Through The Looking Glass
Through the Looking Glass by Quinn Dixsept
Special thanks to Super Nana
This article isn’t going to be about Alice in Wonderland, but it will be a trip, a journey behind the creation of twitter and the true forgotten founder, Noah Glass.
Noah Glass began his journey by creating a company called AudBlog. Audblog allowed a user to enter an audio blog from a remote location using a cell phone, you could call a phone number and it would turn your message into an MP3 hosted on the Internet.
One of his earliest investors was an ex google employee named Evan Williams and together they formed a company called Odeo, a podcasting company. Williams brought in his friend, another ex google employee Biz Stone, and they hired a web designer named Jack Dorsey.
Around this same time Apple announced that iTunes would begin to host podcasts which overshadowed Odeo so together they decided to go in a different direction.
Jack and Noah tossed around ideas until Jack suggested doing something that involved status, a quick application where you could say where you were and what you were doing.
Noah Glass wanted the perfect name and began thumbing through the dictionary, when he hit upon the word Twitter, “The light chirping sound made by certain birds”, he knew he had struck gold.
Noah became almost obsessed with the creation of Twitter.
He spent so much time programming and designing Twitter that it strained his marriage. One of the main things they all agreed on was that Twitter was to be a haven of free speech, they all loathed censorship.
Noah designed Twitter’s core features, wrote the program and came up with the name, this made him very protective of Twitter, it also made Jack Dorsey very uneasy because he thought Noah was too obsessed and controlling. Jack wanted Noah gone so he approached Evan Williams and hinted that Noah was becoming too obsessed and threatened to quit if Evan didn’t get rid of Noah.
In 2006 Williams, who also was concerned with Noah’s obsession for control of Twitter, ousted Noah Glass. The company that Noah Glass had poured his blood, sweat, and tears into, built from the ground up and named, was snatched from him by power hungry jealous rivals, and he was tossed into the dust bin as if he never existed. He was given some stock options and a small buy out sum, which was a pittance of what Twitter would eventually be worth. Noah became depressed and disillusioned, causing him to all but disappear from the Internet.
Jack Dorsey began to erase the mention of Noah’s name from Twitter and if you watch documentaries on the creation of Twitter, Noah’s name is never mentioned. Jack is credited with the creation of Twitter but it was Noah Glass that brought Jack’s idea to life.
This story isn’t all sad for Noah Glass, he eventually landed on his feet and created a new company called Olo, a digital ordering and delivery platform for restaurants. Olo serves 400 restaurant brands and 64,000 locations in the United States and Canada. The company thrived under covid and went public in March of 2021.
Articles have begun to appear about Noah Glass and his contribution to Twitter, but not many. I wonder if Elon Musk knows Noah Glass?