Twitter, President-elect Donald Trump’s media platform of choice, was reportedly left out of today’s big Trump tech roundtable because of a failed deal over sponsored emoji. Politico reports that a source says Twitter was “bounced” from the meeting because it had refused to approve two sponsored emoji during the election, an incident that Trump campaign digital advertising director Gary Coby wrote about last month.
The Trump transition team disputed the news. “They weren't invited because they aren't big enough,” a spokesperson told Reuters. The transition team did not immediately return a request for comment from The Verge.
Today’s tech summit was attended by many 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. Twitter did not immediately respond to questions about whether it was disinvited from the meeting because of the emoji dust-up.
Trump has criticized a number of the companies represented at today’s 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. But relations have warmed (at least publicly) after the election. At the meeting, Trump told tech leaders to “call me” with any problems, urging them to “keep going with the incredible innovation.”
Update 5PM ET: Added statement from transition team, via Reuters.