Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey made his political ambitions known on CBS' "60 Minutes" program on Sunday night: He wants to follow in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's footsteps.
Dorsey, 36, now a billionaire tech entrepreneur, co-founded Twitter in 2006. He resides in San Francisco, where he runs Square, the mobile-payments company. The Big Apple, however, is apparently where his political heart is located, according to 60 Minutes.
"What I love about New York is just the electricity I feel right away," Dorsey said. "It's chaos. It's kind of like being in a car in the middle of a thunderstorm. Everything is raging around you, but you're safe inside that car. So New York feels very much to me like that."
Dorsey's net worth is north of $1 billion, something that he and Bloomberg, founder of a news service and owner of business magazine, share. Dorsey is no stranger to the city having attended New York University and being "hired by a New York dispatch company after he hacked into its website," according to CNN.
Growing up in St. Louis, Dorsey was into computers and trains, he told 60 minutes. Armed with a police scanner, the inspiration for Twitter came from listening to the short bursts of chatter from the city's emergency dispatch center, he said.
"They're always talking about where they're going, what they're doing and where they currently are," Dorsey said. "And that is where the idea for Twitter came from ... and (with cell phones) suddenly we could update where I was, what I'm doing, where I'm going, how I feel. And then it would go out to the entire world."
In December, Twitter announced it had surpassed 200 million monthly active users, while Square, launched in 2010, employs 400 people and counts Starbucks among its adapters. Dorsey said the idea for Square came from talking to a friend, a glassmaker, who was frustrated that he lost a $2,000 sale because he couldn't accept a credit card.
