Trump cuts Twitter out of high-profile tech meet over failed emoji deal

Microblogging giant Twitter was not invited to US President-elect Donald Trump's high-profile tech meet attended by powerful executives of the Silicon Valley on 15 December. Many are calling it an attempt to snub the social media giant for refusing to create a crooked Hillary emoji, media reports said today.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was allegedly not invited to Trump's summit with major tech leaders in retaliation for reneging on a USD 5 million emoji deal with the president-elect during the campaign, The Hill quoted a source with knowledge of the matter as saying.

The President-elect held discussions at Trump Towers in a bid to make peace with a number of high-profile tech companies after relations soured during Trump's election campaign.

With around 17.3 million followers, the president-elect had successfully made Twitter into the de facto press channel of his transition operation.

Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committees chief strategist and communications director, bounced Twitter from the meeting as payback for the failed deal, The Hill reported.

Spicer denied involvement, saying he "had absolutely nothing to do with this meeting." And in a tweet, he called reports that the failed emoji deal led to Dorsey's lack of invitation "another example of false, reprehensible, pathetic, tabloid faux journalism."

The emoji was supposed to show bags of money being stolen and would be offered to Twitter users as a replacement for the Crooked Hillary hashtag, which has been very popular in recent months.

"They weren't invited because they aren't big enough," the President-elect's transition team said, although there are numerous rumours that other reasons were behind Twitter's ban from the meeting.

Among those in attendance were India-born chief of Microsoft Satya Nadella, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, Alphabet's Larry Page, Oracle's Safra Catz, Palantir's Alex Karp, Intel's Brian Krzanich, Elon Musk from Tesla, Chuck Robbins of Cisco and Ginni Rometty of IBM.

- PTI