As Elon Musk drags Twitter and its users through more and more turbulence, its founder Jack Dorsey has made a supportive observation from the sidelines.
He posted that “Running Twitter is hard” and “it’s easy to critique the decisions from afar”.
The 46-year-old billionaire left the platform he co-founded in 2006 to launch what he calls a “decentralised” alternative, which looks a lot like Twitter.
But while Dorsey rolls out Bluesky Social and continues to sing the praises of Bitcoin, Twitter users are left at the whim of his former favourite Tweeter.
Here Sky News looks at how Twitter’s founder got to where he is.
Image: Addressing students at the Indian Institute of Technology
Self-made taxi dispatch developer
Dorsey was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1976. His father developed spectrometers.
By the time he was 14 he’d developed an unusual interest in the software that dispatches taxis.
He went to the University of Missouri-Rolla at 19 and transferred to New York University two years later, but dropped out a semester before he was due to graduate.
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Instead he moved to California, where he created his own company to send out taxis, couriers and emergency service vehicles via the internet.
While working as a programmer for the dispatch platform in 2000, he decided he wanted to create a messaging service to update his friends on what he was doing – without having to sit in front of a computer.
He approached a podcasting company called Odeo, where he got a job alongside Christopher ‘Biz’ Stone, Evan Williams and Noah Glass – who would become his Twitter co-founders.
Image: Twitter co-founders Dorsey (left), Biz Stone (second left) and Evan Williams celebrate stock exchange listing with Dick Costolo in 2013
Although Dorsey had been inspired by instant messaging platforms such as AOL and MSN, he and Stone decided a text-based service would better suit his status-update idea.
In two weeks they’d built a prototype for Twitter.
When Odeo went out of business in 2006, Dorsey returned to the messaging idea and officially launched ‘Twittr’ in March that year, making himself chief executive.
Image: Dorsey in October 2010
Overnight billionaire
Dorsey secured the support of venture capitalists and as celebrities signed up the app grew in popularity.
Two years later, Dorsey moved from chief executive to chairman of the board, reportedly having often left work early to prioritise hobbies such as yoga and fashion design.
When he was younger he briefly dabbled with modelling.
Image: Seen in 2016
In 2009 he courted controversy after joining a US State Department trip to Iraq. Designed to rebuild tech hopes there after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the trip itself was fairly uneventful.
But later that year when the Green Revolution happened, Dorsey agreed to reschedule planned maintenance to Twitter’s servers so protesters could still communicate.
It was seen as a breach of policy given President Barack Obama had promised the US would not meddle in Iraq’s affairs. Dorsey went to Russia on another State Department delegation the following year.
Image: Dorsey and President Barack Obama at Twitter’s town hall in 2011
In 2011 he invited Mr Obama to Twitter’s first ever town hall – where he had to remind him to keep his answers to 140 characters.
Two years later, although it hadn’t been launched with profit in mind, Twitter became a listed company, making Dorsey an overnight billionaire.
When in 2015 the company’s replacement chief executive Dick Costolo announced his resignation, Dorsey returned as interim – but took up the post on a permanent basis in October.
Meanwhile back in 2010 Dorsey had begun splitting his time between Twitter and a new venture – Square – technology that transformed smartphones and tablets into debit card readers for small businesses.
But as competitors launched rival products, it began to struggle with losses of up to $100million (£79m).
Image: Pictured in 2019
Dorsey rebranded Square ‘Block’ in 2021, in reference to his interest in Blockchain, officially giving himself the job title ‘Block Head’ in 2022.
Back at Twitter in 2016, the 140-character limit was effectively increased by no longer including links or photos in the count. The decision was a bid to attract new users – as the number of daily tweets had fallen globally.
A year later it increased again – doubling to 280 characters.
Tech moving faster than policy
In 2018, Twitter and other social media platforms began having to answer to the US government.
The first time Dorsey testified, alongside then-Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, he was quizzed on interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Hours of questioning saw Dorsey post a picture of his heartrate on Twitter. The platform was also accused of anti-Conservative bias, share prices fell, and the decision was made to ban all political advertising the following year.
Image: Dorsey and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg give evidence to Congress in 2018
During his time in office, Dorsey met with President Donald Trump, who had expressed concern his followers were being removed.
