Twitter, President-elect Donald Trump's chosen media platform, was apparently left out of the recent big Trump tech roundtable because of a failed agreement over sponsored emoji. A source reportedly states that Twitter was "bounced" from the meeting because it refused to approve two sponsored emoji of the hashtag #CrookedHillary during the election, an incident that Trump campaign digital advertising director Gary Coby revealed about last month.
Politico says that Trump's campaign made a $5 million deal with Twitter before the election, in which the campaign committed "to spending a a certain amount on advertising and in exchange receive discounts, perks, and custom solutions." However, the campaign objected when the company did not allow the anti-Clinton emoji.
However, the Trump transition team were the ones who disputed the news. "They weren't invited because they aren't big enough," a spokesperson said. Trump adviser Sean Spicer also denied the report, stating that "the conference table was only so big."
According to The Verge, the tech summit was attended by various major Silicon Valley executives, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, IBM CEO Ginni Rometti, Alphabet's Eric Schmidt, Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, and Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. Furthermore, Twitter did not quickly respond to questions about whether it was indeed not invited from the meeting because of the emoji dust-up. Likewise, the President-elect also has not given his official statement about Twitter being "bounced" from the meeting.
Trump also criticized a lot of the companies present in the said meeting, including Apple, which he has knocked for its encryption policies and foreign manufacturing, and Amazon, due to his adversarial relationship with the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. Moreover, Trump told the tech leaders at the meeting to "call me" with any problems, encouraging them to "keep going with the incredible innovation."
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