Twitter turned four in 2010 and became the internet's newswire. Users sent about 50 million tweets a day in February and roughly 90 million a day by September, the Library of Congress agreed to archive every public tweet, and the World Cup repeatedly summoned the Fail Whale error page.
The 2010 Twitter homepage was a pale blue page with a box that asked "What's happening?" (it had asked "What are you doing?" until late 2009). Tweets were 140 characters, retweets had only recently become a native button, and trending topics sat in the sidebar. Hashtags were still a user convention that Twitter had only started linking a year earlier.
In April, Twitter's first developer conference, Chirp, reported 105 million registered users and launched Promoted Tweets. In September the site rolled out #NewTwitter, a two-pane redesign that showed photos and videos beside the timeline. Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Ashton Kutcher were the most-followed people, and celebrity feuds, breaking news and "RT if you agree" chains defined the culture.
- Domain in 2010
- twitter.com
- Launched
- 15 July 2006
- Founders
- Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, Evan Williams
- Owner in 2010
- Twitter, Inc. (private)
- Status today
- Still exists, transformed
What people used it for
- Breaking news and live events
- Celebrity updates
- Link sharing with URL shorteners like bit.ly
- Conversations by @-reply and hashtag
Interface characteristics
- Light blue default background (#C0DEED) with a customisable theme
- "What's happening?" box and a 140-character counter
- Timeline of plain text tweets with tiny avatars
- Trending topics in the sidebar
- Fail Whale illustration on overload
Notable features
- Promoted Tweets launched (April 2010)
- Library of Congress archive deal (April 2010)
- #NewTwitter redesign (September 2010)
- Native retweet button (added late 2009)
- Twitter for iPhone and Android official apps (2010)
What happened later
Twitter went public in 2013, expanded tweets to 280 characters in 2017, was bought by Elon Musk in 2022 and renamed X in 2023.
Archived on the Wayback Machine
Archived pages open on web.archive.org (Internet Archive). They are historical captures, not part of this exhibit.
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