What was the text of the first tweet?

The text of the first tweet was “just setting up my twttr.” Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey posted the message on March 21, 2006, while the service was still being developed and was known internally by the shortened name “twttr.”

The message was intentionally mundane: it was essentially a status update confirming that Dorsey was configuring the new service. Twitter began as an experiment at Odeo, a podcasting company, and was designed around short updates sent through mobile text messages. The original product name omitted vowels, following a naming style common among early technology projects.

This milestone is often confused with the public launch of Twitter or with later famous messages posted by celebrities and politicians. Dorsey’s post came before Twitter became a mainstream social network, before hashtags and retweets were established features, and before the platform was even consistently called Twitter. The exact lowercase wording is part of what makes the post recognizable.