In this photo illustration, former US President Donald Trump’s archived Twitter account is displayed on a phone screen with the Twitter logo in the background.
Sheldon Cooper | Light Rocket | Getty Images
A decade ago, Of Twitter the future looked bright. The company was benefiting from a flood of funding in the social networking space, eventually leading to an IPO in 2013 that raised $1.8 billion.
Now the company is back in private hands. And those are the hands of Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and one of the app’s most high-profile provocateurs.
It’s a massive moment. Twitter has become a key place for people to debate, joke and pontificate in their circles of politics, sports, technology and finance. It has also served as a platform that gives voice to the voiceless, helping protesters organize and speak out in oppressive regimes around the world.
In recent years, however, Twitter and social media rivals like it Facebook have been at the center of controversy for spreading fake news and misinformation, which sometimes leads to bullying and violence.
Investors had grown concerned about Twitter as a business. The company was generally unprofitable, struggling to keep pace Google and Facebook, and often killed popular products without any real explanation.
What follows is a brief history of Twitter, which – despite its many flaws – is one of the most iconic companies to emerge from Silicon Valley in the past 20 years.
2006
In March, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams created Twitter, which was originally a side project that spun out of podcasting tool Odeo. That month, Dorsey would send the first Tweet he ever read, “just setting up my twttr.”
2007
In July, Twitter received a $100,000 Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures. The app’s popularity began to explode after it was heavily promoted by the tech community during the annual South by Southwest conference.
2008
Dorsey stepped down as CEO in October and was replaced by Williams. According to the book Hatching Twitter by journalist Nick Bilton, Twitter’s board fired Dorsey over concerns about the executive’s management style and public bragging.
2009
Twitter’s popularity continued to grow, leading to a high-profile appearance by Williams on Oprah Winfrey’s show alongside celebrity Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher would also write about Williams and Stone as part of Time magazine Time 100 number. Twitter was now a mainstream phenomenon.
2010
Twitter reached space, with NASA astronaut Timothy Creamer sending the first I tweet live from outer orbit. Behind the scenes, however, management problems continued with Williams stepping down as CEO, replaced by chief operating officer Dick Costolo.
2011
Twitter became an essential social media tool used during the Arab Spring, the wave of anti-government protests across Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Protesters used the site to post reports and organize. As the Pew Research Center noted, Twitter’s role in “distributing breaking news” was “not limited to the Arab uprisings — Whitney Houston’s death, for example, was announced on Twitter 55 minutes before the AP confirmed the story “.
2012
Twitter’s reach expanded to 200 million active users. Barack Obama used “the platform to first publicly declare victory in the 2012 US presidential election, with a Tweet that was viewed approximately 25 million times on our platform and widely shared offline in print and broadcast media,” according to filings corporations.
2013
Twitter went public in November. The combined fortunes of Williams, Dorsey and Costolo totaled approximately $4 billion.
“I think we have a tremendous set of thoughts and strategies to increase the slope of the growth curve,” Costolo told CNBC at the time. “I would consider some of it tactics, some of it broader strategy, in the service of bridging the gap between Twitter’s mass awareness and deep engagement of the platform.”
2014
Slowing user growth led to some stock declines and analyst downgrades. Twitter also named 2014 as the year of the selfie.
2015
Compared to rivals like Google, Facebook, and even LinkedIn, Twitter was starting to look like Internet trash. Twitter was still unprofitable as its advertising business struggled mightily against its larger competitors. Dorsey would also return as the company’s CEO, while still retaining the top post at his other company, Square (now Block).
2016
Rumors began to circulate that Twitter was looking to be acquired, with Salesforce as a possible suitor. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook were criticized for their role in allowing prominent users such as Donald Trump, who would win the US presidential election that year, to spread misleading information without consequence.
“Having the president-elect on our service using him as a direct line of communication allows everyone to see what’s on his mind right now,” Dorsey said at the time. “We’re definitely entering a new world where everything is on the surface and we can all see that in real time and have conversations about it.”
2017
For a moment, Twitter seemed to be on the rise. Its stock was finally rising as the company’s finances improved. Meanwhile, Trump as president continued to use Twitter as his megaphone. According to Twitter’s own data, “Trump was the most-tweeted global leader in the world and in the United States” that year, CNBC reported.
2018
Dorsey and then-Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about alleged meddling by Russia-linked actors in the 2016 election. Trump and fellow Republicans have become increasingly vocal about their bias political claims from Twitter and other social media sites.
“In fact, from a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is driven to keep all voices on the platform,” Dorsey said at the time.
2019
Analysts found correlations between President Trump’s voracious use of Twitter and various markets, including gold, underscoring Twitter’s cultural power. Trump met with Dorsey – a Twitter spokesperson said that “Jack had a constructive meeting with the President of the United States today at the invitation of the president.”
“They discussed Twitter’s commitment to protecting the health of the public conversation ahead of the 2020 U.S. election and the efforts being made to respond to the opioid crisis,” the spokesperson said.
2020
As Covid-19 spread across the globe, the spread of misinformation dominated the internet conversation. And Twitter continued to struggle to grow its business. The service was also hacked that year, and miscreants gained access to over a dozen high-profile accounts, including those controlled by Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos and Musk.
2021
Twitter permanently banned Trump over the president’s inflammatory comments during the US Congress riots in January, which the company said could lead to “further incitement to violence”. Trump would allege that Twitter employees “coordinated with Democrats and the Radical Left to remove my account from their platform, to silence me.” Later, Dorsey abruptly left as CEO and was replaced by Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief technology officer.
2022
Musk took to Twitter after a protracted legal battle that would have culminated this week in a trial in Delaware Cancer Court. of Tesla The CEO agreed in April to pay $44 billion for Twitter, but then tried to renege on the deal. He reversed course and chose to move on, walking into the company’s San Francisco office on Wednesday with what appeared to be a porcelain sink in hand.
“Walking into Twitter HQ – let it sink in!” it posted on Twitterwith a video of his introduction.
Musk immediately began making changes, firing Agrawal, head of finance Ned Segal and head of legal policy Vijaya Gadde.
friend: Billionaire Elon Musk walks into Twitter headquarters, dips in his hand
