The rise and fall of the iconic Twitter: 20 years from the first tweet to Musk’s empire

Revolution in 140 characters

Twitter was born from the ashes of the failed podcasting startup Odeo, as a side project of Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. The idea was radically simple: to create a public stream of short statuses, inspired by SMS messages and their limitation of 140 characters.

– Žwe wanted to capture that feeling. The physical feeling of vibrating in your friend’s pocket. It’s like you’re vibrating all over the world, Dorsey explained years later.

The turning point occurred at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in 2007, where the number of daily tweets tripled, launching the platform into the mainstream. Soon, users began to shape its language themselves, and Chris Messina’s suggestion to use the ladder sign (#) to group topics became the basis of conversation organization. From reporting on the forced landing of a plane on the Hudson River to its role in coordinating protests during the “Arab Spring,” Twitter has become an indispensable tool for citizen journalism and political activism.

The golden age and going public

By 2011, Twitter was moreć had one hundred million monthly active users, and the blue bird logo, named “Larry The Bird” after basketball legend Larry Bird, became a globally recognizable symbol. The platform has become the primary communication channel for celebrities, journalists and world leaders. Donald Trump, who used Twitter as a key tool to bypass traditional media during his presidential campaign and mandate, stood out in particular.

Despiteč enormous influence, the company struggled with profitability for years. The IPO in November 2013 was spectacular, with an initial share price of $26, which was more than that. jumped by 73 percent on the first day, giving the company a market value of 31 billion dollars. However, Twitter recorded its first profitable year only in 2017.

Musk’s arrival and the end of an era

Everything changed in 2022. After a months-long legal and media saga, technology mogul Elon Musk bought Twitter on October 27 for an incredible $44 billion. The changes were immediate and radical. Musk immediately fired the entire top management and embarked on mass layoffs, reducing the number of employees from more than 7,500 to less than 1,500. The content moderation teams have practically been disbanded.

The final blow to the old Twitter was delivered in July 2023, when Musk shut down the recognizable brand. The blue bird is gone, replaced by a black letter “X”. Company Twitter, Inc. ceased to exist and became part of X Corp, signaling both a complete break with the past and Musk’s ambition to create an “app for everyone”.

X today

Twenty years since the first tweet, the platform is in a deep identity crisis. Although it has retained a core of approximately 388 million monthly active users, its financial health has been destroyed. Advertising revenue, which accounted for 90 percent of earnings, fell by more than 50 percent, and the company’s value fell to less than $19 billion, a steep drop from the price Musk paid.

His proclaimed stance on “absolute freedom of speech” has led to a rise in hate speech, misinformation and conspiracy theories, causing many major advertisers to pull back and worry about the safety of their brands. Muso’s vision of an “app for everyone” along the lines of China’s WeChat is still a long way off, and the platform is now increasingly integrated with his artificial intelligence company xAI, serving as a training ground for the development of the Grok AI chatbot.