Twitter Began as a Side Project at a Failing Podcast Startup

Odeo was a podcasting startup in San Francisco, co-founded by Noah Glass and Evan Williams. It was meant to help people find and publish podcasts. It struggled, and by early 2006 the company was looking for new ideas.

2006: A status update

One came from an engineer, Jack Dorsey. He wanted a simple way to tell a group of friends what you were doing, by text message. Glass was one of its most enthusiastic backers and, by his account, came up with the original name: Twttr. On March 21, 2006, Dorsey sent the first message: “just setting up my twttr.”

In July 2006 Odeo released Twttr to the public. It was still a side project. The main product, the podcasting platform, was going nowhere, HISTORY.com notes.

That fall Williams made a move that later became controversial. He, Biz Stone and other Odeo employees formed a new company, Obvious Corp, which bought the assets of Odeo, including Twitter, from Odeo’s investors and other shareholders. Some of those investors later wondered whether Williams already saw what Twitter might become, Fast Company reported. Around the same time Glass was fired. His part in Twitter’s founding was largely forgotten for years.

2013: The IPO

On November 7, 2013, Twitter went public at $26 a share and raised $1.82 billion. The stock closed its first day at $44.90, up 73%. Bloomberg put the company’s market value at $24.5 billion; counting options and restricted stock, the AP and NPR put it above $31 billion.

2022: $44 billion

In April 2022 Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in cash, about $44 billion. Twitter accepted. By July Musk was trying to back out, saying he had been misled about the number of spam accounts. Twitter sued to hold him to the deal. Shortly before trial, he agreed to proceed at the original price. The purchase closed on October 27, 2022.

The New York Times reported that Musk agreed to provide roughly $33 billion of the price himself, with about $12.5 billion in loans. Twitter had reported $5.08 billion in revenue in 2021. Musk renamed the service X in 2023.

What it was worth after

Because X was private, its value was hard to see. The answer came in March 2025, when Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI acquired X in an all-stock deal. Musk said the deal valued X at $33 billion, or $45 billion including $12 billion of debt. An analyst at D.A. Davidson noted to Reuters that the $45 billion figure was $1 billion higher than the 2022 take-private price.

In February 2026 SpaceX acquired xAI. The social network that started as a side project at a podcast company is now part of Musk’s rocket company.

What the record shows

• The side project became the company. Odeo’s main product failed; the tool its staff built on the side did not.
• Buying back a failing company can be the deal of a career. Williams bought Odeo, and Twitter with it, from its investors in 2006.
• A takeover price is not a permanent value. Musk paid $44 billion; in 2025 X’s equity was valued at $33 billion.
• Founding stories leave people out. Noah Glass helped start and name Twitter and was gone before it was famous.

Other companies in this archive started as something else. Slack began as a game company’s internal tool, and Nintendo began with playing cards.