Twitter

Template:Infobox website

X, commonly referred to by its former name Twitter, is a social media website based in the United States. With over 500 million users, it is one of the world's largest social networks and the fifth-most visited website in the world.<ref>"Top Websites Ranking". Similarweb. Archived from the original on February 10, 2022. Retrieved December 1, 2021.</ref><ref>"twitter.com". Similarweb.com. Archived from the original on November 10, 2023. Retrieved November 8, 2023.</ref> Users can share text messages, images, and videos as "posts", commonly still known as "tweets".<ref name=":1">Conger, Kate (August 3, 2023). "So What Do We Call Twitter Now Anyway?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 12, 2023. Retrieved August 29, 2023.</ref> X also includes direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists and communities, and Spaces, a social audio feature. Users can vote on context added by approved users using the Community Notes (formerly known as Birdwatch) feature.

The service is owned by the American company X Corp., the successor of Twitter, Inc. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams, and launched in July of that year. Twitter grew quickly, and by 2012^[update], more than 100 million users produced 340 million tweets per day.<ref name="Twitter-2012">"Twitter turns six". Twitter. March 21, 2012. Archived from the original on February 6, 2017. Retrieved August 29, 2014.</ref> Twitter, Inc., was based in San Francisco, California, and had more than 25 offices around the world.<ref name=":2">"Company: "About Twitter"". Archived from the original on April 3, 2016. Retrieved April 24, 2014.</ref> A signature characteristic of the service is that posts are required to be brief (originally 140 characters, later expanded to 280 in 2017).<ref name="Twitter_500" /> The majority of tweets are produced by a minority of users.<ref name=":3">Carlson, Nicholas (June 2, 2009). "Stunning New Numbers on Who Uses Twitter". Business Insider. Archived from the original on February 5, 2021. Retrieved January 9, 2021.</ref><ref>Wojcik, Stefan; Hughes, Adam (April 24, 2019). "Sizing Up Twitter Users". Pew Research Center. Archived from the original on October 29, 2019. Retrieved April 25, 2019.</ref> In 2020, it was estimated that approximately 48 million accounts (15% of all accounts) were not genuine people.<ref name=Rodriguez/>

