Happy 6th Birthday Twitter, But Who’s On First?

It’s Twitter‘s 6th birthday today (seems like we’ve been talking about it forever) and as it passes its 500 millionth user it’s a good time to think about who was on Twitter first. Now, the recognized first public tweet is from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who at 4:50 PM tweeted “just setting up my twttr“. Short and sweet, right, with the trendy Web style of the day: no vowels. Very cool, Jack, very cool.

But, some have confused it with a tweet from co-founder Biz Stone or one by the third member of the Twitter triumvirate  Evan Williams  and no wonder — they tweeted the exact same thing.

OK, so the three founders got together and in a show of solidarity coordinated their “first” tweets. But it doesn’t stop there. That same day six years ago it seems like everyone working on the Twitter product sent their first tweets, and at least 45 of them tweeted identically as the founders.

So, while Jack gets credit for being first, he loses points in my mind for originality (as if that matters to him) but he does get points for one first: he started the first “trending topic” in Twitter history.

They say you never forget your  “first“, so here’s mine:

I know, hardly Shakespearean. So tell us, what was your first tweet?