Last week I celebrated my 10 year anniversary with my girlfriend. I had no idea that, right when we were heading out on our first date that Twitter was getting ready to push the send button for the very first time. 

It was on this day, March 21st, in 2006 that Twitter launched with a Tweet from co-founder, and now CEO, Jack Dorsey.

Since then, Twitter has, of course, gone on to do great things. It became an extremely influential platform, credited with helping to bring news of the Iran demonstrations in 2009, to American audiences, and helping to oust Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. It went public and it has over 300 million. It may be struggling now, but it still remains an important way for big names to get their information out, and to connect with their fans. 

Let’s see how some of the biggest names, and companies, in tech started their own Twitter accounts by going back to their first Tweets:

Facebook (@facebook) was a pretty early adopter of Twitter, having sent out its first Tweet in September of 2008. It now has 14 million followers. 

Microsoft (@Microsoft) didn’t put up its first Tweet until a year later. It now has 7.56 million followers. 

Bill Gates (@BillGates) put his first out in 2010. He’s now up to 27.8 million followers.

Gates lagged behind his successor, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (@stevebmicrosoft) who put his first Tweet out in April of 2009.

Google (@google) tried to be funny with its first Tweet, which says “I’m feeling lucky” in binary. The company has 14.3 million followers. 

Uber’s (@Uber) first Tweet is full of braggadocio, which should be expected. Iroincally, the account only has 475,000 followers.

While Travis Kalanick’s first Tweet sounds like something a college student would write. He has 114,000 followers.

Speaking of college, Snapchat (@Snapchat), which was founded by students still in college, used its first Tweet to promote its new product. It now has 1.23 million followers.

Interestingly, Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel (@evanspiegel) has not Tweeted yet, despite setting up his account in 2010. Or it’s possible he just wrote some stupid stuff and thought it was better off deleted. I couldn’t fault him for that. And he still has 41,100 followers, I guess just waiting for him to finally write something. 

Elon Musk (@elonmusk) joined Twitter, it seems, because he was sick of hid identity being stolen. I guess these were the days before verified accounts. He now has 3.59 million followers. 

Alexis Ohanion (@alexisohanian), meanwhile, was really into emailing people for some reason. Aren’t you glad these were never deleted? He has 97,600 followers now. 

Tim Cook (@tim_cook) used his first Tweet to promote Apple Stores. Don’t you wonder what Steve Jobs would have written if he had ever created his own Twitter account? Cook now has 2.17 million followers.

When it comes to investors, Marc Andreesen (@pmarca) was probably one of the first to Tweet, writing his first in May of 2007. Sadly Tweeting would eventually come back to bite him. He has 504,000 followers.

His partner in investing, Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz), sent him first Tweet in September 2008, and I can’t figure out if he’s talking about his dog or a really manly gardener. He has 268,000 followers.

Vinod Khosla used his first Tweet to give a handly piece of advice. He has 479,000 followers.

And what about the man who ran Twitter for almost five years and helped bring it public? Dick Costolo’s (@dickc) first Tweet came out three years before he took over, and I can’t say it’s exactly profound. 

Hey, they can’t all be classics. He has 1.64 million followers. 

(Image source: salesforce.com)

Tags:

Steven Loeb

All Author Posts

Support VatorNews by Donating

Read more from related categories

Related News