Twitter co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams has revealed that?he personally paid the cell phone bill of the Dalai Lama for many years?after onboarding the Tibetan spiritual leader on the social networking platform.
The Dalai Lama's Twitter account says that he joined the platform in February 2009. He currently has 18.8 million followers, and his tweets typically centre around global peace, humanity, education, and compassion.?Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey launched Twitter in March 2006.
In an interview with Bloomberg, the Twitter co-founder recalled the fun moment when he was tasked with introducing Twitter to the Dalai Lama and getting him to open an account.?When Williams met the Dalai Lama, he realised the spiritual leader wasn't really briefed about the product and how it worked. So, he had to handhold him a fair bit, open an account, and even give him a Blackberry phone so that he could use Twitter.
And the Dalai Lama wasn't the only one. He had also helped popular American TV show host Oprah Winfrey open her Twitter account and, in fact, posted the first tweet for her.
"Another memorable one [apart from Oprah Winfrey] was the Dalai Lama, who supposedly wanted to be on Twitter. It was super awkward. He's delightful obviously but it felt like I was there to sell him on Twitter. And I said, "So, we are going to get you on" and he's like "I don't need that". But I was told that's why we're here. I thought this was all sold through already. This was pre-iPhone, I think. And so, we got his account all set up. So, we just gave him the Blackberry. And he used this account or one of his people used this account for years but my wife and I paid the bill for the Blackberry (to ensure he would keep tweeting). So, we were paying the Dalai Lama cell phone bill for a very long time," Williams recounted with joy, as per the Business Today report.?
Twitter co-founder Williams also recalled his appearance at the Oprah Winfrey show on April 17, 2009, and getting her to post her first tweet.
"I got invited on Oprah. The plan was I'd talk about?Twitter. She'd ask me couple of questions. She'd send her first tweet on air. And then she hit the key with the yellow tape on it. It didn't send the tweet and the tweet went away. So, I typed in her tweet," Williams said, as the report mentioned.
The first tweet of Oprah Winfrey, which Williams had helped push out, reads: "HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21ST CENTURY"
Oprah Winfrey's joining Twitter was considered one of the turning points for the social media app in its early days. Fourteen years later, Oprah has 42.3 million followers on the platform, and Twitter has changed hands in ownership, with Elon Musk buying the platform for $44 billion last year.
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