In October 2022, billionaire Elon Musk acquired Twitter for US$44 billion, gaining control of the platform and becoming the chief executive officer (CEO).<ref>Isaac, Mike; Hirsch, Lauren (April 25, 2022). "Musk's deal for Twitter is worth about $44 billion". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 26, 2022.</ref><ref>Feiner, Lauren (April 25, 2022). "Twitter accepts Elon Musk's buyout deal". CNBC. Archived from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 25, 2022.</ref><ref>Kay, Grace; Hays, Kali. "Elon Musk is officially Twitter's new owner, and he's firing executives already". Business Insider. Archived from the original on October 28, 2022. Retrieved October 28, 2022.</ref><ref>Olmstead, Todd (October 28, 2022). "Twitter Purchased by Elon Musk: A Timeline of How It Happened". WSJ. Archived from the original on June 3, 2023. Retrieved November 7, 2022.</ref> Since the acquisition, the platform has been criticized for enabling the increased spread of disinformation,<ref name=":02">Milmo, Dan (October 9, 2023). "X criticised for enabling spread of Israel-Hamas disinformation". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on October 10, 2023. Retrieved October 10, 2023.</ref><ref name=":12">Goswami, Rohan (October 9, 2023). "X, formerly Twitter, amplifies disinformation amid the Israel-Hamas conflict". CNBC. Archived from the original on October 9, 2023. Retrieved October 10, 2023.</ref><ref>Lyngaas, Sean; O'Sullivan, Donie; Duffy, Clare (October 9, 2023). "Elon Musk's X adds to fog of war at outset of Israel-Hamas conflict". CNN. Archived from the original on October 10, 2023. Retrieved October 10, 2023.</ref> hate speech,<ref>Sato, Mia (December 2, 2022). "Hate speech is soaring on Twitter under Elon Musk, report finds". The Verge. Archived from the original on March 19, 2023. Retrieved April 13, 2023.</ref><ref>"New Data Suggests that Hate Speech is on the Rise on Twitter 2.0". Social Media Today. Archived from the original on September 25, 2023. Retrieved April 13, 2023.</ref><ref>Frenkel, Sheera; Conger, Kate (December 2, 2022). "Hate Speech's Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented, Researchers Find". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 16, 2023. Retrieved September 9, 2023.</ref> antisemitism,<ref>Kolodny, Lora (November 16, 2023). "Elon Musk boosts antisemitic tweet, claims ADL and other groups push 'anti-white' messaging". CNBC. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved November 17, 2023.</ref><ref>Gangitano, Alex (November 17, 2023). "White House blasts Elon Musk's 'unacceptable' antisemitic tweet". The Hill. Archived from the original on November 17, 2023. Retrieved November 17, 2023.</ref> homophobia, transphobia<ref>"Elon Musk promotes anti-trans content as hate speech surges on his far-right platform". The Independent. June 5, 2023. Archived from the original on August 7, 2023. Retrieved November 17, 2023.</ref><ref>Yang, Angela (April 18, 2023). "Twitter quietly changes its hateful conduct policy to remove standing protections for its transgender users". NBC News. Archived from the original on April 19, 2023. Retrieved November 17, 2023.</ref> and child pornography<ref>"On Musk's Twitter, users looking to sell and trade child sex abuse material are still easily found". NBC News. January 6, 2023. Archived from the original on February 13, 2024. Retrieved February 13, 2024.</ref> on the platform. Linda Yaccarino succeeded Musk as CEO on June 5, 2023, with Musk remaining as the chairman and the chief technology officer.<ref name=yaccarino-ceo>Frier, Sarah (June 5, 2023). "Twitter's New CEO Linda Yaccarino Has First Day in the Role". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on November 8, 2023. Retrieved June 6, 2023.</ref><ref name="Miller-2022">Miller, Monica (December 21, 2022). "Elon Musk to quit as Twitter CEO when replacement found". BBC News. Archived from the original on March 17, 2023. Retrieved December 21, 2022.</ref><ref>"Twitter's New CEO Linda Yaccarino Has First Day in the Role". Bloomberg.com. June 6, 2023. Archived from the original on June 26, 2023. Retrieved September 9, 2023.</ref> In July 2023, Musk announced that Twitter would be rebranded to X and that the bird logo, along with the name Twitter, would be retired.<ref>Valinsky, Jordan (July 24, 2023). "Twitter X logo: Elon Musk rebrands social media platform". CNN Business. Archived from the original on October 3, 2023. Retrieved July 25, 2023.</ref><ref>"Elon Musk reveals rebranding of Twitter as X - and what he wants us to now call a tweet". Sky News. Archived from the original on August 1, 2023. Retrieved July 25, 2023.</ref> Although the service is now called X, the primary domain name 'twitter.com' remains in place as of March 2024^[update], with the 'x.com' URL redirecting to that address. In December 2023, Fidelity estimated the value of the company to be down 71.5 percent from its purchase price.<ref>Primack, Dan (December 31, 2023). "Elon Musk's X gets another valuation cut from Fidelity". Axios. Archived from the original on December 31, 2023. Retrieved December 31, 2023.</ref>

