# Timeline of Twitter

The history of Twitter, later known as X, can be traced back to a brainstorming session at Odeo.

## Major events

| Time period | Key developments at Twitter |
| March 2006 – March 2007 | Twitter launches as a product of parent company Odeo. It grows slowly until March 2007, where usage grows dramatically after it is showcased at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference. |
| April 2007 – October 2008 | Twitter grows rapidly under CEO Jack Dorsey, completing two funding rounds and launching official support for hashtags. |
| October 2008 – October 2010 | Jack Dorsey steps down, and Evan Williams takes over as CEO. Twitter raises money, gets celebrity endorsements and publicity, and continues to grow rapidly. The first tweet from space occurs during this period. Twitter also announces that it will start allowing for advertising in the form of promoted tweets – "ordinary tweets that businesses and individuals want to highlight to a wider group of users." |
| October 2010 – October 2013 | Evan Williams steps down as CEO, and Dick Costolo takes over. |
| October 2013 | Twitter announces plans and files relevant legal documents in October 2013 so as to go public. In November 2013, it has its initial public offering. Post-IPO, the company's pace of acquisitions increases dramatically. |
| November 2014 – present | With the launch of features such as Instant Timeline, While You Were Away, Quality Filter, Curator, and Moments, Twitter diversifies beyond just being a reverse chronological stream of tweets by people you already follow. |
| July 2015 – present | Dick Costolo departs Twitter and Jack Dorsey assumes the role of interim CEO. Commentators note that the "founder's instincts" are influencing the product's new direction. |
| April 2022 | Elon Musk and Twitter board reach a deal for Musk to acquire the company for $44 billion and take it private. |
| July 2023 | Elon Musk rebrands Twitter to X. |

## Full timeline

| Year | Month and date | Event type | Event |
| 2004 | November | Prelude | Odeo, Twitter's parent company, is started. |
| 2005 | February | Prelude | Odeo's podcasting service is released, with very little public response. |
| 2006 | February 26–27 | Creation | Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams and Biz Stone discuss the idea of using text messaging to share statuses, and decide to work on the project. The original idea is attributed to Jack Dorsey, and called the status concept. |
| 2006 | Early March | Creation | The name Twitter (spelled twttr at the time and using a green site logo) is chosen for the service. The idea for the name is attributed to Noah Glass. |
| 2006 | March 21 | Creation | Twitter is officially set up and Jack Dorsey sends the first tweet. |
| 2006 | July 15 | Media coverage | Noah Glass tells Om Malik about Twitter (then called twttr), and Malik writes what appears to be the first ever news coverage of Twitter, and several people, including Malik himself, have commented on the accuracy (or lack thereof) of its predictions from the perspective of hindsight. |
| 2006 | August 3 | Usage | Twitter users tweet about a mild (4.4 on the Richter scale) earthquake in California. The event helps Twitter's team see the potential of Twitter as a way for many people to contribute to the reporting of a live event, each from his or her own vantage point. |
| 2006 | September | Creation | Twttr renames itself Twitter after purchasing the Twitter.com domain name. |
| 2006 | September | Userbase | Twitter attempts to have a grand launch at the Love Parade, but gets very little traction there, with only 100 new signups. |
| 2006 | October | Financial/legal and company operation | Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo, form Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo, together with its assets—including Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the investors and shareholders. |
| 2007 | March 12 | Userbase | Twitter is highly successful at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) and gets a major bump in usage from the event. Commentator Steven Levy calls this a tipping point for Twitter. |
| 2007 | April | Financial/legal and company operation | Twitter spins off into its own company. |
| 2007 | June 26 | Financial/legal | Twitter announces that it has closed a funding round led by Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. The five-million-dollar round values Twitter at $20 million. |
| 2007 | August 23 | Usage | The hashtag (#), first proposed by user Chris Messina, debuts on Twitter. |
