Earlier this week, Twitter celebrated its 18th anniversary, a monumental birthday for the world’s most popular microblogging site.
A little-known fact is that Twitter, now known as X, grew out of Odeo, a podcast venture founded in 2004 by Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass. (Mr. Williams and Mr. Stone had previously worked at Google, and Mr. Williams developed the popular web authoring tool Blogger.) In 2005, Apple announced it would add podcasts to its digital media application, iTunes. Odeo executives felt the company couldn’t compete with Apple and needed a new direction.
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When Odeo employees were asked if they had any interesting side projects, young engineer Jack Dorsey suggested a short messaging service (SMS) that would let people share short, blog-like updates with friends. Glass suggested the name Twttr. Dorsey sent the first message (“Just setting up twttr”) on March 21, 2006. It was called a Tweet. But the finished version of Twitter didn’t debut until July 16, 2006, and this week marks its 18th anniversary.
Seeing the potential of the product, Williams, Stone, and Dorsey acquired Odeo and founded Obvious in October 2006 to further develop the idea. Interest in the platform skyrocketed after it was unveiled at the South by Southwest music and technology conference in Austin, Texas, in March 2007. The following month, Twitter was incorporated with an infusion of venture capital funding, and Dorsey became Twitter’s first CEO. In 2008, Williams ousted Dorsey as CEO, and COO Dick Costolo took over two years later.
Twitter’s social networking roots became apparent in April 2009, when actor Ashton Kutcher beat CNN to become the first Twitter user to gain more than one million followers. Since then, “e-watching” celebrities has remained a big draw for the service, and Twitter quickly became everyone’s site for new news, opinions, and ways to get the edge.
There were a lot of big events that helped shape Twitter into what it is today, but we tend to forget them.
* In the 2008 US Presidential election, Barack Obama won a landslide victory over his opponent John McCain, gaining more than 20 times the number of Twitter followers. This development ensured that future political candidates would aggressively incorporate social networking into their media strategies to get elected.
* On January 15, 2009, a tweet from commuter ferry passenger Janice Krumbs broke the news that US Airways Flight 1549 had safely landed in New York City’s Hudson River. Her hastily captured cell phone images of passengers disembarking from the half-submerged plane established the platform as a source of breaking news.
* In June 2009, after state media reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won handily, supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi took to the streets. As Mousavi’s supporters organized protests and posted live updates of events across the Iranian capital, the topic #IranElection became one of the most followed hashtags on Twitter, and Twitter has since become the favored platform for the populist movement.
*Twitter reaffirmed its role as a powerful communication tool after the earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010. It was an effective fundraising platform when the Red Cross launched a mobile “donate” campaign that exceeded expectations.
There have been many changes at Twitter since Elon Musk took over as its new CEO. First, he renamed Twitter to “X” and “denigrated” the platform. He fired about 75% of the employees, lost advertisers due to concerns over changes to the community guidelines, and introduced paid subscriptions.
While it was once taken for granted that most of the world’s top brands would include Twitter in their campaign strategies, many are now reallocating their ad spend to other channels. So what is it that will help Twitter/X maintain its dominance?
* The potential for X to launch viable video advertising products as it strengthens as a long-form video hub.
* Under Musk’s direction, X is moving towards a closed platform where everyone must pay to join, before opening up to the world to an ad-supported model in the coming months once spammers, trolls, bots and other miscellaneous content have been weeded out.
* With the introduction of features like Twitter Spaces, video capabilities and incentives for content creators, the platform is paving the way for diverse advertising formats and attracting a wider range of advertisers.
From Threads to Koo, many companies have tried to overtake X with little success. It makes sense that an 18th birthday celebration would involve a big cake.
The author is Chairman of Rediffusion.