
Twitter on a reorganization spree
Twitter set out to reorganise its board and rope in industry experts and product developers to bring in a whiff of change to the platform. After announcing layoffs amounting to 8% of its workforce, Twitter hired ex-Googler Omid Kordestani as Executive Chairman. Dorsey roped in tech founder Martha Lane Fox and Pepsi CFO Hugh Johnston, as new board members in April this year.
Twitter's take on the melange of expertise its board carries
"His skills also complement those of our other recent Board additions, who bring expertise in finance, media, and entrepreneurship." - Omid Kordestani, Executive Chairman, Twitter
