Katie Rogers 

Twitter turns seven: how the microblog took over the internet and our lives

At first the infant, then a soldier, looking back on the strange eventful history of @Jack's addictive, beloved, hated creation
  
  


Twitter is seven. These days, regular users know it as the only website in the world that can a spark a government revolution as easily as it can fuel a celebrity feud, but since we know you're probably too busy retweeting someone's snarky comment about dying attention spans – bonus points if it's from a Darth Vader parody account – to think about how much Twitter has changed since its infancy, we did the thinking for you.

Behold, with some apologies to Shakespeare, the seven ages of Twitter:

Chapter 1: birth (Twirth)

Twttr was born March 21, 2006, to Jack Dorsey, who, presumably after he realized "Twttr" is impossible to pronounce, later added a few vowels. Along with Twitter's vowel-less birth, Dorsey's concept for the logo was also questionable:

This all changed when British artist Simon Oxley got involved and gave us the all the bird we know as "Larry."

Chapter 2: nom nom

Around the time Twitter reached kindergarten, people started signing up and trying to figure out what to do with this newfangled "microblogging platform". After the first tweet ("is there anybody there?"), what to say? The natural answer was to tweet about food ad nauseum.

According to Topsy, a service which measures social analytics, the phrase "nom nom" has been used in tweets roughly 2m times.

Chapter 3: oversharing

Twitter continued to stuff itself until a tweeting president was elected and suddenly gave the platform some serious clout – yes, with a "c".

Then came the celebrities, who quickly solidified a tradition of self-promotion that has endured to modern day. Suddenly, Larry King was live-tweeting his race to 1 million followers against Ashton Kutcher. Then there was Kutcher's then-wife, Demi Moore (neé @MrsKutcher) who took a very publicized break from her pioneering efforts in the art of the selfie to dissuade a follower from suicide.

Meanwhile, Stephen Fry hilariously kickstarted the global culture of oversharing while stuck in a lift:

The tradition has endured, embraced by politicians, celebrities and hot messes alike. The best thing about Twitter's long oversharing history? Sweet, archived irony:

Chapter 4: celebrity feuding

Now is about the time we start to see pop culture really cross over to what's happening on Twitter. Case in point:

We're good to stop here.

Chapter 5: Klout

This is around the time things start to get dark and existential. The phrase "twinfluencer" starts to rear its head, and users start wondering if their "score" determined by "measurement" "service" Klout could end up jeopardizing their social life and job prospects. Soon, anyone who was anyone was trying to raise their Klout score.

Then key twinfluencers wised up and determined it all very en vogue to act like we didn't care:

Many of us followed suit. At least until we took a few minutes away from prying eyes to log in and see if our mean tweets about Klout had demoted us from Thought Leader and taken away beta Spotify access.

Chapter 6: OUTRAGE!

With maturity came pitchforks. As with oversharing, we quickly perfected our tendency to groupthink ourselves into collective outrage and our eventual swing back into collective acceptance, because someone eventually produces a rational, well-written thought about the issue in question.

Witness the Marissa Mayer "everyone has to physically come into work" debacle. Witch-hunt begins:

People were literally ready to take Vines of themselves jumping out of office windows in solidarity with slighted Yahoo workers.

This continued for a few days, until there was actual reporting on the subject which indicated Mayer may be trying to save a dead-on-the-inside culture at her company. Witch-hunt ends.

Outrages currently occur roughly once a day because 140 characters is the perfect medium for your half-baked angry screed. By the end of Twitter's seventh birthday, tweeters will have ruined the celebration by claiming that March Madness brackets are inherently sexist and Peeps are against gay marriage. Because we can't have nice things.

(Update: True to form, Buzzfeed is working on ruining everything a little earlier than planned.)

Chapter 7: the end is nigh

There is self-evidently a direct correlation between the amount of parody accounts now produced in a week and the speed with which Twitter's oncoming apocalypse approaches.

Awful parody accounts have brought on a new form of Twitter vigilantism to save the service from itself, but it's impossible to say if quick-thinking twinfluencers will be able to stop the onslaught of madness:

The good news? When an asteroid eventually does hit Earth – it's likely! – no one will be around to create @asteroid_OFFICIAL.

By the way, as of 2.30 pm ET, that user name is available.

 

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