Twitter 10th anniversary: this is what the social media site looked like ten years ago

It was 10 years ago today the first tweet was sent. As you can see, web design has come a long way…
Twttr in 2006
Liz Connor21 March 2016

Tweeting about your disappointing Starbucks coffee or your political preferences back in 2006? Well congratulations to you, because you’ve been on the Twitter bandwagon from the beginning.

Yes, today marks ten years of the social networking site which brought us hashtagging, condensing your thoughts into 140 characters or less and plenty of public celebrity spats.

But Twitter was not always the shiny, slick networking site it is today.

Take a look below to see just how Internet users in 2006 interacted on the first ever Twitter platform.

Back in 2006, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass created Twttr, its USP being an SMS service to communicate with a small group.

Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time: "just setting up my twttr".

Twitter's most followed

Katy Perry 84.8m

Justin Bieber 77.5m

Taylor Swift 73.2m

Barack Obama 71.4m

Youtube 60.7m

Rhianna 57.5m

Lady Gaga 57.3m

The Ellen Show 55.9m

Twiter 53.6m

Justin Timberlake 52.9m

Source: Twittercounter.com

Anyone who is familiar with Twitter will know that the social media platform has come a long way in the past 10 years.

The service has rapidly gained worldwide popularity, handling 1.6 billion search queries per day and boasting over 500 million users.

But the original Twttr platform was a more modest affair based on a group SMS platform.

The site prompted its fans to “stay in touch with your friends all the time”, while promising that “If you have a cell and can txt, you’ll never be bored again.”

It seems hard to believe now, but rather than simply typing onto a computer screen, users had to send a text message to ‘40404’ to publish their tweet to their friends.

Twitter stats

Monthly active users 320m. 254 million of those outside the US

500 million tweets sent each day, according to the Real-Time Statistics Project

And while you still had a timeline with details of what your friends have recently published, the option to retweet, favourite or view trending topics would only come later.

Twitter users will also notice an early incarnation of its logo that would shortly be replaced with the site’s synonymous blue moniker and bird logo.

Look out Twttr, little did you know that President Obama, The Kardashians and Kanye West are coming for you.

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