No, first tweet was not posted in %Austin

Mayor a cheerleader for Austin’s rep as technology hub, but his claim about Twitter misses the mark.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler, making a pitch for special transportation aid, made it clear he thinks of his city as an innovation capital. In part, he said, that’s because the very first tweet was posted here.

“Austin is where good ideas become real,” Adler said in a meeting with U.S. Transportation Sec- retary Anthony Foxx. The same day, Adler said during a panel discussion, “The first tweet was sent from Austin.”

Americ an-Statesman technology reporter Lilly Rockwell sounded skeptical in her tweet reporting Adler’s claim to history: “Hmm, @MayorAdler claims the first tweet was sent from Austin. I know it became popular at #SXSW but was the first tweet really sent here?” We wondered too. To our inquiry, mayoral spokesman Jason Stanford said Adler occasionally makes his first-tweetfrom-Austin claim “as shorthand for how Twitter became real when it came to SXSW. He often says that Austin is where good ideas become real, and he likes to cite Twitter as an example, though in this case he is inexact with his word choice. The mayor has been duly and suitably reminded that words have meaning but apologizes to no one for bragging about Austin’s role as a launchpad for innovation.” So, when was the first tweet? A 2013 book by journalist Nick Bilton on Twitter’s birth and growth, “Hatching Twitter,” includes a chapter stating that one of the San Francisco-based company’s founders, Jack Dorsey, posted the first “official” Twitter update at 11:50 a.m. March 21, 2006. According to the book, Dorsey tweeted from the office of his then-employer, Odeo, a faltering podcast venture. Dorsey’s post said: “just setting up my twittr,” matching the wording of a test message someone else