Twitter co-founder – and former CEO – Jack Dorsey is stepping in as an advisor to Ustream.tv, the popular live video community site. By now, you will / should have read about how Twitter came to be and how vital the role of Dorsey was to the whole story, essentially laying the groundworks for the real-time updating service we’ve all come to love (or not understand).
This history prompts Ustream.tv’s co-founder and CEO John Ham to state that “Jack has changed the internet forever”, which is a little over the top but no doubt his experience with real-time culture and the pains of scaling rapidly growing internet services will be a big help to the Mountain View, CA-based startup.
Dorsey is the third outsider to join Ustream’s Advisory Board, after General Wesley Clark and Former Head of Monetization at YouTube Shashi Seth. The company has raised over $13 million to date but faces stiff competition from similar services like Stickam, Kyte, Justin.TV and Mogulus (to name but a few), so it can use all the advice it gets.
Update: Twitter needs some advice too. The service is currently down for the count as from around 11:19 AM CET (aaah, memories).
Hey Robin. Thanks for linking to the Twitter Story written by my friend, @dom.
And to Jack. Good luck. I think this is a great move.
“Jack has changed the internet forever” — Pure PR.
I thought it was Al Gore.
Anjali Sen
kinda true, i guess
“for the past four years, male modeling has been dominated by one man and five syllables: Der-ek Zoo-land-er. “
I’d love to tweet him good luck – if Twitter hadn’t just completely crashed. It had to happen at some point.
Perhaps this is your fault Techcrunch? Or perhaps, it is inevitable. In the UK the media coverage for Twitter has been huge recently, and Twitter is definitely tipping, I can feel that *offline*.
So true:
‘the real-time updating service we’ve all come to love (or not understand).’
No mention of Justin.tv, the largest of their competitors?
Oh Christ. I added them, happy? This post isn’t about live video services in general, you know.
ok, let’s see. Jack failed as CEO of Twitter so, let’s put him on an advisory board so he can help another CEO — fail?
Well, it seems to be some kind of tradition, you know… Carly Fiorina was driving Hewlett-Packard into the ground before she was kicked out [with a truckload of money] then she was on the board at Steve Case’s failed “Revolutionhealth.com.”
Also, she was an adviser for the McCain campaign…
Lately, she shows up in Washington’s Sunday mornings political shows… Someone called her on TC “the kiss of death”
too much effort on your post…must be a competitor to either of these companies
HA! JUSTIN.TV IS DONE!
Silicon Valley is amazing. I’m in LA so a bit of an outsider, but it seems if a company is hot or doing well then everyone jumps on. Man, wish I could be an advisor :p
Lucky Jack
with good connections and enough VC money, anybody can be an advisor… my brother helped with the Obama campaign in Washington, and now he is an “advisor” at the State Department. He speaks Spanish, so he travels to South America on “good-will” missions… [of course, he has no clue!!!]
it’s like an exclusive club. In some ways makes me sick because I want in, in other ways, I can understand it. Must be nice….
Anyhow, Twitter rocks – Everyone knows that. Didn’t they win a Crunchy?
wow…that’s great. lets bring someone on board that has no business plan with their own company, to help run ours.
tone of jealously…be happy, this is great news! I hope for partnership of these 2 companies because I see so many people using Ustream and Twitter together. So exciting for me and I kinda saw this was coming!
extreme makeover photo? looks like hes ready to get down to business. hell hath no fury for a cofounder scourned.
Twitter + Ustream = sweet.
wow this is just dumb. bring aboard the guy who wrote awful ruby code
Apparently you’re not aware of the fact that the expression, “down for the count” means permanently.
this should help the company out a lot.. as quickly as twitter blew up, maybe they can add some innovation.
I feel sorry for Jack Dorsey, but he like everyone will learn a lesson. It’s about the user generated content, and if a company can not pay its users for content then its just another bandwidth provider. Ustream as of yet has not paid anyone to jump like a monkey. Ustream is not making money. Ustream = a one way street to fail. Ustream has lost its vision because it wants to control your entertainment choices. It should have stayed out of peoples ideas and remained transparrent. But you know how people are, and then the bubble bursts. If I was Jack Dorsey I would run away from ustream as fast as I could.
@Cjay
Aren’t you that long haired loser who still lives with his parents that used to be on Ustream?
Get a job man…
Omg…he took that pic w/ his phone, didn’t he? Ah how very tweet;)
I really like this move is an interesting, if not particularly successful company.