History

Template:Split section

2006–2007: Creation and initial reaction

"Twitter all began with status-sharing service TXTmob," explains an article on TNW.<ref name=":0">Protalinski, Emil (October 16, 2013). "The Idea for Twitter Came Directly from Status-Sharing Service TXTmob". TNW. Archived from the original on December 3, 2023. Retrieved November 29, 2023.</ref> Tad Hirsch, a student and activist associated with the Ruckus Society, the Institute for Applied Autonomy, and later the MIT Media Lab, built the basic first application to help activists organize protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention.<ref>di Justo, Patrick (September 9, 2004). "Protests Powered by Cellphone". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 21, 2013. Retrieved November 28, 2023.</ref><ref name=":0" /><ref>Freitas, Nathan (April 23, 2010). "Nathan Freitas Responds To Douglas Rushkoff | Digital Nation | FRONTLINE | PBS". www.pbs.org. Archived from the original on April 23, 2010. Retrieved November 29, 2023.</ref><ref>Hirsch, Tad (October 16, 2013). "TXTmob and Twitter: A Reply to Nick Bilton". Public Practice Studio. Archived from the original on October 16, 2013.</ref> Inspired by TXTmob and other SMS sharing applications of the day, members of the podcasting company Odeo had an "all-day brainstorming session" to decide on building a new application. Jack Dorsey, then an undergraduate student, claims to have introduced the group to the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group.<ref>Template:Registration required Miller, Claire Cain (October 30, 2010). "Why Twitter's C.E.O. Demoted Himself". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 1, 2010. Retrieved October 31, 2010.</ref> The original project code name for the service was twttr, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass,<ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref> inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes. The decision was also partly due to the fact that the domain twitter.com was already in use, and it was six months after the launch of twttr that the crew purchased the domain and changed the name of the service to Twitter.<ref>"Buy a vowel? How Twttr became Twitter". CNN Money. November 23, 2010. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved June 9, 2015.</ref> The developers initially considered "10958" as the service's short code for SMS text messaging, but later changed it to "40404" for "ease of use and memorability".<ref name="HowTwitterWasBorn">Sagolla, Dom (January 30, 2009). "How Twitter Was Born". 140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form. Archived from the original on May 8, 2019. Retrieved February 4, 2011.</ref> Work on the project started in February 2006.<ref name="Carlson-2011" /> Dorsey published the first Twitter message on March 21, 2006, at 12:50 p.m. PST (UTC−08:00): "just setting up my twttr".<ref name="Dorsey2006">Template:Cite tweet</ref> Dorsey has explained the origin of the "Twitter" title:<ref>Sano, David (February 18, 2009). "Twitter Creator Jack Dorsey Illuminates the Site's Founding Document". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on May 2, 2019. Retrieved June 18, 2009.</ref>

...we came across the word "twitter", and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information", and "chirps from birds". And that's exactly what the product was.

The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as an internal service for Odeo employees.<ref name="Carlson-2011">Carlson, Nicholas (April 13, 2011). "How Twitter Was Founded". Business Insider. Archived from the original on July 14, 2018. Retrieved September 4, 2013.</ref> The full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006.<ref name="launch">Arrington, Michael (July 15, 2006). "Odeo Releases Twttr". TechCrunch. AOL. Archived from the original on May 1, 2019. Retrieved September 18, 2010.</ref> In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo, together with its assets—including Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the investors and shareholders.<ref>Malik, Om (October 25, 2006). "Odeo RIP, Hello Obvious Corp". GigaOM. Archived from the original on May 2, 2019. Retrieved June 20, 2009.</ref> Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011.<ref>Madrigal, Alexis (April 14, 2011). "Twitter's Fifth Beatle Tells His Side of the Story". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on May 23, 2019. Retrieved April 26, 2011.</ref> Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.<ref>Lennon, Andrew. "A Conversation with Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey". The Daily Anchor. Archived from the original on July 27, 2009. Retrieved February 12, 2009.</ref> Williams provided insight into the ambiguity that defined this early period in a 2013 interview:<ref name="Inc">Lapowsky, Issie (October 4, 2013). "Ev Williams on Twitter's Early Years". Inc. Archived from the original on April 10, 2019. Retrieved October 5, 2013.</ref>

With Twitter, it wasn't clear what it was. They called it a social network, they called it microblogging, but it was hard to define, because it didn't replace anything. There was this path of discovery with something like that, where over time you figure out what it is. Twitter actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social network.

