History of Twitter

Jack Dorsey, then an undergraduate student, introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group.

[4] 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".

[22][23] 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".

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.

[31] 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.

[35] 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.

[38] The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010.

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.

[45][46] 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.

[50][51] In April 2012, Twitter announced that it was opening an office in Detroit, with the aim of working with automotive brands and advertising agencies.

[38] 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.

[73] During Super Bowl XLVII on February 3, 2013, when the power went out in the Superdome Mondelez International, Kraft Foods vice president Lisa Mann was asked to tweet, "You can still dunk in the dark", referring to Oreo cookies.

[8] In April 2014, Twitter underwent a redesign that made the site resemble Facebook somewhat, with a profile picture and biography in a column left to the timeline, and a full-width header image with parallax scrolling effect.

[a] That layout was used as the main for the desktop front end until July 2019, undergoing changes over time such as the removal of shortcut buttons to jump to the previous or next tweet in early 2017, and rounded profile pictures since June 2017.

[83][90] However, no deal was made, with reports in October stating that all the potential buyers dropped out partly due to concerns over abuse and harassment on the service.

[103] This combination posed a significant challenge to Twitter,[104] as a result they started marking tweets which contained misleading information, and adding links to fact-checks.

[109] Trump responded by signing an executive order to weaken Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which limits social media sites' liability for content moderation decisions.

[116] In May 2020, Twitter placed fact-check labels on two of the Chinese government tweets which had falsely suggested that the virus originated in the US and was brought to China by the Americans.

[117] In January 2021, Hua Chunying renewed the conspiracy theory from Zhao that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in the United States from the U.S. military biology laboratory Fort Detrick.

Hua continued to refer to it on Twitter, while asking the government of the United States to open up Fort Detrick for further investigation to determine if it is the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

[124] In 2021, Twitter began the research phase of Bluesky, an open source decentralized social media protocol where users can choose which algorithmic curation they want.

[130] Twitter unveiled a redesign in August 2021, with adjusted colors and a new Chirp font, which improves the left-alignment of most Western languages.

[132] On August 23, 2022, the contents of a whistleblower complaint by former information security head Peiter Zatko to the United States Congress were published.

The report also claims that the Indian government forced Twitter to hire one of its agents to gain direct access to user data.

[133] The business magnate Elon Musk initiated an acquisition of American social media company Twitter, Inc. on April 14, 2022, and concluded it on October 27, 2022.

Musk had begun buying shares of the company in January 2022, becoming its largest shareholder by April with a 9.1 percent ownership stake.

Musk stated that he planned to introduce new features to the platform, make its algorithms open-source, combat spambot accounts, and promote free speech, framing the acquisition as the cornerstone of X, an "everything app".

The company filed a lawsuit against Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery shortly thereafter, with a trial scheduled for the week of October 17.

Twitter was taken private and merged into a new parent company named X Corp. Musk promptly fired several top executives, including previous CEO Parag Agrawal.

Hundreds of employees then resigned from the company after Musk issued an ultimatum demanding they commit to "extremely hardcore" work.