Dorsey oversaw misinformation warning labels applied to some of Mr Trump’s tweets during his 2020 election campaign and the permanent suspension of his account following the Capitol riots of January 2021.
Mr Trump set up his own platform – Truth Social, while Dorsey stuck by the ban, but also expressed concerns it set a “dangerous precedent”.
He appeared before Congress on two other occasions as Twitter boss – once in October 2020 and again the following month.
Image: Dorsey gives evidence to Congress via videolink in 2020
The first time, in front of the US Senate Commerce Committee, he answered questions alongside Facebook and Google executives about a law that protects tech companies for being prosecuted over content generated on their platforms.
Dorsey said changing it would “collapse how we communicate on the Internet”.
The following month he gave evidence alongside Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on how content was moderated around the 2020 election.
When COVID emerged in 2020 the Twitter founder promised to donate $1bn (£0.79bn) of his total wealth to relief programmes.
The following year when the Delta variant hit India, he donated £15m (£11.8m) to support programmes there.
The pandemic scuppered plans he’d announced in 2019 to move to Africa. He said the continent would “define the future (especially the bitcoin one!)”.
Image: Elon Musk
Musk takes Twitter
Dorsey and Musk’s relationship predates his ill-fated takeover.
When in 2020 it was reported that one of Twitter’s investors Elliott Management was trying to replace Dorsey as chief executive, Musk tweeted his support, saying he had a “good heart”.
In return, Dorsey said Musk was one of his favourite Twitter users and that his updates “focused on solving existential problems and sharing his thinking openly”.
The founder added that he enjoyed the “ups and downs” of Musk’s use of his site – something he may have later come to regret – to which Musk replied: “Twitter rocks!”
They shared an enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies, with Dorsey describing Bitcoin – or ‘The B Word’ as he calls it – as “direct activism against an… exclusionary financial system”.
In late-2021 Dorsey announced he was leaving Twitter in a staff email posted to his account, claiming he wanted to move the firm away from its “founding and founders”.
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Musk, believed to be the wealthiest person in the world, began buying shares in Twitter at the beginning of 2022.
By April he was the biggest shareholder, with a 9.1% stake.
He was invited to join the board of directors – and despite initially turning the role down – then made an unsolicited offer to buy the entire company for $44bn (£34.5bn).
By July, Musk had said he wanted to back out of the deal as Twitter had failed to uphold its promise of cracking down on spambot accounts.
The move triggered legal action against Musk – who just weeks before a trial was due to start in Delaware – gave in and decided to go ahead, closing the deal in November.
Musk began by firing half Twitter’s employees, including the chief executive, which then triggered mass resignations.
After a tumultuous few months in the job, in which he expressed regret for buying the platform, he has made several chaotic changes and given up the job of chief executive.
Image: Twitter and Bluesky logos are seen in this illustration taken November 7, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Beginnings of Bluesky
Dorsey, meanwhile has been working on a Twitter successor, Bluesky Social.
He started it in 2019, but soft launched it with a beta version in late-2022.
Having seen Twitter grow at dizzying speed, he is rolling out membership on an invite-only basis.
Bluesky is a “decentralised” platform, which Dorsey hopes will stop the kind of hostile concentration of power we’ve seen with Musk.
The bosses of four of Britain’s biggest banks are secretly urging the chancellor to ditch the most significant regulatory change imposed after the 2008 financial crisis, warning her its continued imposition is inhibiting UK economic growth.
Sky News has obtained an explosive letter sent this week by the chief executives of HSBC Holdings, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Santander UK in which they argue that bank ring-fencing “is not only a drag on banks’ ability to support business and the economy, but is now redundant”.
The CEOs’ letter represents an unprecedented intervention by most of the UK’s major lenders to abolish a reform which cost them billions of pounds to implement and which was designed to make the banking system safer by separating groups’ high street retail operations from their riskier wholesale and investment banking activities.
Their request to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, to abandon ring-fencing 15 years after it was conceived will be seen as a direct challenge to the government to take drastic action to support the economy during a period when it is forcing economic regulators to scrap red tape.
It will, however, ignite controversy among those who believe that ditching the UK’s most radical post-crisis reform risks exacerbating the consequences of any future banking industry meltdown.