| 2008 | June 24 | Financial/legal | Twitter announces the closure of its second funding round, welcoming new investors Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital and Jeff Bezos of Bezos Expeditions. Existing partners Union Square Ventures and Digital Garage also invest more. |
| 2008 | October 16 | Company operation | It is announced that Jack Dorsey has stepped down from the CEO role at Twitter, and Evan Williams takes over. |
| 2009 | February 13 | Financial/legal | Twitter announces the closure of yet another funding round, with new investors Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital and Todd Chaffee of Institutional Venture Partners. |
| 2009 | April 17 | Media coverage, userbase expansion | Evan Williams appears alongside Ashton Kutcher on Oprah Winfrey's show to explain Twitter to Oprah's audience. |
| 2009 | April 20 onward | Media coverage, userbase expansion | Executives from Twitter and WordPress head over to Iraq to expose the people there to social media and the Internet. |
| 2009 | April 30 | Media coverage | Twitter executives Biz Stone and Evan Williams are included in the TIME 100. |
| 2009 | June 15–16 | Usage | Twitter reschedules planned downtime for maintenance so as not to conflict with a large planned protest in Iran. Because a US State Department official had emailed Twitter about the planned protest, newspapers speculate that Twitter rescheduled its downtime because of pressure from the US government. |
| 2009 | October | Usage | Twitter posts are indexed in real time by Google Search (Google Real-Time Search). |
| 2010 | January 22 | Usage | The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message is posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer. |
| 2010 | April 13 | Product | Twitter announces that it will start allowing for advertising in the form of promoted tweets – "ordinary tweets that businesses and individuals want to highlight to a wider group of users." |
| 2010 | September | Product | Implementation of hash-bang fragment URLs and AJAX-based page loading. Replaced by JavaScript PushState in early 2012 due to problems with compatibility and shareability. |
| 2010 | October 4 | Company operation | Evan Williams steps down as CEO, and Dick Costolo, the erstwhile COO, takes over as CEO. |
| 2011 | April 5, April 20 | Product | Twitter tests a new homepage and phased out the "Old Twitter." However, a glitch came about after the page was launched, so the previous "retro" homepage was still in use until the issues were resolved; the new homepage was reintroduced on April 20. |
| 2011 | July 5 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires BackType, a real-time social analytics platform. |
| 2011 | September 8–9 | Financial/legal | Twitter closes its Series G round, raising $800 million at a $8 billion valuation. Of the $800 million, $400 million buys off shares from existing investors and the remaining $400 million goes to the company. |
| 2011 | December 8 | Product | Twitter overhauls its website once more to feature the "Fly" design, which the service says is easier for new users to follow and promotes advertising. In addition to the Home tab, the Connect and Discover tabs are introduced along with a redesigned profile and timeline of Tweets. The site's layout is compared to that of Facebook. |
| 2012 | February 21 | Product | Twitter announces a partnership with Russian search engine Yandex. Yandex, a Russian search engine, finds value within the partnership due to Twitter's real time news feeds. Twitter's director of business development explained that it is important to have Twitter content where Twitter users go. |
| 2012 | March 21 | Userbase | Twitter celebrates its sixth birthday while also announcing that it has 140 million users and sees 340 million tweets per day. The number of users is up 40% from their September 2011 number, which was said to have been at 100 million at the time. |
| 2012 | April | Company operation | Twitter announces that it is opening an office in Detroit, with the aim of working with automotive brands and advertising agencies. Twitter also expanded its office in Dublin. |
| 2012 | June 5 | Product | A modified logo is unveiled through the company blog, removing the text to showcase the slightly redesigned bird as the sole symbol of Twitter. |
| 2012 | August 22 | Product | Name of tweets' source client no longer displayed. Reinstated in December 2018. |
| 2012 | October 5 | Acquisition | Twitter acquired a video clip company called Vine that launches (later) in January 2013. Twitter released Vine as a standalone app that allows users to create and share six-second looping video clips on January 24, 2013. Vine videos shared on Twitter are visible directly in users' Twitter feeds. Due to an influx of inappropriate content, it is now rated 17+ in Apple's app store. |
