Jack Dorsey’s initial tweet, ‘just setting up my twttr’, started it all, revolutionizing online communication. Twitter, with its new platform, became an instant hit, overtaking traditional social networking websites such as Yahoo Messenger, MySpace, and Orkut. Individuals found Twitter’s minimalistic, straightforward approach appealing since there was no space for excessive gossip. In contrast to today’s ‘X’, the users were not allowed to deviate from a firm 140-character limit, and threads were still not a feature. Here, Twitter brought a new way of online interaction.
Released on March 21, 2006, Twitter was initially an internal application for Odeo, which was a podcasting firm. With the addition of podcast capabilities by Apple’s iTunes, Odeo lost its business. Dorsey, as a software engineer, proposed the concept of a service in which users could send updates similar to SMS to other people. This resulted in the development of Twttr, and later Twitter. Chris Messina’s 2007 suggestion of hashtags became a defining aspect of Twitter.
Real-time interaction on the platform and hashtags ensured that Twitter picked up steam worldwide. It was a favorite haunt of conversations from mundane updates to breaking world news. Sohaib Athar, a computer consultant in Abbottabad, Pakistan, unwittingly tweeted about the helicopter that ultimately validated Osama Bin Laden’s death in 2011. This was the epitome of Twitter’s special role in influencing global discourse.
Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).
— Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) May 1, 2011
By 2012, Twitter boasted more than 200 million monthly active users, with 340 million tweets per day. Today, ‘X’ is estimated to have approximately 650 million active users. Under Dorsey’s guidance, Twitter changed, such as doubling the character count from 140 to 280. Because of these adjustments, Dorsey resigned as CEO in 2021, saying that he felt a company shouldn’t be ‘just ‘founder-led’. In a letter to employees, Dorsey described, “There’s a lot of discussion around the value of a company being ‘founder-led.’ At the end of the day I think that’s materially constraining and a single point of failure.
Dorsey’s email also announced his selection of Twitter CTO Parag Agrawal as the company’s new CEO. “Parag has been behind every key decision that helped turn this company around,” Dorsey said. Even after Dorsey’s resignation, the company kept innovating. Parag Agrawal, an IIT Bombay alumnus, was made the CEO in November 2021, but he did not have a long term. Agrawal was dismissed by new owner Elon Musk in 2022 following a public fight over content moderation, and Musk brought in Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO.
Later in 2022, Musk finalized his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter after months of on-again, off-again negotiations. Musk’s acquisition resulted in mass layoffs and the elimination of historic features, including Twitter’s iconic blue bird logo. The site was relaunched to ‘X’, marking a new path for the company. X now supports posting up to 25,000 characters with a paid subscription, and monetization features have been added, where people can earn on the basis of engagement. In addition, X incorporated Grok, an AI-powered chatbot made by Musk’s xAI, which supports real-time questioning and even coding of games.
Since Musk’s acquisition, X has been controversial but also remade social media on a different footing and on a completely new branding. As Musk keeps pushing the platform, its makeover continues to have no signs of slowing down.