2007–2010

The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000.<ref>Meyers, Courtney Boyd (July 15, 2011). "5 years ago today Twitter launched to the public". The Next Web. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved May 5, 2017.</ref> "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked Newsweek's Steven Levy. "Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it."<ref>Levy, Steven (April 30, 2007). "Twitter: Is Brevity The Next Big Thing?". Newsweek. Archived from the original on April 12, 2010. Retrieved February 4, 2011.</ref> Reaction at the conference was highly positive.<ref>Terdiman, Daniel (March 10, 2007). "To Twitter or Dodgeball at SXSW?". CNET. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved February 4, 2011.</ref> Twitter staff received the festival's Web Award prize with the remark "we'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"<ref>Stone, Biz (February 4, 2011). "We Won!". Twitter Blog. Twitter. Archived from the original on February 24, 2008. Retrieved May 7, 2008.</ref>

The company experienced rapid initial growth. In 2009, Twitter won the "Breakout of the Year" Webby Award.<ref>"13th Annual Webby Special Achievement Award Winners". The Webby Awards. Archived from the original on February 20, 2011. Retrieved February 22, 2011.</ref><ref>Paul, Ian (May 5, 2009). "Jimmy Fallon Wins Top Webby: And the Winners Are..." PC World. Archived from the original on February 25, 2021. Retrieved February 22, 2011.</ref> On November 29, 2009, Twitter was named the Word of the Year by the Global Language Monitor, declaring it "a new form of social interaction".<ref>"Top Word of 2009: Twitter". Languagemonitor.com. November 29, 2009. Archived from the original on May 14, 2012. Retrieved July 28, 2014.</ref> In February 2010, Twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day.<ref>Beaumont, Claudine (February 23, 2010). "Twitter Users Send 50 Million Tweets Per Day – Almost 600 Tweets Are Sent Every Second Through the Microblogging Site, According to Its Own Metrics". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022. Retrieved February 7, 2011.</ref> By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000 registered applications.<ref>"Twitter Registers 1,500 Per Cent Growth in Users". New Statesman. March 4, 2010. Archived from the original on May 3, 2019. Retrieved February 7, 2011.</ref> As of June 2010^[update], about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter.<ref>Garrett, Sean (June 18, 2010). "Big Goals, Big Game, Big Records". Twitter Blog (blog of Twitter). Archived from the original on February 13, 2011. Retrieved February 7, 2011.</ref> As of March 2011^[update], that was about 140 million tweets posted daily.<ref>"Twitter Blog: #numbers". Blog.twitter.com. March 14, 2011. Archived from the original on March 25, 2013. Retrieved January 20, 2012.</ref> As noted on Compete.com, Twitter moved up to the third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twenty-second.<ref name="Kazeniac" />

Twitter's usage spikes during prominent events. For example, a record was set during the 2010 FIFA World Cup when fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second in the thirty-second period after Japan scored against Cameroon on June 14, 2010. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets per second were posted after the Los Angeles Lakers' victory in the 2010 NBA Finals on June 17, 2010,<ref>Miller, Claire Cain (June 18, 2010). "Sports Fans Break Records on Twitter". Bits (blog of The New York Times). Archived from the original on January 12, 2011. Retrieved February 7, 2011.</ref> and then again at the close of Japan's victory over Denmark in the World Cup when users published 3,283 tweets per second.<ref>Van Grove, Jennifer (June 25, 2010). "Twitter Sets New Record: 3,283 Tweets Per Second". Mashable. Archived from the original on September 20, 2018. Retrieved February 7, 2011.</ref> The record was set again during the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Final between Japan and the United States, when 7,196 tweets per second were published.<ref>"Women's World Cup Final breaks Twitter record". ESPN. July 18, 2011. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved July 31, 2011.</ref> When American singer Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, Twitter servers crashed after users were updating their status to include the words "Michael Jackson" at a rate of 100,000 tweets per hour.<ref>Shiels, Maggie (June 26, 2009). "Web Slows After Jackson's Death". BBC News. Archived from the original on October 26, 2009. Retrieved February 7, 2011.</ref> The current record as of August 3, 2013^[update], was set in Japan, with 143,199 tweets per second during a television screening of the movie Castle in the Sky<ref name="Krikorian-2013" /> (beating the previous record of 33,388, also set by Japan for the television screening of the same movie).<ref>Kanalley, Craig (January 2, 2013). "Tweets-Per-Second Record Set By Japan, Korea On New Year's Day 2013". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on October 19, 2017. Retrieved January 3, 2013.</ref>

