It’s a far cry from the $9.9 million mansion overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge seven miles across town owned by his former best friend and co-founder Jack Dorsey.

In an exclusive investigation into what became of the man who dreamt up the world-changing social network but got nothing, news.com.au can reveal:

● He has become a recluse who refuses to discuss Twitter

● He is ‘bitter’ about ‘being screwed’ by his friends

● He feels his co-founders “wrote him out of the story” and craves recognition for his role

● His obsessive work on Twitter destroyed his second marriage

● Mates say he’s a genius who deserves to be acknowledged properly by other founders

● He has been working on various projects since — including building a rocket

On November 6 last year Twitter became a public company, confirming its three founders — Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone — as billionaires and Silicon Valley’s biggest success story.

The trio are now celebrities in their own right, have met President Barack Obama and all own multi-million dollar mansions in the San Francisco area.

However Noah Glass, dubbed the forgotten founder, made next to nothing from the website — even though it was originally his company, the first office was his apartment and he came up with its iconic name.

Noah has been omitted from several profiles of how the company started, his co-founders never mention his name when interviewed and when anyone Googles ‘Twitter founders’, although the four names come up with photos of them all — the picture of Noah is the wrong person. On his own twitter account @Noah, his bio simply reads: ‘i started this’.

Our exclusive photos show the elusive tech genius painting graffiti off a wall near his home.

The 44-year-old now lives a quiet life with his girlfriend and their one-year-old baby girl in a rough part of town a world away from the sprawling mansions of his once-close friends who arguably couldn’t have ever created Twitter without him.

Speaking exclusively to news.com.au former Twitter employee Ray McClure, who worked at the company from 2004-2007, describes Noah as the company’s “spiritual founder”, he said: “For the years following Noah leaving, he had no recognition as a founder of Twitter … they kind of wrote him out of the story ... I know that his spirit was in many ways defeated by this.”

Ray bumped into Evan Williams, known as ‘Ev’, last year but they didn’t discuss Noah.

Ray said: “I think that was the first billionaire who’s hand I shook. I told him congratulations and he’s got a beautiful family and a lot has happened. Clearly he’s doing a lot of cool things.”

Asked if he thinks Ev, Jack and Biz have any remorse over what happened to Noah, Ray said: “They’re in a different class of people now, I mean they’ve got billions. I imagine you don’t become a billionaire without screwing a couple of people … I’m just saying it’s probably a rite of passage to being a billionaire. We consider it screwing people but really it’s about making the hard decision [to make it work] … so that’s how you can justify making the hard decision.”

Ray, 36, hopes one day Noah will be properly acknowledged. He added: “The hardest thing is you can’t get away from this (being the forgotten founder of such a successful company) … I would hope that’s the end of the story (Noah getting acknowledged).”

The story of how Twitter started is told in the book ‘Hatching Twitter’ by New York Times journalist Nick Bilton, released last November.

In it, Bilton describes how Twitter started out as Noah’s podcasting platform called Audio Blogger, which allowed anyone to post voice-based posts to blogs from a phone.

In 2004 Noah teamed up with his friend Ev — already a tech millionaire from selling his first start up, Blogger, to Google — who invested in Noah’s project.

Working out of Noah’s apartment, the company changed its named to Odeo and the pair started to assemble a small team, largely made up of anarchist computer nerds. They soon moved the operation to Ev’s apartment and eventually rented an office space. But it needed more money and in exchange for a $200,000 investment, Noah reluctantly agreed to make Ev the CEO.

News.com.au uncovered these exclusive photos from about this time, showing what good friends Noah and Ev were. The photos, taken at a 2004 New Year’s Eve party in San Francisco, show Noah and his wife Erin having fun with Ev and his future wife Sara Morishige. The foursome can be seen enjoying dinner together before seeing in the New Year with party hats on.

However disaster struck for the entrepreneurs in 2005 when Apple launched iTunes podcasting, making Odeo’s product irrelevant.

Ray said: “That was when we realised that maybe we were a little too late. Even though we were there in the beginning. Once Apple did it we kind of realised that it was going to be difficult to beat them at it.”

Ev was on the brink of shutting the whole thing down, when Noah and fellow employee Jack Dorsey had a Eureka moment sitting in a car after a night out drinking.

Bilton wrote: “[Jack] mentioned the concept of a one-off site that people could use to share their current status. ‘You could say what music you’re listening to,’ Jack said, ‘or tell people you’re at work’.”

Noah, then going through a divorce with Erin, was very lonely at the time and immediately got excited about the idea.

The book continues: “I get it! Noah exclaimed. This status thing could help connect people to those who weren’t there. It wasn’t just about sharing what kind of music you were listening to or where you were at that moment; it was about connecting people and making them feel less lonely.”

On Monday February 27, 2006, the pair went to work and pitched the idea to Ev and fellow founder Biz Stone, who loved it and decided to change the focus of the dying start-up.

Two days later, Noah came up with the name Twitter after feeling his phone vibrate.

“His vibrating phone led him to think of the brain impulses that cause a muscle to twitch,” the book says. It then describes how he searched the ‘tw’ section of the dictionary where he found the word twitter.

