Jack Dorsey first began to develop his early idea for the social media site Twitter in 2006 while working at early Internet tech company Odeo. After it spun off in 2007 and expanded rapidly after that, Twitter became a significant component of global society. It became a key part of politics and international relations but was also banned or blocked in some countries.
Twitter went public in 2013 and continued to expand. Elon Musk took Twitter private in 2022 and later changed the name of the service to X.
Background TXTMob was one of the example services which was used as a model for the service Twitter when it was originally created.”The other thing was @blaine and i were hacking on txtmob.org which is an open source group text messaging system. We spent a lot of time talking about txtmob, trying it, figuring out why it didn’t work." Comment from @rabble at
Twitter's origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, then an undergraduate student, introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group. The original project code name for the service was twttr, an idea that Evan Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes. The decision was also partly due to the fact that the domain twitter.com was already in use, and it was six months after the launch of twttr that the crew purchased the domain and changed the name of the service to Twitter. The developers initially considered "10958" as the service's short code for SMS text messaging, but later changed it to "40404" for "ease of use and memorability".
2006–2007
Work on the project which would become Twitter started in February 2006. In March 2006 Dorsey published the first Twitter post: "just setting up my twttr."
Dorsey has explained the origin of the "Twitter" title: ...we came across the word "twitter", and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information", and "chirps from birds". And that's exactly what the product was.
The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as an internal service for Odeo employees. The full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006. In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo, together with its assets—including Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the investors and shareholders. Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011. Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.
Williams provided insight into the ambiguity that defined this early period in a 2013 interview: With Twitter, it wasn't clear what it was. They called it a social network, they called it microblogging, but it was hard to define, because it didn't replace anything. There was this path of discovery with something like that, where over time you figure out what it is. Twitter actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social network.
In 2006, Iconfactory was developing a twitter application called "Twitterrific" and developer Craig Hockenberry began a search for a shorter way to refer to "Post a Twitter Update." In 2007 they began using "twit" before Twitter developer Blaine Cook suggested that "tweet" be used instead.
The use of the hashtag appeared in 2007, introduced by Chris Messina. Messina struggled to get Twitter executives to adopt his idea but was eventually successful in convincing Twitter to trial the idea. Messina drew inspiration from Internet Relay Chat and Jaiku however the way it was implemented on Twitter was unique. Initial reactions to the hashtag were mixed.
2007–2010 The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000. "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked Newsweeks Steven Levy. "Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it." Reaction at the conference was highly positive. Twitter staff received the festival's Web Award prize with the remark "we'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"
Elon Musk joined Twitter as a user in 2009. The company experienced rapid initial growth. In 2009, Twitter won the "Breakout of the Year" Webby Award. On November 29, 2009, Twitter was named the Word of the Year by the Global Language Monitor, declaring it "a new form of social interaction". In February 2010, Twitter users were sending tweets per day. By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000 registered applications. , about tweets were posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter. , that was about tweets posted daily. As noted on Compete.com, Twitter moved up to the third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twenty-second.
Twitter's usage spikes during prominent events. For example, a record was set during the 2010 FIFA World Cup when fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second in the thirty-second period after Japan scored against Cameroon on June 14, 2010. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets per second were posted after the Los Angeles Lakers' victory in the 2010 NBA Finals on June 17, 2010, and then again at the close of Japan's victory over Denmark in the World Cup when users published 3,283 tweets per second. The record was set again during the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Final between Japan and the United States, when 7,196 tweets per second were published. When American singer Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, Twitter servers crashed after users were updating their status to include the words "Michael Jackson" at a rate of 100,000 tweets per hour. The current record , was set in Japan, with 143,199 tweets per second during a television screening of the movie Castle in the Sky (beating the previous record of 33,388, also set by Japan for the television screening of the same movie).
In June 2009, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter for trade infringement and cybersquatting after an unknown user impersonated him and made vulgar posts. The lawsuit was settled, and Twitter introduced "Verified Accounts" later that year. Also in 2009, Ashton Kutcher's Twitter account became the first one with a million followers.
