Twotter has a bright future. The company benefited from a large amount of money in the social networking space and eventually conducted an initial public offering in 2013, raising $1.8 billion.
Now the company is back in private hands. They happen to be the hand of Elon Musk , who is the richest man in the world and one of the app's most compelling provocations.
This is a huge moment. Twitter has become a key place for people to debate, joke and speak in their own political, sports, technology and financial circles. It also serves as a platform to speak out for silent people, helping protesters organize and express themselves in repressed regimes around the world.
However, in recent years, competitors on social media such as Twitter and Facebook have been at the center of controversy over the spread of fake news and misinformation, sometimes leading to bullying and violence.
Investors are increasingly worried about Twitter as a business. The company is generally unprofitable, has difficulty keeping up with Google and Facebook, and often kills popular products without real explanations.
Below is a brief history of Twitter, and despite its many flaws, it is one of the most iconic companies in Silicon Valley in the past 20 years.
2006
3, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams created Twitter, which was originally a side project from the podcast tool Odeo. That month, Doxi would send the first tweet that read "Just set my twttr".
2007
7, Twitter received a US$100,000 Series A financing led by Union Square Ventures. The app became popular after being promoted by the technology community during the annual Southwest Conference.
2008
Dolsey stepped down as CEO in October and was replaced by Williams. According to journalist Nick Bilton’s book Hatching Twitter, Twitter’s board fired Dorsey for fear of the executive’s management style and public boast.
2009
Twitter's popularity continues to soar, resulting in Williams making a high-profile appearance in the talk show of Oprah Winfrey with celebrity Ashton Kutcher . Kutcher also writes about Williams and Stone in 100 issues of Time magazine. Twitter is now a mainstream phenomenon.
2010
Twitter Arrived in space, NASA astronaut Timothy Creamer sent the first tweet in real time from the external orbit. However, behind the scenes, management’s dilemma continues as Williams resigns as CEO and takes over by operations director Dick Costello.
2011
Twitter became an indispensable social media tool during the Arab Spring, which is the wave of anti-government protests throughout Egypt , Libya and Tunisia . Protesters used the website to publish reports and organize them. As Pew Research Center notes, the role of Twitter in "disseminating breaking news" is not "limited to the Arab uprising—for example, the death of Whitney Houston was announced on Twitter 55 minutes before AP confirmed the story."
2012
Twitter's coverage has expanded to 200 million active users. Barack Obama used “the platform for the first time publicly announced its victory in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, with a tweet viewed about 25 million times on our platform and spread widely in print and broadcast media,” according to company documents.
2013
Twitter was launched in November. Williams, Dorsey and Costolo totaled about $4 billion.
"I think we have a huge set of ideas and strategies to increase the slope of the growth curve," Costello told CNBC at the time. “I would consider some of these strategies, some of them broader strategies to serve to do what I say to bridge the gap between Twitter’s massive awareness and deep engagement of the platform.”
2014
User growth slowed down resulting in several stock price declines and analyst ratings downgrades. Twitter also believes 2014 is the year of “selfie”.
2015
Compared with competitors like Google, Facebook and even LinkedIn, Twitter is starting to look like a small part of internet spam. Twitter remains unprofitable as its advertising business struggles with its larger competitors. Dorsey will also return to the company as CEO while still at his other company, Square (now Block).
2016
rumors began to circulate, Twitter is seeking to be acquired, and Salesforce is a potential suitor. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook have been criticized for allowing well-known users such as Donald Trump, who would win the U.S. presidential election that year, to spread misleading information without any consequences.
2017
For a time, Twitter seemed to be rising. As the company's financial situation improves, its stock is finally on an upward trend. Meanwhile, Trump as president continues to use Twitter as his megaphone. According to CNBC, according to Twitter's own data, "Trump was the global leader who posted the most tweets around the world and the United States that year."
2018
Dorsey and Facebook's then-head of operations Sheryl Sandberg testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, alleging that actors related to Russia intervened in the 2016 election. Trump and his colleagues in the Republican Party are increasingly vocal about the so-called political biases on Twitter and other social media sites.
"In fact, from a simple business perspective, in order to serve public conversations, Twitter was motivated to retain all voices on the platform," Dorsey said at the time.
2019
Analysts found that President Trump's extensive use of Twitter has a connection with various markets, including gold, which highlights the cultural power of Twitter. Trump met with Dorsey — a Twitter spokesman said: “Jack had a constructive meeting with the U.S. president at the invitation of the president today.” The
spokesman said: “They discussed Twitter’s commitment to protecting the health of public dialogue before the 2020 U.S. election and the efforts to deal with the opioid crisis.”
2020
As Covid-19 spreads globally, the spread of misinformation has dominated the online conversation. Twitter continues to work hard to grow its business. The service was also hacked that year, with criminals gaining access to more than a dozen well-known accounts, including accounts controlled by Joe Biden , Jeff Bezos and Musk
2021
Twitter permanently banned Trump on the grounds of the President's incitemental remarks during the riots at the U.S. Capitol in January, which the company said could lead to "further incitement of violence." Trump will claim that Twitter staff “coordinated with the Democrats and the radical left to remove my account from their platform to keep me silent.” Later, Dorsey suddenly resigned as CEO and replaced by company chief technology officer Parag Agrawal.
2022
Musk took over Twitter after a protracted legal dispute, culminating in the Delaware Equity Court trial this week. Tesla _The CEO agreed in April to pay $44 billion for Twitter, but then tried to break his promise.He changed direction and chose to move on, walking into the company's office in San Francisco on Wednesday, holding something that seemed to be a ceramic bathroom sink.
"Go to Twitter Headquarters - let it sink!" He posted a video of his entrance on Twitter.
Musk immediately started making changes, fired Agrawal, Treasurer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy.
