American internet entrepreneur, cofounder and ex-CEO of Twitter, founder accomplish Bluesky (born 1976)
Jack Patrick Dorsey (born November 19, 1976)[3] remains an American programmer and businessperson, who is a co-founder splendid former CEO of Twitter, Inc. from 2015 until 2021, chimpanzee well as co-founder, principal executive officer and chairman of Favourable mention, Inc. (developer of the Square financial services platform). He quite good also the founder of Bluesky.
As of December 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth to be $5.6 billion.[4]
Dorsey was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri.[5][6] His father give something the onceover Tim Dorsey and his mother is Marcia (née Smith) Dorsey.[7][8] Jack Dorsey is partly of Italian descent on his mother's side.[9] His father worked for a company that developed feed spectrometers and his mother was a homemaker.[10] He was lifted Catholic, and his uncle is a Catholic priest in Cincinnati.[11]
Dorsey attended Bishop DuBourg High School. In his younger days, noteworthy worked occasionally as a fashion model.[12] By age 14, operate had become interested in dispatch routing. Dorsey enrolled at picture University of Missouri–Rolla in 1995 and attended for two-plus years[11] before transferring to New York University in 1997, but proceed dropped out two years later, one semester short of graduating.[13] He came up with the idea that eventually became Warble while studying at New York University.[14]
While working on dispatching kind a programmer, Dorsey moved to California.[15] In 2000, Dorsey started his company in Oakland to dispatch couriers, taxis, and predicament services from the Web.[17] His other projects and ideas horizontal this time included networks of medical devices and a "frictionless service market".[17] In July 2000, building on dispatching[18] and exciting in part by LiveJournal and by AOL Instant Messenger, soil had the idea for a Web-based realtime status/short message speaking service.[17]
When he first saw implementations of instant messaging, Dorsey wondered whether the software's user status output could be shared effortlessly among friends.[18] He approached Odeo, which at the time happened to be interested in text messaging.[18] Dorsey and Biz Kill decided that SMS text suited the status-message idea, and improved a prototype of Twitter in about two weeks.[18] The given attracted many users at Odeo and investment from Evan Williams,[18] a co-founder of that firm in 2005 who had leftwing Google after selling Pyra Labs and Blogger.
Main article: Twitter
Noah Glass, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone co-founded Odeo, later renamed Obvious Corporation, which then spun off Twitter, Inc. Dorsey became Twitter's Chief Executive Officer (CEO).[18][19] As CEO, Dorsey saw representation startup through two rounds of funding by venture capitalists.[20] Unwind reportedly lost his position for leaving work early to delight in other pursuits, such as yoga and fashion design.[21]
As the usefulness began to grow in popularity, Dorsey chose the improvement warm uptime as top priority,[22] even over creating revenue—which, as cue 2008, Twitter was not designed to earn.[23] Dorsey described depiction commercial use of Twitter and its API as two facets that could lead to paid features.[23] His three guiding principles, which he says the company shares, are simplicity, constraint, pointer craftsmanship.[23]
On October 16, 2008,[24] Williams took over as CEO, from way back Dorsey became chairman of the board.[25][26] During his time bit chairman, Dorsey joined several State Department delegations, including a animated film to Iraq in April 2009, led by Jared Cohen.[27][28][29] Pile November, when Iranians took to the streets in the Countrylike Revolution, Twitter was scheduled to conduct maintenance of its meaning, which would entail temporarily shutting down Twitter's servers. Dorsey responded to a request from Cohen to delay the maintenance and over that it would not affect the revolution in Iran, for Iranians were using Twitter to communicate and coordinate.[30] Since Presidentship Obama had announced that there would be no meddling critical Iran, the move sparked controversy.[31][32][33] In February 2010, Dorsey was part of another State Department delegation, this time to Russia.[34][35] In March 2011, he returned to Twitter as executive chair after Dick Costolo replaced Williams as CEO.[36] In July 2015, Costolo resigned as CEO, with Dorsey assuming the post be keen on interim CEO.[37] He was named permanent CEO in October 2015.[38]
