Can you imagine a world without social media platforms? You can’t right? It is impossible to know how our world would look like now if social media platforms did not exist. Many people who are reading this right now would have been born after these social media platforms came into the world. Probably all of you have accounts on social media platforms. Different people like to use different social media platforms. They choose the one that suits them. Some people have accounts on multiple social media platforms. When social media platforms first came into the scene they were seen as platforms that were only meant for the younger generation. But this is clearly not the case today. In the current generation, everybody is on social platforms. It can be kids, teenagers, young people, middle-aged people, and even some senior citizens everybody seems to be using social media platforms.
Not only that but even businesses, brands, celebrities, and many other organizations have been using social media platforms. The usage of social media platforms has drastically increased over the past decade all over the world. It doesn’t matter which country you are in you can always find people who are glued to their smartphones scrolling through some newsfeed. Social media platforms have become an essential part of people’s lives in the modern world. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat are some of the most famous social media platforms. Twitter is quite different from other social media platforms if you have observed. All you can is write a short tweet, post a photo, or video. But it has managed to become one of the most popular and successful social media platforms. But not many people don’t know who owns Twitter. This article is completely about that. But first, let’s see how it all started.
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History of Twitter
You all know Twitter as this microblogging social media platform but it is quite different from what people defined intended it to be initially. Before Twitter, its founding members were part of a podcasting company called Odeo. Jack Dorsey who is the co-founder and current CEO of the company proposed this idea where someone could communicate with a group of people using SMSs. The initial name of the platform was twttr because the domain name Twitter.com was already being used by others. The company managed to buy the domain six months after it was launched. It all started after the initial prototype was developed by Jack Dorsey and Florian Weber. Jack Dorsey made the first tweet. He also stated that the name of the company was perfect as it meant chirps of birds or a short burst of information. Initially, it was used by employees of Odeo as an internal communication service.
After this Dorsey along with some other people from Odeo acquired. Due to this acquisition, they got Odeo and Twitter. In 2007 Twitter became its own company. Twitter became popular when the South by Southwest conference was held in 2007. All of the people who were participating in the conference were tweeting about the conference. To make sure that everyone notices the tweets Twitter placed big plasma TVs in the hallways so that people could see every tweet made by the speakers, panelists, and whoever participated in it. Apart from that each person who spoke at the conference talked about Twitter and how great it was. Twitter also won the Web Award of that conference. The other thing that also boosted its popularity was when an astronaut of NASA T.J Creamer tweeted from space. Today more than people make nearly half a million tweets every day.
Who owns Twitter?
This is the part all of us have been waiting for. Just like other big companies Twitter is also a public company so its shares are owned by individual people and institutions. First, let’s take a look at the individual stakeholders.
Evan Williams
Out of all the co-founders Evan Williams owns the most shares of the company. This may come as a surprise to many people because most people who know about Twitter think that Jack Dorsey owns most shares as he is the CEO. But this is not at all true. Evan Williams owns 57 million shares of Twitter. This nearly 12% of the company. According to sources, his net worth is $1.4 billion.
Jack Dorsey
Right after Evan Williams comes Jack Dorsey who you already know as the current CEO of Twitter. Jack owns 22 million shares of Twitter which is about 4.7% of the company. This may not look like much compared to Evan Williams but it is actually a lot if you look at the company’s net worth.
Now that you know about the company’s individual shareholders let’s look at the top institutional shareholders.
Vanguard Group Inc
This is one company that seems to own major shares in almost all the top companies in the world. It has shares in companies like Apple, Facebook, Netflix, Disney, and many others. Vanguard Group Inc is a mutual fund and ETF management company. The company has $6.2 trillion in assets globally. It owns 10% of Twitter’s total shares.
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley is the company that holds the most number of shares after Vanguard Group Inc. It is a wealth management company that has nearly $2 trillion in assets globally. Morgan Stanley owns 5.7% of the total shares of Twitter.
BlackRock Inc
This is another company that owns major shares in top companies in the world. It has shares in almost all the companies that Vanguard Group Inc has shares in. Just like Vanguard, it is also a mutual fund and ETF management company. It owns nearly 4.7% of the total shares of Twitter.
Conclusion
These are the people and institutions that own Twitter. Twitter has become a tool through which people can know about the global discourse. It has given people a platform to express what they feel. Twitter has managed to make the playing field even by giving people a platform to counter popular beliefs, ideas, and opinions. You can retweet someone else’s tweet if you like or didn’t like what they said irrespective of their social status or political influence. It has become a platform where people can discuss and debate all kinds of topics. People can use this platform to spread awareness about all sorts of topics. By looking at the popularity it has gained it is easy to say that it is not going to fade away anytime soon. To know how it became a successful look at the business model of Twitter. You can also check out other articles that will tell you who owns which popular company. For instance, you can click here to know who owns Amazon.
