16° anniversary of Twitter

We tell you the story behind its origin, its controversies, its marketing advantages, and the most shared retweets in history.

Back in 2006, the story of Twitter begins with its founders Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone, who were interested in evolving the, until then, popular blog, but do it in a more attractive, versatile, and instant way. They decided to merge it with what we were using at the time, SMS, instant text messages. If you lived through this time, you probably remember that the telephone companies charged them by characters, 140 to be precise. It was necessary to go to the point to send as few messages as possible. 

That’s how Twitter started under the innovative idea of the microblog, where people could tell their day to day from small texts. It is evident that its essence is still valid in the famous "threads".

In 2007, Twitter became an exponentially growing company and network. Their case is special because, unlike their competence, it evolved as users devised and demanded new tools. For example, retweet began when people replicated other people’s tweets and before copying, they used the letters RT. Also, in its beginnings, Twitter did not have the possibility to upload multimedia content but had to add it by the demand of its audience. And in 2017 it increased the extension to 280 characters.

The cradle of the hashtag was Twitter, because, although it was already used on platforms such as IRC (Internet Relay Chat), its function was not the current one. In this social network, the hashtag began to be used to refer to certain topics and to be able to join that conversation. But it was until Chris Messina officially proposed it in 2007 when the history of the hashtag began, to which all the internet would later be added.

Its first years were complicated, as it did not find economic stability and it took many years to be a profitable company. Until 2018 it began to grow economically thanks to the fact that Jack Dorsey, one of its founders, returned to the position of CEO. 

Twitter is now one of the biggest social networks worldwide, with a notable influence on politics and socio-cultural events.

While Twitter is not the world’s favorite social network, its importance in global communication is unquestionable. This network changed the way to interact immediately with wide ranging. Their hashtags serve the function of connecting people interested in the same subject. It’s only a matter of seconds before tweets begin to add up around the world thanks to a single hashtag; especially when it comes to political events, such as debates, elections, conflicts, or controversies.

Politics uses this network as a main channel to broadcast relevant and brief messages about issues of national or global interest; for example, Barack Obama’s tweet about the far-right racist protests in Charlottesville; for his part, Trump was permanently suspended from his account for his controversial hate tweets.

Access a huge amount of data 

One of the great advantages of Twitter is the Open Data it offers (if you know how to catch it and have the tools for it). This translates into an acute knowledge of your prospects, their tastes, interests, and behaviors, which can help you improve strategy, product, and experience. 

Viral campaigns

The goal of being on Twitter for businesses should be to achieve a long reach through a campaign that goes viral with a hashtag of its own. This requires optimal planning, knowledge of potential audiences and awareness of trends. For example, Dove Mexico supported values such as diversity and respect through its campaign "Your hair is the reflection of your story and we want to celebrate it", where it invited people to tell their story of resilience and show their hair with the hashtag #YourHairYourChoice. 

Positioning

This social network offers the possibility to give visibility and attract traffic to our website with tweets with links, for example to a blog that is of general interest, or to an online store through attractive offers or customizable shopping experiences.

Carter Wilkerson (@carterjwm), a man desirous for chicken nuggets takes third place. He made a joke to Wendy’s about how many retweets he needed to have a year of free nuggets and, although the goal was 18 million, Wendy’s rewarded the reach of the tweet (3.28 million retweets) by fulfilling Carter’s wish and giving a donation to an NGO. 

Chadwick Boseman’s family (@chadwickboseman) ranks fourth with the announcement of the unfortunate death of the actor, the king of Black Panther, with 3.01 million retweets. 

Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow), the acclaimed actress and presenter is ranked fifth with the most famous selfie in history with 3.01 million retweets, captured during her participation in the 2014 Oscars.