Information Technology Reference
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rounds of venture financing. Venture money usually means that either an IPO or
an acquisition will eventually occur because the venture capitalists want a large
return in a fairly short time period.
The Twitter network itself has become phenomenally large and popular, with
more than 140 million users and more than 340 million tweets per day. Twitter did
not stay with short text messages but added the ability to link photographs, and
it also provides a news feed. Companies can also set up Twitter accounts and use
them to communicate with customers.
Note
Jack Dorsey has also founded another interesting company called
Square. The Square company allows credit card purchases via
smartphones that use a small square card reader that plugs into a
cell phone port.
Twitter has become an unusual social domain where the famous communicate
with fans in a fairly benign and friendly social environment. It is one of the few
places where ordinary people can read messages from celebrities and world fig-
ures like President Obama, Tiger Woods, and Jennifer Lopez on a daily basis.
In fact, it is partly due to the use of Twitter by A-list celebrities that makes it so
popular to such a wide audience. Twitter gives ordinary citizens a glimpse into the
daily lives of many of the most famous people in the world.
The fact that thousands of politicians, movie stars, and sports figures use Twit-
ter is proof that computers and software have entered our daily lives and changed
our methods of communication in new and unexpected ways.
YouTube
YouTube is an interesting company whose business is entirely based on new tech-
nologies. One technology is the World Wide Web and a second technology is that
of digital images for photographs and videos. Of course, computers and software
are needed as well. This company could not have existed more than 20 years ago.
This company was founded in 2005 in San Mateo, California, by Chad Hurley,
Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. All three had been employed at PayPal. Like
Apple, YouTube was also founded in a garage in Silicon Valley.
The company started with “angel” funding, but in November 2005, it received
about $3.5 million in venture funding from Sequoia Capital.
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