Jack Dorsey Cofounder and creator of Twitter

 Jack Dorsey Cofounder and creator of Twitter 

The hand-wringing about monetization and user growth at Twitter TWTR -1.5% gave way to euphoria after the company announced second-quarter results Tuesday evening, and Wednesday morning’s stock surge swelled the fortunes of its billionaire founders.

Twitter rocketed 20% higher, and was as high as $48.00, adding almost $5 billion to its market capitalization in what shapes up to be its best one-day performance since it jumped 73% on its first day of trading last November. Wednesday’s pop lifted the net worth of co-founder and board member Evan Williams by $465 million to $2.9 billion, and boosted fellow co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey’s fortune by $193.5 million to $2 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time rankings of the world’s billionaires.

On Tuesday’s earnings conference call, Chief Executive Dick Costolo emphasized Twitter’s global reach, which the company maintains goes far beyond its 271 million monthly active users. That’s key for a company that faces inescapable comparisons with much larger rival Facebook and its billion-plus users.

The problem with that kind of thinking though, as Jeff Bercovici pointed out yesterday, is that it aims to include users Twitter doesn’t make money from and may never be able to monetize. That monetization question is a critical one that Facebook had to answer as its user base shifted to mobile and one that Twitter is also grappling with at an earlier stage in its development. (See “Twitter Reveals Its Plan For Growing As Big As Facebook.”)

Though much is made about the big lead Facebook has on Twitter, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney argues that the latter also has something of a template thanks to its larger competitor. “The Facebook historical monetization and margin ramps provide a clear roadmap for where Twitter’s P&L can go. Higher,” Mahaney writes.

“Twitter is the highest-multiple stock we cover. But it also has the highest growth rates. So we view Twitter’s super-premium multiples as well-warranted.”

The bulls were emboldened by Tuesday’s results, which included $312 million in revenue, up 124% from a year ago, and EBITDA of $54.1 million.

Goldman analyst Heath Terry wrote that the company is “in the very early stages of a very long growth cycle…as it leverages cultural ubiquity, invests in product and technology, and grows the platform.”

While investors cheered the second-quarter results, the questions leading into the release haven’t all been answered. Sterne Agee’s Arvind Bhatia noted Twitter has shown it can deliver strong user growth, especially with a boost from the 2014 FIFA World Cup, but that the jury is still out on whether it can become a mainstream platform on par with Facebook.

“[I]f the World Cup was an important driver of user growth, such user growth may be less sustainable,” Bhatia wrote. “Q3 results, without the benefit of the World Cup, will likely be more indicative of the underlying trends.”

UBS analyst Eric Sheridan said the spike in Twitter shares immediately following Tuesday’s reports was a “likely near-term top as investors digest valuation.”

Sheridan expects “the market already reflects better than expected results and excellent forward operating results,” but after Twitter beat UBS’ estimates the firm did up its sell rating to a neutral even though it thinks the stock remains range bound.

A similar sentiment came from JPMorgan’s Doug Anmuth, who was “are encouraged by Twitter’s strong quarter and the company’s momentum in both product experiences and advertising,” but kept a neutral rating as he looks for continued user gains and believes the stock is fairly valued after the earnings-driven rally.

SunTrust’s Robert Peck isn’t too worried about the fleeting impact of the World Cup or the lofty valuation, calling Q2 an “inflection point quarter” as Twitter aims to make up ground on its average revenue per user, which is about 50% that of Facebook. “We remain positive on the growth outlook for one of the few platforms of the Internet,” Peck wrote.

Even with Wednesday’s surge, Twitter shares remain well below the $74.73 peak reached in late December and are still down 26% in 2014, partly thanks to a lengthy losing streak in May.

Source : http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2014/07/30/twitter-takes-off-lifts-fortunes-of-co-founders-dorsey-williams/

Jack Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American web developer and businessman widely known as a co-founder and co-creator of Twitter, and as the founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company In 2008, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. For 2012, The Wall Street Journal gave him the "Innovator of the Year Award" for technology

 Being New York Mayor is his dream job 
Let's help Jack make his dream come true

Dorsey was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Marcia (Smith) and Tim Dorsey. He is of part Italian descent. He was raised Catholic, and his uncle is a Catholic priest in Cincinnati He went to Catholic high school, at Bishop DuBourg High School.

By age thirteen, Dorsey had become interested in dispatch routing. Some of the open source software he created in the area of dispatch logistics is still used by many taxi cab companies. Dorsey attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology before subsequently transferring to New York University, where he first came up with the idea that became Twitter While working on dispatching as a programmer, he later moved to California

When he was 15, Dorsey wrote dispatch software that is still used by some taxicab companies today.

In Oakland in 2000, Dorsey started his company to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the Web. His other projects and ideas at this time included networks of medical devices and a "frictionless service market" In July 2000, building on dispatching and inspired in part by LiveJournal and possibly by AOL Instant Messenger, he had the idea for a Web-based realtime status/short message communication service.

