In this photo illustration, former US President Donald Trump’s archived Twitter account is shown on a phone screen with the Twitter logo in the background.
Sheldon Cooper | Lightrocket | Getty Images
A decade ago, on Twitter the future looked bright. The company benefited from a flood of funding in the social networking space that eventually led to an IPO in 2013 that raised $1.8 billion.
Now the company is back in private hands. And it happens to be the hands of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and one of the most famous provocateurs of the application.
This is a huge moment. Twitter has become a key place for people to debate, joke and pontificate in their own circles on politics, sports, technology and finance. It also serves as a platform that gives voice to the voiceless, helping protesters organize and express themselves in repressed regimes around the world.
In recent years, however, rivals on Twitter and social media like Facebook have been at the center of controversies over the spread of fake news and misinformation, sometimes leading to harassment and violence.
Investors worried about Twitter as a business. Overall, the company was unprofitable and struggled to keep pace Google and Facebook and often destroys popular products with no 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 stemming from podcasting tool Odeo. This month, Dorsey will send out the first tweet that reads “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 grow 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 CEO’s management style and public bragging.
2009
Twitter’s popularity continued to grow, leading to Williams’ high-profile appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show alongside celebrity Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher will also write about Williams and Stone as part of Time magazine Time 100 pcs. Twitter was already a mainstream phenomenon.
2010
Twitter has reached space, and NASA astronaut Timothy Creamer sent the first a tweet live from outer orbit. Behind the scenes, however, management woes continued with Williams stepping down as chief executive, replaced by chief operating officer Dick Costolo.
2011
Twitter became a major social media tool used during the Arab Spring, the wave of anti-government protests in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Protesters used the site to post reports and organize. As the Pew Research Center notes, Twitter’s role in “breaking breaking news” is 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 has grown to 200 million active users. Barack Obama used “the platform to first publicly announce 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 electronic media,” according to corporate filings .
2013
Twitter went public in November. The combined wealth of Williams, Dorsey and Costolo reached an estimated $4 billion.
“I think we have a huge set of thoughts and strategies to increase the slope of the growth curve,” Costolo told CNBC at the time. “I would look at some of them as tactics, some of them as broader strategies, in service of what I’ve called bridging the gap between mass awareness of Twitter and deep engagement on the platform.”
2014
Slowing consumer growth led to several declines in stocks and downgrades by analysts. Twitter has also designated 2014 as the year of the “selfie.”
2015
Compared to rivals like Google, Facebook and even LinkedIn, Twitter was starting to look like the Internet’s wildest litter. Twitter was still unprofitable as its advertising business struggled mightily against its larger rivals. Dorsey will also return as the company’s CEO, while retaining the top job at his other company, Square (now Block).
2016
Rumors began to circulate that Twitter wanted to be acquired, with Salesforce a potential candidate. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook have been 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 in our office, 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 we can have conversations about it.”
2017
For a moment, Twitter seemed to be on the upswing. Its stock finally rose 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” this year, CNBC reported.
2018
Dorsey and then-Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about alleged meddling by Russian-linked actors in the 2016 election. Trump and his fellow Republicans have become increasingly vocal about alleged political bias by Twitter and others social media.
“In fact, from a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to support all voices on the platform,” Dorsey said at the time.
2019
Analysts have 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 “Jack had a constructive meeting with the President of the United States today at the President’s invitation.”
“They discussed Twitter’s commitment to protecting the health of the public conversation ahead of the 2020 US election and ongoing efforts to respond to the opioid crisis,” the spokesperson said.
2020
As Covid-19 has spread across the globe, the spread of misinformation has dominated the online conversation. And Twitter continued to struggle to grow its business. The service was also hacked that year, and criminals 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 inflammatory comments the president made during the Capitol riots in January, which the company said could lead to “further incitement to violence.” Trump would allege that Twitter officials “coordinated with Democrats and the radical left in removing my account from their platform to silence me.” Dorsey later abruptly stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief technology officer.
2022
Musk took over Twitter after a lengthy legal battle that would have ended this week in a trial in Delaware court. The Tesla The CEO agreed in April to pay $44 billion for Twitter, but then tried to back out of the deal. He changed course and decided to move on, walking into the company’s San Francisco office on Wednesday with what looked like a porcelain bathroom sink in his hands.
“Walking into Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” he tweetedwith video of his entry.
Musk immediately began making changes, firing Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal policy Vijaya Gade.
I’M WATCHING: Billionaire Elon Musk walks into Twitter headquarters with a sink in hand