Jack Dorsey posted Twitter’s first tweet on March 21, 2006.
The message, “just setting up my twttr,” was sent while Dorsey and his colleagues were developing the service at Odeo, a podcast company. The early product was initially called “twttr,” following a short-name style used by several early web services.
Dorsey conceived Twitter as a way for people to share short status updates by text message. The first tweet is historically important because it documents the service’s transition from an internal prototype to a working social network. Twitter later became one of the world’s most influential platforms for news, politics, entertainment and live conversation.
A common mix-up is confusing the first tweet with Twitter’s first public launch. The first tweet appeared in March 2006, while the service became publicly available later that year. Twitter was renamed X in 2023, but the original first-tweet record remains associated with Dorsey.