| 2012 | December 18 | Userbase | Twitter announces it had surpassed 200 million monthly active users. Twitter hit 100 million monthly active users in September 2011. |
| 2013 | March 24 | Product | Line breaks |
| 2013 | April 18 | Product | Twitter launches a music app called Twitter Music for the iPhone. |
| 2013 | June 13 | Product | Shutdown of public site API "1.0" |
| 2013 | August 28 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires Trendrr, a real-time social data company. |
| 2013 | September 9 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires MoPub. |
| 2013 | September 12 | Financial/legal | Twitter announces that it has filed papers with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of a planned stock market listing. |
| 2013 | October 4 | Financial/legal | Twitter releases an 800-page prospectus in preparation for the IPO. |
| 2013 | November 6–7 | Financial/legal | On November 6, 70 million shares are priced at US$26 and issued by lead underwriter Goldman Sachs. On November 7, trading of the shares begins on the New York Stock Exchange. The share closes at US$44.90, giving the company a valuation of around US$31 billion. |
| 2014 | April | Product | Desktop website layout majorly redesigned. This layout served as main front end for desktop web users until July 2019. |
| 2014 | June 19 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires SnappyTV. |
| 2014 | June 30 | Acquisition | Twitter confirms acquisition of mobile ad retargeting startup TapCommerce. |
| 2014 | July 31 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires password security startup Mitro and open sources the product. |
| 2014 | November 12 | Product, userbase | Twitter announces "Instant Timeline"—a way to show users who have just created accounts interesting content even before they have followed anybody. Around the same time, Twitter announces that it will make the timeline more customized, highlighting to a user the most important tweets while they were away, rather than simply showing a reverse chronological feed. Other features announced include better video capability and the ability to share public tweets privately with one's followers to discuss them. |
| 2014 | December 2 | Product | Twitter announces a new suite of anti-harassment tools and promises faster response times for abuse complaints. |
| 2015 | January 20 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires India-based mobile marketing startup ZipDial. |
| 2015 | January 21 | Product | Twitter officially launches its "While You Were Away" feature. |
| 2015 | January 27 | Product | Launch of video uploading through mobile app and direct messaging in groups. |
| 2015 | February 11 | Acquisition | Twitter announces that it has acquired Niche, an ad network for social media stars, founded by Rob Fishman and Darren Lachtman. The acquisition price is reportedly $50 million. |
| 2015 | February 17 | Product | Twitter lets people share team accounts without sharing passwords, with its new TweetDeck Team feature. |
| 2015 | March 5 | Product, monetization | Twitter announces that it will tap data from its Marketing Platform Partners and allow publishers to target ads to specific audiences based on that data. |
| 2015 | March 9 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires Periscope, a live video streaming startup. |
| 2015 | March 23 | Product | Twitter starts rolling out a "Quality Filter" to verified iOS users so that people can more easily keep bullying and unpleasant tweets out of their stream. A number of news articles commented that it worked quite well. |
| 2015 | March 31 | Product | Twitter publicly launches Curator, a real-time search and filtering feature for media outlets, that some commentators call a Storify competitor. |
| 2015 | April 2 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires TenXer, a platform for developers and engineers to collaborate more effectively. |
| 2015 | April 7 | Product | Added feature to quote tweets |
| 2015 | April 28 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires with $532 million in stock TellApart, an ad technology company with rich user profiles, and partners with DoubleClick, Google's ad exchange. |
| 2015 | April 28 | Financial | Twitter shares fall in price by about 18% based on their disappointing quarterly revenue ($436 million), earning, and user growth numbers. The drop begins even before Twitter's official announcement because the results are scraped by financial intelligence firm Selerity from Twitter's website. |
| 2015 | May 18 | Product | Twitter completes the rollout of its new search interface for logged-in web users. |