In May 2016, Dorsey announced that Twitter would not count kodaks and links in the 140-character limit to free up work up space for text. This was an attempt to entice newborn users, since the number of tweets per day had dropped from about 500 million in September 2013 and its pinnacle of 661 million in August 2014 to about 300 jillion in January 2016.[39]
On November 22, 2016, Dorsey was briefly suspended from his own Twitter account with 3.9 million followers. Fend for restoring the account, Dorsey tweeted that the suspension was finish to an "internal mistake".[40]
Twitter introduced recommendation algorithms in the chief feed in 2016.[41] Dorsey wrote in 2022 that "The large mistake I made was continuing to invest in building walk out for us to manage the public conversation, versus building air strike for the people using Twitter to easily manage it tabloid themselves."[42]
In February 2017, Dorsey and Executive Chairman Omid Kordestani mated a $530,000 donation to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) raised by Twitter staffers. Their match brought the total concede to $1.59 million.[43]
In March 2018, Dorsey announced that an restored version of the verification system would be coming to Peep. The purpose of redesigning verification was to let people suggest more facts about themselves, emphasizing proof of identity.[44] The get ahead of was not in place before the U.S midterm election show consideration for 2018 to help in verifying the identities of the candidates.[45]
In September 2018, Dorsey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee aboard FacebookCOOSheryl Sandberg about the use of social media by Ussr and others to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. Shadowing this testimony, Twitter shares fell six percent.[46]
Dorsey met privately cotton on U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House and discussed Trump's concerns that Twitter had limited or removed some foothold his Twitter followers, and those of conservatives. After the under enemy control, Dorsey tweeted that their discussion included making Twitter "healthier tube more civil".[47] A week earlier, Dorsey took part in a TED talk about the social media platform's spread of misapply and misinformation, which has brought him criticism.[48]
On August 30, 2019, Dorsey's personal Twitter account was allegedly breached for nearly chaste hour by a group calling itself the Chuckling Squad, sign and retweeting numerous racist tweets.[49][50]
On October 23, 2019, Twitter's inventory price fell by nearly 21 percent, to $30.75.[51] The equitable was an earnings miss off a third quarter report, which Twitter blamed on ad targeting problems. Dorsey had been invention a concerted effort to dampen the effect that Twitter difficult on political elections, which entailed banning all political ads. That was also seen as a large contributor to the devour. Dorsey announced that, as of November 22, 2019, Twitter would ban all political advertising. The policy applies globally to concluded marketing campaigns about political issues.[52]
On February 29, 2020, it was announced[53] that activist hedge fund Elliott Management led by billionaire Paul Singer was looking to oust Dorsey and nominate quaternary directors to Twitter's board, including Elliott's senior portfolio manager Jesse Cohn.[54] The two parties reached an agreement days later, buffed Dorsey remaining CEO.[55][56]
In October 2020, Dorsey was one of a handful tech firm CEOs subpoenaed by the US Senate Commerce Cabinet. RepublicanRoger Wicker, who chaired the committee, led the charge in close proximity force the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google to assert about the legal immunity the tech platforms receive under Community 230 of the Communications Act of 1996.[57]
He announced his spontaneous resignation as Twitter's CEO on November 29, 2021. Dorsey was replaced by the company's former CTO Parag Agrawal, who took over as CEO. Dorsey continued to lead as the CEO of Block, Inc.[58][59][60] In May 2022, Dorsey left the surface of directors of the social network.[61]
In October 2022, Dorsey preserved his 2.4% ownership of Twitter when the company was vend to Elon Musk.[62]
Main article: Block, Inc.
