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Twitter co-creator keeps to the quiet edges of life By Tim Barker
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT)
ST. LOUIS — One night in mid-September, a man named The Cardinals were playing the Cubs. And he was there to toss out the first pitch. What a sight it was, as 46,000 fans shrugged and asked each other: "Who's Hard to blame them. After all, Dorsey isn't among the best known tech celebrities. But it's difficult these days not to know about Twitter, the social networking phenomenon he helped create. Dorsey may very well be the most important And considering the power of Twitter, where millions of people communicate in short bursts, one has to assume that Dorsey's anonymity is by choice: "He could build himself into an idol, 140 characters at a time if he wanted to," said Fortunately for Dorsey, he's quite well known in tech circles — a must, given his current push to start a new company using Twitter's technology. He won't offer details, but says the venture will deal with the health care and financial service sectors, and will involve While men like Apple founder He maintains apartments in If they made a movie about his life, you get the distinct feeling he'd be played by It's always been like this for Dorsey, who has never really been the typical anything. His uncle "How many 10-year-olds have that? He's always seen life a little differently," his uncle said.
"I was eager to grow up and get started," Dorsey said. "I knew I'd be working and working very hard some day." While Dorsey hasn't lived in It was the September visit that gave the city a chance to claim him as one of its own. There was the trip to His parents, who still live in "I was nervous for him. But I was really happy with the whole weekend," said Indeed, it would be hard to top the praise lavished on Dorsey by Webster's But does Dorsey really fit in the history books alongside a man like Gutenberg, whose printing press brought the written word to the masses? That's a tough one to answer when you consider Twitter has been around fewer than four years. Some communication experts stop well short of putting Dorsey and his partners on such a lofty shelf, saying they simply found a new way to use existing technology. Twitter allows users to post brief — 140-character maximum — missives or "tweets" that essentially say: This is what's on my mind right now. "None of this is as revolutionary as the printing press," said It's not even certain, yet, that the company — which doesn't produce any revenue — could survive without being propped up by venture capitalists, who have pumped more than Dorsey, who resigned last year as Twitter's chief executive and took the role of chairman, routinely faces questions about the company's financial prospects. And he routinely deflects them with comparisons to But even if Dorsey isn't the next Gutenberg, there's no denying he has played a major role in reshaping today's social landscape. Nearly 19 million people used Twitter at some point last month, according to data from the Aside from a six-year stint in It was 1991. He was a freshman at That love would later spawn a fascination with the coordinated movements of taxi cabs, couriers and emergency vehicles throughout a city. Their constant need to provide location updates formed the foundation for Twitter. Old friends remember Dorsey as a quiet kid, with a love of music, whose eyes lit up when talking about computers and something called the Internet. He was, in the words of his good friend He shows up on three pages in his senior year book. One identifies him as "That was kind of a big high school moment for him in terms of status," said Brouk, a newspaper reporter in Funny thing is, Haessig was at a loss when word began spreading around campus that a former DuBourg student was behind Twitter. "I had to go back to an old yearbook to jolt any memory of him," Haessig said. It's a theme that carried over into the two-plus years he spent at the "The name rings a bell, but I can't bring a face to mind," said The same cannot be said for Dorsey's first employer, Despite his inexperience, Dorsey was soon supervising full-time workers. Projects were designed for him. "I was the president of the company and he was the summer intern. But that doesn't necessarily mean I wasn't the one running errands," said McKelvey, who recently agreed to join Dorsey's new venture. Life for Dorsey has become complicated and demanding. He travels from coast to coast, lining up investors as he works to get his new company off the ground. Gone is the nose ring. It's been replaced by worries about how he's perceived by the world around him. It's a transition that's going well, said Wilson uses terms like "craftsmanlike" when describing Dorsey's attention to detail in the way he presents himself in social and professional settings. He suggests the rather anonymous version of Dorsey could soon be a thing of the past. "I think you'll see Jack being a little bit more out there in the future," Wilson said. "He's built a lot of confidence with Twitter." Maybe that's why Dorsey spent nearly three hours the night before that Cardinals game, practicing his pitches with a couple friends at a small lighted baseball field in He remembered summer nights spent with his grandmother, listening to Cardinals games on the radio and dreaming of what it would be like to play on a big league field. He thought of his family. And the thousands of strangers watching him represent his company. "It all just kind of boiled up into that one moment," said Dorsey, who ended up putting the pitch high and outside. "It could have been better. But I was happy." Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here. © 2009, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