| 2015 | May 19 | Use in other products | Google adds tweets to its mobile search results. |
| 2015 | June 11 (announcement), July 1 (planned change) | Company operation | Dick Costolo steps down as CEO, co-founder Jack Dorsey returns as interim CEO. Costolo will remain on the Board. Shares are up 3% on the announcement. |
| 2015 | June 17 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires Cambridge-based machine learning startup Whetlab. |
| 2015 | September 30 | Product | Twitter expands Buy buttons through partnerships with BigCommerce, Demandware, and Shopify. |
| 2015 | October 6 | Product | Twitter debuts Twitter Moments, a way for people to get a quick overview of important tweets or chains of tweets that occurred recently. |
| 2015 | October 14 | Company operation | Omid Kordestani leaves his job as Chief Business Officer at Google to become Executive Chairman at Twitter. His base salary is $50,000 and he is eligible for up to $12 million in stock based on the company's performance. |
| 2015 | November 3 | Product | Twitter replaces the Favorite button with a Like button and the star symbol (used to symbolize favoriting) with a heart symbol. Twitter reports a 6% increase in usage of the feature after the change, and also appears to be experimenting with offering a more diverse set of emojis, prompting commentators to draw parallels with Facebook's Reactions feature. |
| 2015 | November 4 | Product | Twitter launches a political transparency page, so that people can better engage with policy issues on Twitter. |
| 2016 | February–March | Product | Twitter rolls out a change to its feed, making recommended tweets the default option, rather than the reverse chronological format that it had used since launch. The rollout officially begins on February 10. The rollout is completed on March 17, 2016. Users are allowed to opt out, but Twitter reports in April 2016 that the percentage of users who opted out is in the "low single digits". |
| 2016 | May 24 | Product | Twitter announces that attached photos and videos will not be counted towards the 140 character limitation, and that a tweet beginning with a handle will be seen by followers. |
| 2016 | June 14 or 15 | Product | Added ability to retweet oneself |
| 2016 | June 20 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires Magic Pony Technology, a company based out of London that has developed techniques of using neural networks (systems that essentially are designed to think like human brains) and machine learning to provide expanded data for images. |
| 2016 | June 24 | Product | Twitter launches tags to location feeds with Foursquare. People can see which tweets are from a specific place. |
| 2016 | September 23 | Acquisition (potential) | CNBC reports that Twitter is in talks with potential acquirers including Google and Salesforce.com. On the same day, TechCrunch reports on the departure of two key Twitter team members. |
| 2016 | October 21 | Downtime | A distributed denial of service attack on DNS provider Dyn's servers in the United States East Coast causes DNS resolution problems for many websites include Twitter, Reddit, GitHub, Spotify, and others, mostly for users in the Americas. |
| 2016 | October 27 | Company operation | Twitter announces that it plans to cut 350 jobs (around 9% of its global workforce). |
| 2016 | October 27 | Vine | Vine announces that Twitter would be discontinuing the Vine mobile app. Vine says users of the service would be notified before any changes to the app or website are made. The company also states that the website and the app will be still available for users to view and download Vines; however, users will no longer be able to post. |
| 2016 | November 1 | Company operation | Rishi Jaitly, Twitter's head of India, announces his departure from the company. |
| 2016 | November 9 | Company operation | Adam Bain, Twitter's chief operating officer, announces he will leave the company. |
| 2016 | December 1 | Acquisition | Twitter acquires Yes, Inc., the company that made several apps including Frenzy. All of Yes's apps would shut down. In the process of the acquisition, Keith Coleman, who had served as CEO of Yes, becomes a new vice president of product for Twitter. |
| 2016 | December 20 | Company operation | Adam Messinger, Twitter's chief technology officer, announces his departure from the company. On the same day, Josh McFarland, a vice president of product, also announces his departure from Twitter. |
| 2017 | January | | Twitter announces that it would shut down the Twitter Dashboard. |