In their letter to the chancellor, the quartet of bank chiefs told Ms Reeves that: “With global economic headwinds, it is crucial that, in support of its Industrial Strategy, the government’s Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy removes unnecessary constraints on the ability of UK banks to support businesses across the economy and sends the clearest possible signal to investors in the UK of your commitment to reform.
“While we welcomed the recent technical adjustments to the ring-fencing regime, we believe it is now imperative to go further.
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“Removing the ring-fencing regime is, we believe, among the most significant steps the government could take to ensure the prudential framework maximises the banking sector’s ability to support UK businesses and promote economic growth.”
Work on the letter is said to have been led by HSBC, whose new chief executive, Georges Elhedery, is among the signatories.
His counterparts at Lloyds, Charlie Nunn; NatWest’s Paul Thwaite; and Mike Regnier, who runs Santander UK, also signed it.
While Mr Thwaite in particular has been public in questioning the continued need for ring-fencing, the letter – sent on Tuesday – is the first time that such a collective argument has been put so forcefully.
The only notable absentee from the signatories is CS Venkatakrishnan, the Barclays chief executive, although he has publicly said in the past that ring-fencing is not a major financial headache for his bank.
Other industry executives have expressed scepticism about that stance given that ring-fencing’s origination was largely viewed as being an attempt to solve the conundrum posed by Barclays’ vast investment banking operations.
The introduction of ring-fencing forced UK-based lenders with a deposit base of at least £25bn to segregate their retail and investment banking arms, supposedly making them easier to manage in the event that one part of the business faced insolvency.
Banks spent billions of pounds designing and setting up their ring-fenced entities, with separate boards of directors appointed to each division.
More recently, the Treasury has moved to increase the deposit threshold from £25bn to £35bn, amid pressure from a number of faster-growing banks.
Sam Woods, the current chief executive of the main banking regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority, was involved in formulating proposals published by the Sir John Vickers-led Independent Commission on Banking in 2011.
Legislation to establish ring-fencing was passed in the Financial Services Reform (Banking) Act 2013, and the regime came into effect in 2019.
In addition to ring-fencing, banks were forced to substantially increase the amount and quality of capital they held as a risk buffer, while they were also instructed to create so-called ‘living wills’ in the event that they ran into financial trouble.
The chancellor has repeatedly spoken of the need to regulate for growth rather than risk – a phrase the four banks hope will now persuade her to abandon ring-fencing.
Britain is the only major economy to have adopted such an approach to regulating its banking industry – a fact which the four bank chiefs say is now undermining UK competitiveness.
“Ring-fencing imposes significant and often overlooked costs on businesses, including SMEs, by exposing them to banking constraints not experienced by their international competitors, making it harder for them to scale and compete,” the letter said.
“Lending decisions and pricing are distorted as the considerable liquidity trapped inside the ring-fence can only be used for limited purposes.
“Corporate customers whose financial needs become more complex as they grow larger, more sophisticated, or engage in international trade, are adversely affected given the limits on services ring-fenced banks can provide.
“Removing ring-fencing would eliminate these cliff-edge effects and allow firms to obtain the full suite of products and services from a single bank, reducing administrative costs”.
In recent months, doubts have resurfaced about the commitment of Spanish banking giant Santander to its UK operations amid complaints about the costs of regulation and supervision.
The UK’s fifth-largest high street lender held tentative conversations about a sale to either Barclays or NatWest, although they did not progress to a formal stage.
HSBC, meanwhile, is particularly restless about the impact of ring-fencing on its business, given its sprawling international footprint.
“There has been a material decline in UK wholesale banking since ring-fencing was introduced, to the detriment of British businesses and the perception of the UK as an internationally orientated economy with a global financial centre,” the letter said.
“The regime causes capital inefficiencies and traps liquidity, preventing it from being deployed efficiently across Group entities.”
The four bosses called on Ms Reeves to use this summer’s Mansion House dinner – the City’s annual set-piece event – to deliver “a clear statement of intent…to abolish ring-fencing during this Parliament”.
Doing so, they argued, would “demonstrate the government’s determination to do what it takes to promote growth and send the strongest possible signal to investors of your commitment to the City and to strengthen the UK’s position as a leading international financial centre”.
