This article was published on March 21, 2016

Happy birthday, Twitter: 10 years of famous first tweets


Happy birthday, Twitter: 10 years of famous first tweets

This week, Twitter turns 10. Over the next five days we’ll be exploring how far the microblogging service has come, the challenges it faces going forward and some of its key moments along the way.

March 21 marks ten years since Twitter came to life. Since its 2006 arrival, the platform has arguably changed the way we express ourselves online, keeping our worldly thoughts within its 140 character constraint.

What a lot of people don’t realize, Twitter — once Twttr — stemmed from a startup called Odeo, which was meant to be a podcast platform. Evan Williams, Noah Glass and Biz Stone were about to launch when Apple crushed their dreams with the release of iTunes podcasting.

It was at this point in time that Jack Dorsey, who was an employee at Odeo, reared his head with the bare bones idea for what we now call Twitter.

Once the idea was fleshed out – with Biz Stone overseeing Dorsey’s work – Twttr spun off from Odeo (now Obvious Corp) and became Twitter Inc.

Along the way it has spawned the hashtag, mentions and created more than its fair share of viral memes.

To celebrate ten years of life in 140 characters, we’ve taken the liberty of pulling together some of the best and worst first tweets so you can see how far we’ve come.

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/59254912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Note: The founder of Uber likes to be called ‘tbone’ for future articles.

Rihanna who? The founder of Pinterest was way ahead of the musical times.

Stan Lee – summing up why everyone has social media accounts.

Yes, Google sent its first tweet in binary.  “Feeling lucky?” Read into that as you will.

Twittering, you say?

Hardcore tweet from the founder of Reddit.

We’re assuming Sheryl Sandberg was in her own home.

While this isn’t the astronaut’s first tweet, it was the first ever tweet sent from beyond earth, which is pretty impressive. In the seven years since this we’ve become accustomed to astronauts tweeting images and updates from outer space.

A pre-Oculus Luckey.

I wonder what ever happened to Branson’s romantic novel?

Facebook didn’t quite grasp the character limit at first.

Twitter’s journey to ten has seen its stock slump to an all-time low and continued losses, the departure and subsequent return of Jack Dorsey as CEO and a flatline in signup numbers.

So while it might be hard to imagine life without Twitter as an outlet for our quips, it’s hard to imagine the company will be the same when it enters its awkward teenage phase.

What was your first tweet? Let us know on Twitter or in the comments.

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