2011: Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson first breaks the news that Osama bin Laden was killed via tweet.
2012: Twitter buys video sharing service Vine for a reported $30 million.
2013: Twitter goes public on the New York Stock Exchange.
2013: The first #BlackLivesMatter tweet is posted.
2014: The “Oscars selfie” taken by Ellen DeGeneres and fellow celebrities went on to become one of the most-retweeted photos to date.
2015: Jack Dorsey returns as CEO for a second time, after stepping down in 2008.
2015: Twitter replaces the “Favorite” button with the “Like” button.
2014: Leaked surveillance of Solange, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z elevator altercation surfaces.
2015: #TheDress optical illusion divides Twitter users on what colors they see.
2016: Twitter experiences a multi-hour global outage caused by a glitch in a software update. People compared it to Twitter’s early “fail whale” days when outages were common.
2016: Twitter shuts down Vine as it struggled to compete with Instagram and Snapchat.
2016: Hillary Clinton tweets “Delete your account” to Trump during the 2016 presidential election.
2017: Twitter upped the allowable character count on tweets from 140 characters to 280 characters.
2017: Alyssa Milano tweets about #MeToo and sparks a movement for sexual assault survivors.
2017: President Trump tweets “Covfefe,” and the internet tries to decode what he meant by it.
2019: Collective freakout over the ‘Cats’ trailer.
2019: “Sco pa tu manaa” meme used as a prompt to give your opinion.
2019: The Game of Thrones series finale.
2020: Twitter users mourn the death of Kobe Bryant.
2020: Everyone having to #StayInside at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
2020: Celebrities singing “Imagine” at the start of the covid-19 pandemic. Many on Twitter described it as “cringe.”
2020: Nationwide protests in response to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
2020: News of Chadwick Boseman’s death breaks on Twitter.
2020: “We did it, Joe,” from Kamala Harris after Joe Biden won the presidential election.
2021: #StopAsianHate movement on Twitter in response to increased violence against Asian-Americans.
2021: January 6 insurrection in Washington DC. Many rioters posted videos of themselves entering the Capitol Building, which would be later used against them as criminal evidence.
2021: Donald Trump gets banned from Twitter.
2021: GameStop mania on Twitter. GameStop investors anxiously awaited cryptic tweets from chairman Ryan Cohen, like a picture of an ice cream cone.
2021: Nicole Kidman’s AMC commercial goes viral. “Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this.”
2021: Jack Dorsey steps down as CEO and Parag Agrawal becomes the new head of Twitter.
2022: Russia invades Ukraine. Many atrocities committed during the war are documented on Twitter.
2022: “The Slap,” Will Smith slaps Chris Rock at the 94th Oscars after Rock made a joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith.
2022: Elon Musk agrees to buy Twitter for $44 billion after revealing he had a 9% stake in the company.
2022: Musk attempts to back out of the Twitter deal, claiming the company wasn’t honest about the number of bots on the platform. Twitter sues Musk to keep him in the deal.
2022: Twitter announces that it’s testing an edit feature, something many users had requested for years.
2022: Musk officially takes over Twitter in late-October. His first act as owner is to fire CEO Parag Agrawal, along with several other top executives at the company.
2022: One of the first new products rolled out under Musk’s tenure was a blue verification checkmark for anyone who paid Twitter $8/month. Chaos ensued on the site, as people began impersonating brands and celebrities. The program was temporarily halted.
2022: Musk laid off 50% of Twitter’s workforce in early-November. Two weeks later, he asked remaining employees to sign a pledge to commit to “hardcore Twitter” or leave the company. Many employees chose to leave.
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