Twitter!

On this day in 2006, Twitter was publicly launched. The idea for Twitter was originally to enable people to use SMS messaging to talk with a small group of people. At a brainstorming session at podcasting company Odeo, the idea took hold and became project TWTTR, using a 5 letter code as a nod to 5 character SMS codes. The idea eventually evolved into using the web rather than SMS technology with Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams driving the idea into what would become Twitter.

Originally the messages were limited to 140 characters and the service grew very quickly. In 2010, the service added the ability to send pictures and video which fueled another spurt of growth. By 2019, Twitter had more than 300 million active monthly users and had become a major factor in communications, marketing and politics.

In 2022, Elon Musk made his offer to buy Twitter and after some deal is off/deal is on drama, became the owner and changed its name to X.

I have a Twitter account but I rarely use it these days. What began as a fun way to connect with friends has for me become disheartening. A lot of what I see in my feed contains misinformation and vitriol so ugly that I just stopped opening the app. I think this is a sad fact that is true across social media these days although I have my Facebook feed locked down so I don’t see a lot of it there. I’m only an occassional user of Instagram and I don’t read comments there so I miss out on a lot of the ugly there as well.

I don’t have a solution for it – but I just think that social media is a sad place these days between the ugliness of hate/snark and the egos of social media influencers and wanna be influencers. The best thing I can say is to try to limit your usage and be very judicious with the functionality that allows you to filter/block misinformation and hate.