From that moment Noah spent every waking moment on the project.

Describing it, Ray said: “I just remember a lot of fun times, we were working long hours. Noah would be the last one to leave every time, no matter what … he would be the last one to leave because he was that committed, totally committed.

“He was there and felt very passionate about what was happening and putting everything into it.”

However within five months Noah got the sack.

Noah’s behaviour became unpredictable and moody as his marriage fell apart and eventually Jack Dorsey threatened to quit unless his colleague was fired — although Noah had no idea his friend stabbed him in the back at the time.

Remembering it, Ray told news.com.au how Noah’s dedication to the company cost him his marriage. “There were situations that had happened … like he yelled at somebody, he flew off the handle because something happened,” he said.

“He was splitting up with his wife, it was very bad timing. He probably would have split up from his wife eventually anyway, but this commitment to his work may have had something to do with it and then that might have been the thing that killed the other thing.”

Ray remembers being devastated by the decision. He said: “When he told me I was just devastated and I could not believe it. I felt that he had so much of his identity invested in this and I felt that was reciprocated … I felt there was going to be a huge hole left by Noah not being there.”

Ray thinks the decision was cold and unfair on his friend. He said: “They probably made what would be the right decision by the book for the business. Personally I saw it [was] kind of cold and I also saw that because Noah was going through some things with his wife at the time he was very emotional … he had already contributed so much you probably could have in a holistic way worked with him and acknowledged his talents … but maybe in this situation there’s no room for risk at all. I could see that he was pissing off some people ... but whether it would have been good for the company or not, the way I would have done it I would have probably tried to like create a situation to minimise his risk and also keep him a part of things, because I would feel that [would have been] the right thing to do.”

Noah was given a small pay-off and some Twitter shares, which he later sold.

Ray has no idea how much money Noah actually made out of Twitter. “I have no idea, he was given something,” Ray said.

In 2011 Noah gave his one and only interview on the subject to the website Business Insider , describing how he felt hard done by.

He said: “I was not in the story, which in some ways was difficult to deal with in the beginning, since it was a massive labour of love and a massive labour to get it created. To create the thing, to bring it into the world. It was a ton of effort and a ton of energy.

“To not be included in the story was hard to swallow at first.

“Twitter is a phenomenon and a massively beneficial tool and it’s incredibly useful and it helps a lot of people. I realised the story is not about me. That’s OK.”

However since then Noah has watched his three co-founders go on to be billionaires, the service has more than 300 million active users around the world and it has even been lauded for its use in fighting political oppression and sparking revolutions in the Middle East.

Bilton’s book describes how Noah fell into a depression and news.com.au can reveal as the company has got bigger, Noah has become a recluse who has cut himself off from friends.

However in September 2013, Noah who was once a prolific tweeter but now rarely tweets.

His last message, just before the company went public, was: “I wish the twitter team the best of luck and trust that they will be successful in continuing to develop this important communication tool.”

He has been working on different ideas ever since, but has so far not come up with an idea to match Twitter.

Noah officiated Ray’s wedding to his wife Keiko in 2008 but it has now been more than two years since they saw each other.

Ray — who held on to shares in Twitter given to him when he was laid off that have made him very wealthy — said: “We haven’t been in contact since it reached this level ... Noah has been difficult to get a hold of in the last couple of years. One of the last times that I saw him me and my wife were helping him pack his truck, he had bought a semi truck and he was going to make a mobile lab and he was driving that down to LA where I think he had rented a warehouse and was doing some start-up / physical invention type stuff.”

“I also do know he was in France for a while, his girlfriend was French and while he was there he was designing some type of rocket engine and he got it running. So he was kind of all over the place and had the freedom to be able to experiment with ideas. He was also doing stuff with some kind of interactive games for kids, all different things.”

Asked if he thinks Noah is a genius, Ray said: “Yeah for sure. But I would say what’s most attractive about him is his passion and his passion for offbeat things. He’s a dreamer.”

Noah has since moved back to San Francisco and lives in a poor part of The Mission district which has a large homeless population.

So far the only acknowledgment from any of the other founders was a tweet by Ev in 2011 when Noah’s story first emerged in Business Insider. He tweeted: “It’s true that @Noah never got enough credit for his early role at Twitter. Also he came up with the name, which was brilliant.”

News.com.au also tracked down Noah’s first wife Sonya Scharrer. Although they divorced in 2003, they have remained friends.

She said: “He was a really interesting guy ... a sweet and very creative guy. He’s an idea guy, I would not be surprised if he came up with something again.”

Sonya thinks it must have been horrible for him to see his friends become famous billionaires.

She said: “It’s not something you realise at the time that you’ve come up with a billion dollar idea. How would you feel if you were involved in the creation of an idea worth billions of dollars? I’m sure he’s bitter, I’m sure he’s maybe disappointed.”

News.com.au approached Noah at his home for an interview but he declined. He said: “I have no comment. All I can say is I don’t really have any comment, I’m sorry about that.”

Asked if he regrets his role in creating Twitter because of how it has turned out for him, he simply added: “No”, before retreating behind his barb wire topped front yard gate which is covered in makeshift cloth to prevent people from seeing in.