Facebook, Steve Ballmer and Al Gore - everyone tried to buy Twitter

The pending book of the journalist Nick Bilton's history of Twitter revealed a number of secrets about the company, including the active attempts of Mark Zuckerberg to buy a microblogging service in 2009, writes The Verge. According to the excerpt published in The New York Times Magazine, Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg and Al Gore all talked with the former head of the company Evan Williams about a possible deal, and Zuckerberg went even further, trying to hire co-founder Jack Dorsey after he left the company.

The excerpt of the book also tells about the fierce struggle for control over the company and the right to be called Twitter’s founder. Kawhauder Noah Glass, who made a great contribution to the development of the platform at an early stage and even came up with the very name Twitter, had to leave the company, because otherwise his departure threatened Dorsey.

Dorsey is criticized in the book for his ineffective management style and inexperience. As Bilton writes, he usually didn’t linger at work until late to get to drawing classes, hot yoga, or courses at a local fashion school. Williams once said to him: "You can be a tailor or CEO of Twitter, but you can't be one or the other." A year later, Williams replaced Dorsey as CEO.
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However, thanks to the correct work with journalists and understanding of the life of Silicon Valley, Jack Dorsey managed to secure the status of the founder and ideological leader of Twitter, which allowed him to return to power in the company after Williams lost the position of the board of directors. After the upcoming IPO, Dorsey is expected to receive half a billion dollars, while Glass is almost nothing. As one employee told Bilton, "Jack Dorsey's greatest product is Jack Dorsey."