Twitter played a major role in the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests.
The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010.Press release (January 22, 2010). "Media Advisory M10-012 – NASA Extends the World Wide Web Out into Space" . NASA. Retrieved February 5, 2011. By late November 2010, an average of a dozen updates per day were posted on the astronauts' communal account, @NASA_Astronauts. NASA has also hosted over 25 "tweetups", events that provide guests with VIP access to NASA facilities and speakers with the goal of leveraging participants' social networks to further the outreach goals of NASA.
Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11, 2010. Atebits had developed the Apple Design Award-winning Twitter client Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone. The application became the official Twitter client for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
In 2010 the Library of Congress archived all Tweets back to 2006 and began archiving all new tweets. Only the text of tweets were archived; they do not include videos, images, or linked content. They switched to archiving tweets on a selected basis similar to their treatment of other media in 2018.
2010–2014
From September through October 2010, the company began rolling out "New Twitter", an entirely revamped edition of twitter.com. Changes included the ability to see pictures and videos without leaving Twitter itself by clicking on individual tweets which contain links to images and clips from a variety of supported websites, including YouTube and Flickr, and a complete overhaul of the interface, which shifted links such as '@mentions' and 'Retweets' above the Twitter stream, while 'Messages' and 'Log Out' became accessible via a black bar at the very top of twitter.com. , the company confirmed that the "New Twitter experience" had been rolled out to all users. In 2019, Twitter was announced to be the 10th most downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019.
Twitter played an important role in the Arab Spring across the Middle East and North Africa.
On April 5, 2011, Twitter tested a new homepage and phased out the "Old Twitter". However, a glitch came about after the page was launched, so the previous "retro" homepage was still in use until the issues were resolved; the new homepage was reintroduced on April 20. On December 8, 2011, Twitter overhauled its website once more to feature the "Fly" design, which the service says is easier for new users to follow and promotes advertising. In addition to the Home tab, the Connect and Discover tabs were introduced along with a redesigned profile and timeline of Tweets. The site's layout has been compared to that of Facebook. On February 21, 2012, it was announced that Twitter and Yandex agreed to a partnership. Yandex, a Russian search engine, finds value within the partnership due to Twitter's real-time news feeds. Twitter's director of business development explained that it is important to have Twitter content where Twitter users go. On March 21, 2012, Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday by announcing that it had 140 million users, a 40% rise from September 2011, who were sending 340 million tweets per day. In April 2012, Twitter announced that it was opening an office in Detroit, with the aim of working with automotive brands and advertising agencies. Twitter also expanded its office in Dublin.
In March 2011, a cobra escaped from the Bronx Zoo; soon after, a parody Twitter account for the cobra appeared using the handle "@BronxZoosCobra," which soon amassed a large number of followers. The snake was on the loose for a week before being recaptured, during which time the account tweeted regularly. This parody account led to increased interest in parody accounts on Twitter in general.
On June 5, 2012, a modified logo was unveiled through the company blog, removing the text to showcase the slightly redesigned bird as the sole symbol of Twitter. On December 18, 2012, Twitter announced monthly active users had increased 42% in the proceeding nine months and now surpassed 200 million.
In December 2012 Pope Benedict XVI joined Twitter with the account name "@pontifex." The account answers questions which are posed to it using the hashtag "askpontifex."
In 2012 "tweet" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Vine, a short video service, was launched in 2013.
On January 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Crashlytics in order to build out its mobile developer products. On April 18, 2013, Twitter launched a music app called Twitter Music for the iPhone. On August 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Trendrr, followed by the acquisition of MoPub on September 9, 2013. , the company's data showed that 200 million users sent over 400 million tweets daily, with nearly 60% of tweets sent from mobile devices.
In April 2013 the Syrian Electronic Army hacked the Twitter account of the Associated Press. The attack had a significant short-term impact on the stock market. In October they hacked the account of Barack Obama.