The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010.<ref>Press release (January 22, 2010). "Media Advisory M10-012 – NASA Extends the World Wide Web Out into Space" Archived December 13, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. NASA. Retrieved February 5, 2011.</ref> By late November 2010, an average of a dozen updates per day were posted on the astronauts' communal account, @NASA_Astronauts. NASA has also hosted over 25 "tweetups", events that provide guests with VIP access to NASA facilities and speakers with the goal of leveraging participants' social networks to further the outreach goals of NASA.

Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11, 2010. Atebits had developed the Apple Design Award-winning Twitter client Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone. The application became the official Twitter client for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.<ref>Miller, Claire Cain (April 11, 2010). "Twitter Acquires Atebits, Maker of Tweetie". Bits (blog of The New York Times). Archived from the original on December 18, 2010. Retrieved February 7, 2011.</ref>

2010–2014

From September through October 2010, the company began rolling out "New Twitter", an entirely revamped edition of twitter.com. Changes included the ability to see pictures and videos without leaving Twitter itself by clicking on individual tweets which contain links to images and clips from a variety of supported websites, including YouTube and Flickr, and a complete overhaul of the interface, which shifted links such as '@mentions' and 'Retweets' above the Twitter stream, while 'Messages' and 'Log Out' became accessible via a black bar at the very top of twitter.com. As of November 1, 2010^[update], the company confirmed that the "New Twitter experience" had been rolled out to all users. In 2019, Twitter was announced to be the 10th most downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019.<ref>Rayome, Alison DeNisco. "Facebook was the most-downloaded app of the decade". CNET. Archived from the original on December 18, 2019. Retrieved December 18, 2019.</ref>

On April 5, 2011, Twitter tested a new homepage and phased out the "Old Twitter".<ref>Praetorius, Dean (May 4, 2011). "Twitter Users Report Twitter.com Has A New Homepage (SCREENSHOTS)". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on October 27, 2017. Retrieved May 22, 2011.</ref> However, a glitch came about after the page was launched, so the previous "retro" homepage was still in use until the issues were resolved; the new homepage was reintroduced on April 20.<ref>Dunn, John E (April 6, 2011). "Twitter Delays Homepage Revamp After Service Glitch". PCWorld. Archived from the original on May 10, 2011. Retrieved May 22, 2011.</ref><ref>Crum, Chris (April 20, 2011). "New Twitter Homepage Launched". Archived from the original on April 24, 2011. Retrieved April 25, 2011.</ref> On December 8, 2011, Twitter overhauled its website once more to feature the "Fly" design, which the service says is easier for new users to follow and promotes advertising. In addition to the Home tab, the Connect and Discover tabs were introduced along with a redesigned profile and timeline of Tweets. The site's layout has been compared to that of Facebook.<ref>"Twitter: Yours to discover". Fly.twitter.com. Archived from the original on January 18, 2012. Retrieved January 20, 2012.</ref><ref>"Twitter 2.0: Everything You Need to Know About the New Changes". Fox News. April 7, 2010. Archived from the original on April 15, 2012. Retrieved January 20, 2012.</ref> On February 21, 2012, it was announced that Twitter and Yandex agreed to a partnership. Yandex, a Russian search engine, finds value within the partnership due to Twitter's real-time news feeds. Twitter's director of business development explained that it is important to have Twitter content where Twitter users go.<ref>"Twitter partners with Yandex for real-time search". Reuters. February 21, 2012. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved July 2, 2017.</ref> On March 21, 2012, Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday by announcing that it had 140 million users, a 40% rise from September 2011, who were sending 340 million tweets per day.<ref>"Twitter Says It Has 140 Million Users". Mashable. March 21, 2012. Archived from the original on May 2, 2019. Retrieved March 21, 2012.</ref><ref>"Twitter Now Has More Than 200 Million Monthly Active Users". Mashable. December 18, 2012. Archived from the original on July 14, 2018. Retrieved December 18, 2012.</ref>

