The Billion-Dollar Betrayal: Noah Glass and the Forgotten Genesis of Twitter

Imagine this. A visionary, a coder, and a business strategist launch a startup. What's left when everything settles?

For Noah Glass, not wealth. Not recognition. Just erasure from the story.

This is the untold tale of a man who created what would become a global communication platform. His colleagues pushed him out. He watched his creation morph into a $44 billion empire. Elon Musk eventually took notice. It's drama beyond any Silicon Valley script.

Noah Glass: The Original Architect

Early 2000s. Noah Glass was building the future. Others hadn't caught on yet. He founded Odeo, a podcasting platform when few people knew what podcasts were. His team? Pretty impressive:

• Evan Williams, who became Odeo's CEO and later struck it rich
• Jack Dorsey, just a talented coder with ideas back then

Then it happened. Apple jumped into podcasting in 2005. Overnight, Odeo's business model crumbled.

From Crisis to Creation

Noah didn't give up. Not his style. He gathered his team for a brainstorm: create something new. Something better. During this meeting, Jack Dorsey mentioned a simple SMS service for status updates. Seemed kind of basic, but it sparked something in Noah.

Noah ran with the concept. Refined it. Named it Twitter. He helped turn a vague idea into something real—a platform that would kind of change everything about how people communicate globally.

The Silicon Valley Power Play

The story gets darker here. Tech isn't always about cool innovation. It can get ugly.

Evan Williams didn't exactly promote Twitter's potential to investors. This let him buy the company cheap. Meanwhile, Jack Dorsey worked behind scenes to remove Noah. The man who named and nurtured Twitter? Fired without ceremony.

No stake. No credit. No legacy.

Twitter's Meteoric Rise

2007. Twitter exploded:

• Celebrities couldn't get enough
• Politicians found their megaphone
• It became this global thing

Jack Dorsey became CEO. Twitter became cultural shorthand. Noah Glass? He faded away—deliberately erased from the origin story.

The Musk Acquisition and Transformation

By 2022, Twitter had grown so influential that Elon Musk bought it. Price tag: $44 billion. He renamed it X. New vision, he said.

Through all these massive changes, Noah Glass—the original dreamer—stayed forgotten. The public barely knew his name. Those who built fortunes on his idea? They didn't mention him much.

The Continuing Legacy

October 2025. Noah Glass remains mostly absent from Twitter/X's official history. He's pursued other ventures. Keeps a lower profile than his former colleagues. Shows up occasionally for interviews. Talks about innovation without bitterness.

Noah's story tells us something about tech:

• Visionaries sometimes get pushed aside
• Creators lose their creations
• The real stories aren't as clean as the public versions

Noah Glass didn't just build a platform. He started a communication revolution that others profited from. Executives became billionaires. He got shown the door.

History has ways of revealing truth, though. When you see X today, maybe think of Noah Glass—the forgotten founder whose idea changed how we talk to each other.