Twitter turns 19 — here's how it changed the internet

On Tuesday, July 15, Twitter, one of the most influential social platforms of our time, celebrates its 19th anniversary. On this day in 2006, founders Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams officially launched the short message service, which has become a global information tool.

Read everything you need to know about the platform in the article on Novyny.LIVE.

The history of Twitter's creation

Twitter was originally conceived as a simple service for sharing short status updates of up to 140 characters. But in just a few years, it has become the main arena for public discussions, news, political statements, and cultural trends.

Twitter has come a long way from a simple platform for short messages to one of the major players in the global information space. Between 2009 and 2012, the service rapidly gained popularity. It was then that features such as hashtags, retweets, and trends appeared, transforming Twitter into a convenient tool for shaping the information agenda.

In the following years, from 2013 to 2021, Twitter became an important arena for political communication. The platform played a prominent role during Donald Trump's Presidency and was also actively used during protests, crises, and emergencies around the world.

The year 2022 was a real tectonic shift for Twitter when Elon Musk acquired the company. His arrival marked the beginning of large-scale reforms: changes affected moderation policies, subscription structures, and algorithms that determine what users see.

In 2023–2024, Twitter underwent a radical rebranding — the service was renamed "X." Musk began promoting the idea of creating a "super app" that would combine social networking with banking, video services, and a marketplace.

The purpose of the Twitter platform

Twitter has become more than just a social network; it is now a political and social tool. Thanks to its openness and speed, it has allowed ordinary people to directly address the Presidents, opinion leaders, journalists, and corporations. Many world events — from the Arab Spring to the war in Ukraine — were covered in real time on Twitter.

The platform has also popularised new formats: short news, threads, verification, memes as a form of communication, and developed the phenomenon of "Twitter personalities" — opinion leaders without a traditional background.

As a reminder, Elon Musk's company xAI has begun implementing the vision feature in the mobile version of Grok for iOS. It allows you to turn on your smartphone camera, take pictures, and receive a voice explanation of what is depicted in the photo. So far, the feature's capabilities are limited to creating a frame — full image processing is still in development.