Birthoflittlebluebird thatwouldbeheard aroundtheworld
It was originally conceived as a website for “bursts of short, inconsequential information”.
Yet Twitter, which was launched on July 15, 2006, has proved to be anything but inconsequential.
It has had an unprecedented impact on politics, fame and information sharing.
Movements such as Black Lives Matter and #Metoo were born from the platform, and users, including celebrities and public figures, announce events, all neatly within 280 characters.
It came about from a daylong brainstorming session at New York podcasting company Odeo. Then an undergraduate student at New York University, co-founder Jack Dorsey coined the idea of people sending short text messages to communicate within a small social group, which the company first used as their in-house communication system.
In particular, politicians have taken advantage of the website to directly speak to voters. None more so than former US President Donald Trump, who’s antics online included accusing almost anyone and anything of being “fake news”.
Trump’s Twitter infamy eventually led to him being banned by the platform’s moderators, with his turning point coming in May 2020 when he accused postal voting ballots of being fraudulent in the upcoming US election.
In a first, Twitter marked his tweets as “potentially misleading”. Online chaos ensued, and Trump threatened regulations against the social media platform and promptly signed a presidential order regarding online censorship.
Eventually, Trump’s account was suspended from Twitter after it was deemed to have glorified violence as loyal supporters stormed the Capitol, the centre of US lawmaking.
The US government is not the only one with a difficult relationship with the social media platform – Twitter was completely banned for almost a year in Nigeria, after its President, Muhammadu Buhari, was temporarily suspended and his tweets warning of a second Nigerian civil war were deleted.
During the pandemic, Twitter experienced a surge in users, but the platform has been accused of helping to spread misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines.
Politics is not the only area of life that Twitter has shaped. Everything, from births and deaths, is announced to the world via the platform.
David Bowie’s account announced the death of the rock legend, shocking fans who had known nothing of his illness.
Even Microsoft founder
Bill Gate’s divorce from wife Melinda was announced through a tweet, with the couple both sharing: “We no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives”.
When Michael Jackson died in 2009, Twitter servers crashed as accounts were re-tweeting the superstar’s name at a rate of 100,000 times per hour.
The ownership of Twitter has become controversial.
Billionaire Elon Musk put in a bid to buy it in a move which has alarmed some commentators.
But yesterday it emerged the $44bn (£36.5bn) deal was on the verge of collapse after Musk sent a letter to the social media company’s board saying he no longer wanted to go ahead, amid speculation he now feels he offered too much.