On June 5, 2012, a modified logo was unveiled through the company blog, removing the text to showcase the slightly redesigned bird as the sole symbol of Twitter.<ref>Rodriguez, Salvador (June 6, 2012). "Twitter flips the bird, adopts new logo". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on July 12, 2012. Retrieved May 5, 2017.</ref><ref>Gilbertson, Scott (June 8, 2012). "Twitter's New Logo Inspires Parodies, CSS Greatness". Wired. Archived from the original on November 6, 2018. Retrieved May 5, 2017.</ref> On December 18, 2012, Twitter announced it had surpassed 200 million monthly active users.

On January 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Crashlytics in order to build out its mobile developer products.<ref name="crashlytics">T. Huang, Gregory (February 5, 2013). "Twitter's Boston Acquisitions: Crashlytics Tops $100M, Bluefin Labs Close Behind". Xconomy. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved November 22, 2021.</ref> On April 18, 2013, Twitter launched a music app called Twitter Music for the iPhone.<ref>Ulanoff, Lance (April 18, 2013). "Twitter Launches Twitter #music App and Service". Mashable. Mashable. Archived from the original on September 21, 2018. Retrieved April 28, 2013.</ref> On August 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Trendrr,<ref>"Twitter acquires real-time social data company Trendrr to help it better tap into TV and media". The Next web. August 28, 2013. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved August 29, 2013.</ref> followed by the acquisition of MoPub on September 9, 2013.<ref>Isidore, Chris (September 10, 2013). "Twitter makes another acquisition". CNN Money. Archived from the original on April 24, 2019. Retrieved September 10, 2013.</ref> As of September 2013^[update], the company's data showed that 200 million users sent over 400 million tweets daily, with nearly 60% of tweets sent from mobile devices.<ref>Moore, Heidi (September 12, 2013). "Twitter files for IPO in first stage of stock market launch". The Guardian. Archived from the original on August 1, 2019. Retrieved September 13, 2013.</ref>

During Super Bowl XLVII on February 3, 2013, when the power went out in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Mondelez International vice president Lisa Mann was asked to tweet "You can still dunk in the dark", referring to Oreo cookies. She approved and later told Ad Age in 2020, "Literally the world [had] changed when I woke up the next morning." This became a milestone in the development of commenting daily on culture.<ref>Schultz, E.J. (October 5, 2020). "Q&AA: The CMO Fixer: After working for major marketers, Lisa Mann now places CMOs and other executives. She gives her take on what's ailing top brands and what companies are looking for in top execs". Ad Age. 91 (19): 6.</ref>

2014–2020

In April 2014, Twitter underwent a redesign that made the site resemble Facebook somewhat, with a profile picture and biography in a column left to the timeline, and a full-width header image with parallax scrolling effect.<ref group="lower-alpha">It is not documented whether the parallax scrolling effect was added with the redesign in April 2014 or subsequently.</ref><ref>Savov, Vlad (April 8, 2014). "Twitter redesign looks a lot like Facebook". The Verge. Archived from the original on March 10, 2021. Retrieved March 1, 2021.</ref> That layout was used as the main for the desktop front end until July 2019, undergoing changes over time such as having rounded profile pictures since June 2017.<ref>"Check out our new look!". blog.twitter.com. Archived from the original on January 23, 2024. Retrieved January 23, 2024.</ref>

