Twitter was created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Noah Glass and Biz Stone. Since then, it has become, by its immediacy, essential for both journalists and politicians.
1. En 2006, le premier tweet : « Just setting up my twttr»
Twitter was officially created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Noah Glass and Biz Stone.
It all started in 2005, when Evan Williams, Noah Glass and Biz Stones owned the podcast company Odeo. The competition is fierce and the business is in decline. To renew their activity, Jack Dorsey, then a web designer, had the idea of a communication site by text message in order to be able to share information and moments of life more quickly with those around him.
On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey posted his first tweet: Just setting up my twttr“, literally “ i am installing my twttr“. Tweets are limited to 140 characters. The site officially opened to the public on July 13, 2006.
2. January 15, 2009: “There’s a plane in the Hudson”
Quickly, the social network shakes up the way of informing by its immediacy. Newspapers experienced this on January 15, 2009 when entrepreneur Janis Krums posted a photo on Twitter of a plane landing on the Hudson River off Manhattan.
This is US Airways flight 1549 which has just hit a group of birds, just minutes after taking off from La Guardia airport. After landing in an emergency on the water, the 154 passengers and flight crew managed to evacuate the plane.
On Twitter, the photo posted by Janis Krums quickly went viral. It is seen 40,000 times in the first four hours of its posting. For the media, this image becomes the first accessible visual testimony. Half an hour after taking the photo, the entrepreneur is even interviewed by the American channel MSNBC.
3. September 12, 2013: Twitter’s IPO
On September 12, 2013, the social network announced its IPO. The very slow growth in the number of monthly active users of the social network is causing the dissatisfaction of shareholders and more generally of the markets. The sale of Twitter is already mentioned.
Despite everything, on February 8, 2018, Twitter announced its first quarterly net profit. The same year, the social network generalized the practice of “thread“, launched in December 2017. This is a feature that links the messages to each other in order to create a thread and to be able to develop a longer message.
4. January 8, 2021, Donald Trump’s last tweet
The social network, which has also become a must for politicians, makes the decision to permanently ban Donald Trump’s account on January 8, 2021, two days after his supporters took over the Capitol and interrupted the counting of votes for the presidential election.
The former president of the United States has tweeted more than 26,000 times since entering the White House in 2017 and has generalized this way of making political announcements directly on Twitter.
To justify the suspension of his account, the social network cites the last two tweets from Donald Trump, who describes, in the first, his supporters as “patriotsand announces, in the other, that he will not participate in the induction of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021. Twitter then considers that these messages violate the rules prohibiting calls to violence.
5. October 28, 2022, the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk
« The bird is freed(the bird is released), it is in these terms that billionaire Elon Musk announced his takeover of Twitter. The richest man in the world, boss of Tesla and Space X, has officially acquired, Thursday, October 26, the social network for the sum of 44 billion dollars, announced several American media, including Reuters and the New York Times.
Immediately, the entrepreneur fired chief executive Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and chief legal and policy officer Vijaya Gadde, who were behind the banning of Donald Trump’s account.
This is the culmination of a case started last April, when Elon Musk proposed a $ 44 billion takeover bid for Twitter, before retracting in early July, accusing the company of having him lied. The company’s Board of Directors then took legal action. The two parties had until Friday, October 28 to reach an agreement in order to avoid a trial in November.