Twitter co-founder Evan Williams has revealed that he personally paid the cell phone bill of Dalai Lama for many years after onboarding the Tibetan spiritual leader on the social media app.
In an interview with Bloomberg's Emily Chang, Williams recollected the fun moment when he was tasked to introduce Twitter to Dalai Lama and get him to open an account. When Williams met Dala 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, 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. So, we were paying the Dalai Lama cell phone bill for a very long time," Williams recounted with joy.
Dalai Lama's Twitter account says that he joined the platform in February 2009. He has 18.8 million followers and his tweets typically centre around global peace, humanity, education and compassion. Jack Dorsey launched Twitter in March 2006.
Williams also recollected 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.
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 joining Twitter is considered to be 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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