| 2017 | January 12 | Competition | The founders of App.net announce that the platform will shut down on March 14, 2017. App.net has been called "an ad-free, subscription-based, Twitter clone". The source code for App.net will be made available through its GitHub account. |
| 2017 | January 18 | Acquisition | Twitter announces it has sold Fabric, Twitter's developer platform, to Google. |
| 2017 | January 20 | Vine | Twitter launches an online archive of Vine videos. |
| 2017 | January 26 | Product | Twitter launches the "Explore" tab, which replaces the "Moments" tab. The Explore tab bundles together Moments, trends, live video streams, and search. |
| 2017 | January 27 | Legal | Twitter releases two national security letters it had received from the United States federal government. The release followed the lifting of the gag order placed on Twitter to not release the letters. The letters are from September 2015 and June 2016. |
| 2017 | March 30 | Product | Usernames no longer inside tweet replies |
| 2017 | March 31 | Product | Default profile picture changed from egg with randomly coloured background to grey person silhouette. |
| 2017 | April 6 | Product | Introduction of "Twitter Lite", a progressive web app for mobile users. |
| 2017 | April | Product | Font size of tweets in timeline consistent; some tweets' font no longer appears larger. |
| 2017 | June 15 | Product | Redesign of user interface icons such as "like", "retweet", "reply", and circular profile pictures, following a trend widely adapted by other large social media sites. |
| 2017 | November 7 | Product | Twitter increases tweets' character limit from 140 to 280 for all accounts. The earliest rollout to select accounts happened in September. |
| 2017 | November 10 | Product | Twitter increases display names' character limit from 20 to 50 characters. |
| 2017 | December | Product | Ability to post threads of multiple tweets at once |
| 2018 | July 13 | Product | Locked and suspended accounts no longer add to profiles' follower counts, making the appearance of a sudden drop in following on popular accounts. |
| 2018 | September | Legal | Jack Dorsey testifies before the U.S. senate alongside Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. |
| 2018 | December 20 | Product | Tweet source label reinstated on the website and mobile app, after previously removed in August 2012. |
| 2019 | March | Product | Earliest trial of vertical left-side navigation bar column on the progressive web app ("Twitter Web App"). Gradually rolled out, starting with Microsoft Windows 10 users. In June 2019, this layout was rolled out to all users of "Twitter Web App". |
| 2019 | May 7 | Product | Added ability to attach media (images or a video) to quote tweets |
| 2019 | June | Company Operation | Twitter reveals data showing thousands of fake accounts linked to foreign governments like Iran and Russia. |
| 2019 | July 15 | Product | Progressive web app front end (known as "Twitter Web App", formerly "Twitter Lite") set to default for desktop website users. |
| 2019 | July 15 | Product | TLS 1.0 and 1.1 support ended, placing Twitter among the earliest sites to do so. |
| 2019 | September 5 | Product | Line breaks in biography texts |
| 2020 | March | Product | Multimedia viewer overhaul for desktop users of "Twitter Web App", with the host tweet and its replies appearing in a scrollable and retractable side bar on the right, similarly to Facebook and Instagram. Gradually rolled out. |
| 2020 | June 1 | Product | Legacy (2014) web front end, also known as "Twitter Web Client", discontinued. |
| 2020 | August 11 | Product | Ability to limit replies to individual tweets to followed or mentioned users. First tested in May 2020. Expanded to be adjustable after tweeting in July 2021. |
| 2020 | August 26 | Product | Added counter for quote tweets |
| 2020 | November | Product | Trial with changed retweeting behaviour, where users are prompted to quote the tweet with a comment rather than a menu with a selection between both. A quoteless retweet would only be done if nothing was entered in the text box. The trial lasted for a month. |
| 2020 | December 15 to 16 | Product | Shutdown of "M2" mobile web front end which commenced as mobile front end in the early 2010s and later served as fallback to low-end devices/browsers, as well as browsers with JavaScript deactivated or unsupported. |
| 2021 | May | Product | Removal of the automated picture cropping algorithm used for previews in tweets and timelines. |
| 2021 | October 14 | Product | First trial of downvoting feature |
| 2022 | April 25 | Company operation | Elon Musk and Twitter board reach a deal for Musk to acquire the company for $44 billion and take it private. |
| 2022 | August 1 | Product | Initial tests of "tweets per month" counter. |
