This article was published on November 20, 2014

Twitter time machine: the first time these important words appeared on Twitter


Twitter time machine: the first time these important words appeared on Twitter

Twitter now lets you search through every public tweet on the service and the change has got everyone looking right back to the beginning of the service, so we thought we’d dig a little deeper and find the first mention of people, words and other interesting terms on the service.

Notable people

Steve Jobs’ first mention was in 2006 when Dom Sagolla had a dream about the Apple co-founder. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey had a dream about him a few months later.

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Someone had a dream about Bill gates that same year.

The first person tweeting about Steve Ballmer in 2007 wondered if he was going to sink his yacht for insurance money.

Obama’s first appearance on the service was this person listening to his book.

Nickleback first appeared in 2006 too (sorry).

Taylor Swift didn’t show up until 2007.

Remember LOST?

Technology

When did ‘Twitter’ first appear on Twitter? Remember that the service was named Twttr at the time.

The first appearance of ‘iPad’ was this person tweeting a comedy skit three years before the iPad launched and six months before the iPhone itself.

The first tweet that actually talked about some sort of tablet called the iPad was also in 2007.

The first tweet about the iPhone was already featured earlier, too.

By the way, everyone was still using their BlackBerry phones in 2006.

How about Windows? The first tweet about Microsoft Windows was this one.

Spotify appeared in 2007, too.

Uber’s first mention was its Head of Operations testing the service when it was called UberCab still.

The first time Reddit appeared on the service, someone was saying they preferred it to Digg.

Other words

Remember the fail whale? The first time that phrase was coined wasn’t until 2007.

Nobody said anything about selfies until 2007.

Literally the first literally.

Om nom nom nom.

Nobody was a social media guru until mid-2007.

The word ‘feminist’ didn’t appear until late 2006.

Kale hipsters appeared pretty early on.

Is this the first ever Twitter lie?

The first tweet about The Next Web was someone coordinating a conference, but not ours.

Swear words

The first ‘shit’, in 2006.

The first ‘fuck’ in 2006.

The first ‘crap’ in 2006.

Have you found any cool ‘firsts’ on Twitter? Let us know in the comments.

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