The Evolution of Twitter: A Twitter timeline of milestones!

9 Mar 2016

March 21st 2016 marks the 10th birthday of one of our favourite social media giants, Twitter! You might be asking yourself, where did it all start out and how did Twitter become so big? Well, we’ve put together a Twitter timeline of events, milestones and successes over the past 10 years!

Twitter Timeline

March 2006

Twitter is born! Founded by three tech whiz kids and entrepreneurs, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. Jack Dorsey set up the first ever Twitter profile and sent out the first Tweet saying: “just set up my twttr”.

July 2006

By 15th July 2006, Twitter’s microblogging service is officially available to the public. Of course in 2006, if you or I said the word ‘microblogging’ to a member of the general public, they would look at you as though you were speaking a foreign language! So to clear up any confusion, co-founder Biz Stone created this funny YouTube video to explain what Twitter is – or was way back in 2006!

August 2007

The hashtag is proposed by Chris Messina. Little did he know that the ‘hashtag’ would become one of the most used and recognisable features of Twitter.

October 2008

After two years of ploughing blood, sweat and tears (not literally) into what we now recognise as one of the biggest social media breakthroughs of the decade, Jack Dorsey decided to take a back seat, stepping down as CEO of Twitter to become Chairman of the Board. Co-founder Evan Williams replaced Jack as CEO.

November 2008

By November 2008, Twitter reached 1 billion Tweets! That’s pretty mega…

October 2009

Just 11 short months since Twitter reached the 1 billion tweet milestone, they reached 5 billion Tweets!

February 2010

By early 2010, over 50 million Tweets are sent out every single day!

April 2010

Twitter launched its advertising platform, Promoted Tweets!

March 2011

Twitter celebrates its 5th birthday, and announces that over 1 billion Tweets are sent out every single week!

May 2011

Twitter launches the ‘TweetDeck’ feature. TweetDeck organises all of the world’s news in real-time and delivers it to your Twitter feed.

June 2012

Twitter releases the first glimpse of the new Twitter bird design, which has gone on to form what is now one of the most recognised brands in the digital world.

November 2012

Barack Obama is the first president to announce his success in the election on Twitter with this Tweet. President Obama’s Tweet was the most retweeted Tweet of 2012!

January 2013

Twitter announces the launch of their new video-sharing app, Vine. Vine is very similar to the Instagram app in terms of functionality and interface, except its sole purpose is to share videos as opposed to images.

August 2013

In August 2013, Twitter introduced an update that allowed users to follow conversations easier. This newfound ease came in the form of blue and grey lines, linking up conversations in chronological order.

March 2014

During the Oscars in 2014, American TV Show Host, Ellen DeGeneres Tweeted a picture with some of the biggest A-list celeb’s of our generation! This Tweet received over 3 million retweets and 3.3 billion impressions, making it the most engaged with Tweet of all time! Nice one Ellen!

August 2014

Twitter launches its promoted video service. This was revolutionary for business users and even the entertainment industry. The promoted video allows users to view the video straight from their Twitter feed.

January 2015

Group direct messages are now available, so users are able to chat to more than one person at a time… About time, Twitter!

May 2015

May 2015 saw the revolution of social media posts in Google search results! Google and Twitter team up to ensure that relevant Twitter posts, images and videos appear in SERPs. A game-changer for Digital Marketing gurus!

March 2016

On 21st March 2016, Twitter celebrated its 10th birthday, and what a whirlwind those 10 years have been in the Twittersphere!

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