| 2022 | August 23 | Legal | Contents of Whistleblower complaint to the United States Congress is published, alleging multiple violations of United States securities regulations, the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, and a 2011 enforceable consent decree reached with the Federal Trade Commission after several issues between 2007 and 2010. |
| 2022 | October 27 | Company operation | Elon Musk completed the acquisition of Twitter. |
| 2022 | November 1-9 | Product | Announcement of new version of Twitter Blue with verification system, costing $7.99 per month. Launched 8 days later. |
| 2022 | November 8 | Product | Addition of "Official" label for government, company, and public figure accounts |
| 2022 | November 18-19 | Company operation | Elon Musk reinstates several previously banned accounts, including Donald Trump |
| 2022 | December 10 | Product | Relaunch of Twitter Blue with higher price on iOS |
| 2022 | December 18 | Product | Brief ban on posting links to other social media platforms, reverted a day later |
| 2022 | December 19 | Company operation | Elon Musk runs a poll asking if he should resign as Twitter's CEO. |
| 2022 | December 19 | Product | Launch of gold verified checkmarks and square profile pictures for brands as part of Twitter Blue for Business, as well as gray checkmarks for government accounts |
| 2022 | December 23 | Product | Addition of public view counter (or "impression counter") to individual tweets. |
| 2023 | January 19 | Product | Twitter bans third-party client apps, resulting in the discontinuation of apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot. |
| 2023 | February 17 | Product | Twitter starts charging for SMS two-factor authentication, with the feature being limited to Twitter Blue subscribers effective March 20 |
| 2023 | March 23 | Product | Announcement of discontinuation of legacy verified checkmarks as of April 1, later delayed to April 20 |
| 2023 | March 31 | Product | Twitter's algorithm is made open source |
| 2023 | April 3-6 | Product | Twitter briefly replaces its logo with a Doge logo for 3 days. |
| 2023 | April 10 | Company operation | Twitter, Inc. is merged with X Corp. |
| 2023 | April 20 | Product | Discontinuation of legacy verified checkmarks |
| 2023 | May 12 | Company operation | Linda Yaccarino is appointed as Twitter's new CEO following Musk's resignation |
| 2023 | June 12 | Company operation | Linda Yaccarino begins her tenure as Twitter's CEO |
| 2023 | June 30 | Product | Unregistered users are blocked from accessing profiles and tweets, citing data scraping from AI companies |
| 2023 | July 3 | Product | Relaunch of new TweetDeck for verified users |
| 2023 | July 23 | Product | Elon Musk rebrands Twitter to "X". |
| 2023 | August 5 | Product | Twitter Blue is rebranded to X Premium |
| 2023 | August 15 | Product | TweetDeck (rebranded to X Pro) now requires subscription |
| 2023 | August 25 | Product | Launch of X Hiring for Verified Organizations |
| 2023 | October 4 | Product | Headlines removed from links in posts |
| 2023 | October 25 | Product | Launch of audio and video calls |
| 2023 | October 27 | Product | Launch of additional Premium subscription tiers (Basic, Premium, and Premium+) |
| 2023 | November 3 | Product | Launch of Grok chatbot for X Premium subscribers |
| 2023 | November 16 | Company operation | Multiple companies pull advertising from X after Musk's antisemitic posts |
| 2023 | December 21 | Outage | Global outage of X |
| 2024 | January 2 | Product | Headlines are re-added to article links with small text |
| 2024 | March 17 | Product | Grok is made open source |
| 2024 | April 3 | Product | Gifting of Premium subscriptions to accounts with over 2,500 verified followers, and Premium+ for accounts with over 5,000 verified followers |
| 2024 | May 17 | Product | URL is changed from Twitter.com to X.com |
| 2024 | June 11 | Product | Likes are made private for all users |
| 2024 | July 16 | Company operation | Elon Musk announces plans to move X's headquarters to Texas |
| 2024 | August 30 | Legal | Judge Alexandre de Moraes orders a ban of X in Brazil |
| 2024 | September 13-18 | Company operation | X Corp. closes its former headquarters in San Francisco and subsequently moves to Bastrop, Texas. |
| 2024 | October 8 | Legal | Brazil lifts its ban on X imposed on August 30 |
| 2024 | October 16 | Product | Changes to the blocking feature are announced, allowing users who they have blocked to see their posts |
| 2024 | November 3 | Product | Blocking changes are officially implemented |
| 2024 | November 15 | Product | New terms of service take effect, requiring users to consent to their posts being used for AI training. |