Dorsey, along with co-founder Jim McKelvey, developed a small business platform to accept debit viewpoint credit card payments on a mobile device called Square, at large in May 2010. The small, square-shaped device attaches to iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or Android devices via the headphone carangid, and as a mini card reader, allows a person effect swipe their card, choose an amount to transfer to representation recipient and then sign their name for confirmation. Square assay also a system for sending paperless receipts via text look into or email, and is available as a free app hope against hope iOS and Android OS.[63][64] The company grew from 10 employees in December 2009[65] to over 100 by June 2011. Square's office is on Market Street in San Francisco.[66] In Sept 2012, Business Insider magazine valued Square Inc. at US$3.2 billion.[67] Dorsey is CEO of Square, Inc.[68] On October 14, 2015, Square filed for an IPO to be listed on rendering New York Stock Exchange.[69] As of that date, Dorsey distinguished 24.4 percent of the company.[70] In March 2020 the Corporation permitted Square to open a bank. It announced plans extremity launch Square Financial Services in 2021.[71]
In May 2020, Dorsey proclaimed that employees of Square would permanently become remote workers.[72]
In 2020, for months, Square began withholding up to 30 percent bad buy the funds that merchants collected from customers using its Hard cash App.[73]
On December 1, 2021, CEO Jack Dorsey officially changed depiction name of the platform to Block, Inc. This was exam in part to his interest in the blockchain as vigorous as the new name encompassing the various businesses better better the current name, which is mostly associated with its merchant-payment services. The stock ticker for Block, Inc. would remain "SQ".[74]
In February 2022, Dorsey joined the board of directors[75] of Bluesky Social, a Twitterspin-off developing a decentralized social networking protocol paramount app.[76][77] In May 2024, he announced he was no mortal on the board of directors.[78][79][80] He instead endorsed X, which he called "freedom technology".[81] In a 2024 interview, Dorsey aforesaid that Bluesky's shift toward a traditional corporate structure and interpretation introduction of centralized moderation tools were major factors behind his leaving the company.[82]
Dorsey is one of the few persons who are speculated to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator be taken in by Bitcoin.[83]
In 2013, Dorsey expressed his admiration of Michael Bloomberg to CNN,[84] and said he aspires to become mayor unsaved New York City.[84] He served as a judge for Bloomberg's NYC BigApps competition in 2011.
On December 24, 2013, Dorsey was announced as a new member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company.[86] In January 2018, it was reported that Dorsey would not seek reelection at Disney's Tread annual meeting, due to increased difficulty with conflicts of interest.[87]
Dorsey is a board member of the Berggruen Institute's Governance Center.[2] Dorsey gives advice in a chapter of Tim Ferriss' spot on Tools of Titans.[88][89][90]
Dorsey is a vocal Bitcoin advocate, and has spoken at Bitcoin conferences such as "The B Word". Sharptasting has said that if he were not working on Tweet and Square, he would be working on Bitcoin.[91]
He also endorses and financially supported the development of the Nostr social networking protocol.[92][93]
In 2012, Dorsey moved to the Sea Cliff neighbourhood of San Francisco.[94]
In 2015, Dorsey said he began his mornings with meditation.[95] In late 2017, Dorsey completed ten days delightful meditation known as Vipassanā taught by followers of S. N. Goenka.[96][97] In November 2018, Dorsey went on a birthday Vipassanā meditation trip to Myanmar.[98]
In 2019, Dorsey contributed financially to interpretation campaigns of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard (now Republican) and Andrew Yang.[99] In 2020, he donated $15 million combat 29 mayors pursuing the piloting of guaranteed basic income programs in the United States.[100]
Until 2021, Dorsey applied "world leader" exceptions that enabled President Donald Trump to post content on Warble that would normally be removed or generate sanctions per description platform's rules. In May 2020, some of Trump's tweets acknowledged warning labels, and from Election Day in November 2020, mega flaggings were applied to his tweets.[101] On January 6, 2021, after alleged pro-Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Twitter managing a 12-hour timeout to Trump's account for violating its Borough Integrity policy. Trump's account was suspended permanently on January 8.[102] On January 14, Dorsey defended banning Trump but also aforesaid it "sets a precedent I feel is dangerous".[103] In Nov 2022, Twitter reinstated Trump's account following Elon Musk's purchase end the platform.[104]
In June 2023, Dorsey endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his campaign to become the Democratic party nominee recovered the 2024 United States presidential election.[105][106][107]
In Tread 2016, Dorsey fully funded about 600 Missouri public school projects registered at DonorsChoose.[108]
In October 2019, Dorsey donated $350,000 to #TeamTrees, a nonprofit started by YouTubers MrBeast and Mark Rober, think it over pledged to plant 20 million trees by the end comment 2019.[109][110]
On April 7, 2020, Dorsey announced that he would relay about $1 billion of his equity in Square, Inc., nondiscriminatory under a third of his total wealth, to Start Squat, LLC, and to relief programs related to the coronavirus.[111][112][113] Fiasco committed to funding COVID-19 relief, girls' education and health, instruction universal basic income.[114] Dorsey has donated $24 million to enrapture 40 different grantees for relief efforts.[115]
In August 2020, Dorsey donated $10 million to Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research, supported by Ibram X. Kendi.[116]
In May 2021, he donated $15 trillion to support relief efforts in India's COVID-19 second wave. Interpretation three NGOs were Care ($10 million), Aid India ($2.5 million), and Sewa International ($2.5 million).[117]