The Post Office will next week unveil a £1.75bn deal with dozens of banks which will allow their customers to continue using Britain’s biggest retail network.
Sky News has learnt the next Post Office banking framework will be launched next Wednesday, with an agreement that will deliver an additional £500m to the government-owned company.
Banking industry sources said on Friday the deal would be worth roughly £350m annually to the Post Office – an uplift from the existing £250m-a-year deal, which expires at the end of the year.
The sources added that in return for the additional payments, the Post Office would make a range of commitments to improving the service it provides to banks’ customers who use its branches.
Banks which participate in the arrangements include Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Santander UK.
Under the Banking Framework Agreement, the 30 banks and mutuals’ customers can access the Post Office’s 11,500 branches for a range of services, including depositing and withdrawing cash.
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The service is particularly valuable to those who still rely on physical cash after a decade in which well over 6,000 bank branches have been closed across Britain.
In 2023, more than £10bn worth of cash was withdrawn over the counter and £29bn in cash was deposited over the counter, the Post Office said last year.
A new, longer-term deal with the banks comes at a critical time for the Post Office, which is trying to secure government funding to bolster the pay of thousands of sub-postmasters.
Reliant on an annual government subsidy, the reputation of the network’s previous management team was left in tatters by the Horizon IT scandal and the wrongful conviction of hundreds of sub-postmasters.
A Post Office spokesperson declined to comment ahead of next week’s announcement.
As Chancellor Rachel Reeves meets her counterpart, US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent to discuss an “economic agreement” between the two countries, the latest trade figures confirm three realities that ought to shape negotiations.
The first is that the US remains a vital customer for UK businesses, the largest single-nation export market for British goods and the third-largest import partner, critical to the UK automotive industry, already landed with a 25% tariff, and pharmaceuticals, which might yet be.
In 2024 the US was the UK’s largest export market for cars, worth £9bn to companies including Jaguar Land Rover, Bentley and Aston Martin, and accounting for more than 27% of UK automotive exports.
Little wonder the domestic industry fears a heavy and immediate impact on sales and jobs should tariffs remain.
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American car exports to the UK by contrast are worth just £1bn, which may explain why the chancellor may be willing to lower the current tariff of 10% to 2.5%.
For UK medicines and pharmaceutical producers meanwhile, the US was a more than £6bn market in 2024. Currently exempt from tariffs, while Mr Trump and his advisors think about how to treat an industry he has long-criticised for high prices, it remains vulnerable.
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The second point is that the US is even more important for the services industry. British exports of consultancy, PR, financial and other professional services to America were worth £131bn last year.
That’s more than double the total value of the goods traded in the same direction, but mercifully services are much harder to hammer with the blunt tool of tariffs, though not immune from regulation and other “non-tariff barriers”.
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The third point is that, had Donald Trump stuck to his initial rationale for tariffs, UK exporters should not be facing a penny of extra cost for doing business with the US.
The president says he slapped blanket tariffs on every nation bar Russia to “rebalance” the US economy and reverse goods trade ‘deficits’ – in which the US imports more than it exports to a given country.
That heavily contested argument might apply to Mexico, Canada, China and many other manufacturing nations, but it does not meaningfully apply to Britain.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show the US ran a small goods trade deficit with the UK in 2024 of £2.2bn, importing £59.3bn of goods against exports of £57.1bn.
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Add in services trade, in which the UK exports more than double what it imports from the US, and the UK’s surplus – and thus the US ‘deficit’ – swells to nearly £78bn.
That might be a problem were it not for the US’ own accounts of the goods and services trade with Britain, which it says actually show a $15bn (£11.8bn) surplus with the UK.
You might think that they cannot both be right, but the ONS disagrees. The disparity is caused by the way the US Bureau of Economic Analysis accounts for services, as well as a range of statistical assumptions.
“The presence of trade asymmetries does not indicate that either country is inaccurate in their estimation,” the ONS said.
That might be encouraging had Mr Trump not ignored his own arguments and landed the UK, like everyone else in the world, with a blanket 10% tariff on all goods.
Trade agreements are notoriously complex, protracted affairs, which helps explain why after nine years of trying the UK still has not got one with the US, and the Brexit deal it did with the EU against a self-imposed deadline has been proved highly disadvantageous.