All's fair in love and tech

Once upon a time, four friends started a social network. Less than 10 years later, the platform became one of the most visited Web sites in the world, with more than 550 million registered users. In 2013, the company launched a hugely successful IPO, which earned investors millions of dollars.

You guessed it - I am talking about microblogging service Twitter.

Sounds like a Cinderella story, no? Well, if by Cinderella story you mean it involves a tangled web of deception and neglect, then you'd be spot on.

In this rendition of the famous folk tale, Twitter's four co-founders will take the starring roles. Cinderella will be played by Noah Glass, who was also involved in the development of podcasting company Odeo. Glass' fellow Odeo founders, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, have been cast as his two evil stepsisters, while early Twitter investor Evan Williams' cutthroat antics make him a fitting candidate for the role of evil stepmother.

This story of a bromance gone wrong began in 2006, when Glass spent hours poring over a dictionary in search of a name for the status-based social media platform he had conceptualised with his Odeo colleagues Dorsey and Stone. He eventually settled on Twitter. Seeing potential in the platform, and acknowledging his hand in the idea, Williams put Glass in charge of Twitter, which became Glass' obsession.

But alas, our Cinderella's fairytale was short-lived. Dorsey and Williams fired Glass just a few months later. And his role in the whole project has been expunged somewhat from the history books. Following Twitter's recent IPO, insiders suggested Glass' current standing in the company would earn him about as much as Dorsey's secretary. Ouch.

In a 2010 interview with the New York Times, Williams said all successful businesspeople make enemies along the way. Two years after ousting Glass, he attempted to get rid of Dorsey too, who had been neglecting his duties as Twitter CEO, because he was too busy attending yoga classes and following his dreams of becoming a successful fashion designer.

But Dorsey had other plans. His sartorial interests firmly behind him, he began an extensive marketing campaign, during which he established himself as the public face of Twitter and surreptitiously omitted his three co-founders from Twitter's history. And in 2010, Dorsey toppled Williams from his throne. The Twitter board later reinstated Dorsey as Twitter CE.

Cue dramatic music and an evil villain laugh.

But the situation at Twitter is far from unique. In fact, these battles for power have become commonplace among Silicon Valley's innovative tech start-ups. Perhaps the most famous incidents of tech-based treachery involve the founding fathers of Apple and Facebook - Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.

These battles for power have become commonplace among Silicon Valley's innovative tech start-ups.

In 1976, Steve Jobs short-changed his friend and future Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, when the two worked together to build Atari game "Breakout". With Wozniak's assistance, Jobs was able to submit the game within a very strict deadline, for which he was awarded a capital bonus, a bonus he failed to share with Wozniak. The late Jobs had also been criticised for refusing to offer stock options to some of Apple's earliest employees when the company went public in 1980.

Likewise, Zuckerberg was taken to court by his Harvard classmates Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Eduardo Saverin, who accused him of taking all the credit for what would eventually become Facebook. Zuckerberg reached a settlement with all parties. Saverin was acknowledged as a co-founder of Facebook, while the Winklevoss twins earned $20 million in damages and $45 million in Facebook stock. A pittance when you consider that Facebook is currently worth over $100 billion.

And the trend continues.

The latest company to experience dissention among its ranks is Snapchat. The three creators of the photo messaging application - Frank "Reggie" Brown, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy - are set to duke it out in court over the company's intellectual property.

Soon after the app was launched in 2011, Spiegel and Murphy began plotting to cut Brown out of the company. But when Brown overheard the two conspiring against him, he unleashed his own offensive by filing a lawsuit stating he was one of three founders of Snapchat and that Spiegel and Murphy were trying to cheat him out of his ownership of the app. The case hasn't even reached trial yet, but a lot of dirty laundry is set to be aired as the trio battle for their stake in the $800 million business.

The landscape may have changed, the technology has evolved, but it seems the story always plays out in the same way. The feisty few trample their friends on the way to the top and enjoy a dollar-laden happy ending, while others, like Noah Glass, descend into relative anonymity, forced to wait a little while longer for their happily ever after.