When he first saw implementations of instant messaging, Dorsey wondered whether the software's user status output could be shared among friends easily He approached Odeo, who at the time happened to be interested in text messaging. Dorsey and Biz Stone decided that SMS text suited the status message idea, and built a prototype of Twitter in about two weeksThe idea attracted many users at Odeo and investment from Evan Williams who had left Google after selling it Pyra Labs and Blogger.

Creation of Twitter

After a brief stint at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, Dorsey transferred to New York University. In the tradition of computer science entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, he dropped out of college before receiving his degree. Instead, Dorsey moved to Oakland, California, and in 2000 started a company offering his dispatch software through the Web. Shortly after starting his company, Dorsey came up with the idea for a site that would combine the broad reach of dispatch software with the ease of instant messaging.
Dorsey approached a now-defunct Silicon Valley company called Odeo to pitch the concept. "He came to us with this idea: 'What if you could share your status with all your friends really easily, so they know what you're doing?'" said Biz Stone, a former Odeo executive. Dorsey, Stone and Odeo co-founder Evan Williams started a new company, called Obvious, which later evolved into Twitter. Within two weeks, Dorsey had built a simple site where users could instantly post short messages of 140 characters or less, known in Twitter parlance as "tweets."
On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey posted the world's first tweet: "just setting up my twttr." Dorsey was named the company's chief executive officer. He removed his nose ring in an attempt to look the part of a mature Silicon Valley executive, though he kept his boyish, mop-like haircut and abstract, forearm-length tattoo whose shape represented, among other things, the human clavicle bone. Co-founder Evan Williams replaced Dorsey as Twitter's CEO in October 2008, with Dorsey staying on as company chairman.

Twitter Success

Twitter was initially derided by some as a tool for the shallow and self-centered to broadcast the minutiae of their lives to the universe. Late-night comedy host Conan O'Brien even featured a segment called "Twitter Tracker" that mocked users of the service. In its early days, the site also suffered from frequent service outages. But as celebrities and CEOs alike began tweeting, Twitter was no longer the brunt of so many jokes. Suddenly the head of the "microblogging" movement, Twitter became a powerful platform for U.S. Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008, as a method for updating their supporters while on the campaign trail.
Twitter vaulted to international prominence after the June 2009 presidential elections in Iran, when thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets to protest the claimed victory of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When the government blocked text messaging and satellite feeds of foreign news coverage, Iranian Twitter users flooded the site with live updates. A U.S. State Department official even emailed Dorsey to request that Twitter delay its scheduled maintenance so that protestors could keep tweeting. "It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?" said a State Department spokesman, describing the call. Twitter complied.

 Williams, Stone and Noah Glass co-founded Obvious, which then spun off Twitter Inc. with Dorsey as the CEO In his role during the pivotal days of the company's founding, a compilation chronicling the originally named "twttr" and the time leading up to the official launch, is shown in a timeline of tweets revealing Twitter's beginnings.As chief executive officer, Dorsey saw the startup through two rounds of funding by the venture capitalists who backed the company. He reportedly lost his position for leaving work early to enjoy other pursuits such as yoga and fashion design. On October 16, 2008 Williams took over the role of CEO, while Dorsey became chairman of the board On March 28, 2011, Dorsey returned to Twitter as Executive Chairman after Dick Costolo replaced Williams as the CEO.

As the service began to grow in popularity, Dorsey chose the improvement of uptime as top priority,even over creating revenue – which, as of 2008, Twitter was not designed to earn. Dorsey described the commercial use of Twitter and its API as two things that could lead to paid features. His three guiding principles, which are shared by the whole company and through its culture, are simplicity, constraint, and craftsmanship

Dorsey developed a small business platform to accept debit and credit card payments on a mobile device called Square, released in May 2010. The small, square-shaped device attaches to iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or Android devices via the headphone jack, and as a mini card reader allows a person to swipe her or his card, choose an amount to give to the recipient and then sign his or her name for confirmation. Square is also a system for sending paperless receipts via text message or email, and is available as a free app for iOS and Android OS. The company grew from 10 employees in December 2009 to over a hundred employees by June 2011. Square's office is located on Market Street in San Francisco In September 2012, Business Insider magazine valued Square Inc. at $3.2 billion. Dorsey is CEO of Square, Inc.

@jack and I at #palazzovecchio in #florence. It has been a great emotion to meet him pic.twitter.com/L53iVzoqr4
— Dario Nardella (@DarioNardella) August 6, 2014

Producer Tom Anderson and correspondent Lara Logan interviewed Dorsey for a segment of CBS 60 Minutes called "The Innovator: Jack Dorsey" which aired during March 2013 In 2013, talking to CNN, Dorsey expressed admiration for Michael Bloomberg and his reinvention through design and simple interfaces of what it means to be mayor. Dorsey thinks becoming mayor of New York City is an aspiration that would raise the bar for him. Dorsey served as a judge for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's NYC BigApps competition in 2011.
Dorsey was announced as a new member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company on December 24, 2013. The press release referred to Dorsey as a "talented entrepreneur" and explained that his experience is aligned with the corporation's "strategic priorities