In April 2015, the Twitter.com desktop homepage changed.<ref>"Twitter.com gets a refresh". blog.twitter.com. Archived from the original on July 30, 2019. Retrieved July 30, 2019.</ref> Later in the year it became apparent that growth had slowed, according to Fortune,<ref>Ingram, Matthew (October 25, 2015). "What if the Twitter growth everyone is hoping for never comes?". Fortune. Archived from the original on November 6, 2019. Retrieved September 23, 2016.</ref> Business Insider,<ref>Beaver, Laurie; Boland, Margaret (October 28, 2015). "Twitter user growth continues to stall". Business Insider. Archived from the original on November 6, 2019. Retrieved September 23, 2016.</ref> Marketing Land<ref>Beck, Martin (October 27, 2015). "Revenue Is Up, But Twitter Is Still Struggling In Slow Growth Mode". Marketing Land. Archived from the original on July 30, 2016. Retrieved September 23, 2016.</ref> and other news websites including Quartz (in 2016).<ref>Truong, Alice (February 10, 2016). "Twitter now has a problem that's way worse than slow user growth". Quartz. Archived from the original on November 6, 2019. Retrieved September 23, 2016.</ref>

On April 29, 2018, the first commercial tweet from space was sent by a private company Solstar utilizing solely commercial infrastructure during the New Shepard flight.<ref>Bogan, Ray (May 4, 2018). "Commercial space travelers will soon be able to send a tweet from space". Fox News. Archived from the original on March 5, 2023. Retrieved February 24, 2023.</ref>

Since May 2018, tweet replies deemed by an algorithm to be detractive from the conversation are initially hidden and only loaded by actuating a "Show more replies" element at the bottom.<ref>Oremus, Will (May 15, 2018). "Twitter Will Start Hiding Tweets That "Detract From the Conversation"". Slate Magazine. Archived from the original on June 8, 2023. Retrieved April 11, 2021.</ref>

In 2019, Twitter released another redesign of its user interface.<ref>"Like It or Not, You're Getting Twitter's Redesigned Website Soon". PCMAG. Archived from the original on March 17, 2021. Retrieved August 25, 2020.</ref> By the start of 2019^[update], Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users.<ref name="Twitter">Molina, Brett (October 26, 2017). "Twitter overcounted active users since 2014, shares surge on profit hopes". USA Today. Archived from the original on January 1, 2020. Retrieved December 2, 2017.</ref>

2020–2021

Twitter experienced considerable growth during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.<ref>"Q2 2020 Letter to Shareholders, July 23, 2020, @TwitterIR" (PDF). Twitter. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 22, 2021. Retrieved March 14, 2022.</ref> The platform also was increasingly used for misinformation related to the pandemic.<ref>"Full Page Reload". IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News. July 29, 2020. Archived from the original on January 3, 2021. Retrieved August 26, 2020.</ref> Twitter started marking tweets which contained misleading information, and adding links to fact-checks.<ref name="Roth-2020">Roth, Yoel; Pickles, Nick (May 11, 2020). "Updating our Approach to Misleading Information". Twitter. Archived from the original on February 28, 2021. Retrieved May 28, 2020.</ref> In May 2020, Twitter moderators marked two tweets from U.S. President Donald Trump as "potentially misleading" and linked to a fact-check.<ref>Lybrand, Holmes; Subramaniam, Tara (May 27, 2020). "Fact-checking Trump's recent claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud". CNN. Archived from the original on February 28, 2021. Retrieved May 28, 2020.</ref> Trump responded by signing an executive order to weaken Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which limits social media sites' liability for content moderation decisions.<ref>Allyn, Bobby (May 28, 2020). "Stung By Twitter, Trump Signs Executive Order To Weaken Social Media Companies". NPR. National Public Radio. Archived from the original on June 28, 2020. Retrieved May 29, 2020.</ref><ref>"Trump signs executive order targeting social media companies". CNN. May 28, 2020. Archived from the original on February 13, 2021. Retrieved May 29, 2020.</ref><ref>Conger, Kate; Isaac, Mike (May 28, 2020). "Defying Trump, Twitter Doubles Down on Labeling Tweets". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 28, 2020. Retrieved May 29, 2020.</ref> Twitter later banned Trump, claiming that he violated "the glorification of violence policy".<ref>"Twitter 'permanently suspends' Trump's account". BBC News. January 8, 2021. Archived from the original on June 8, 2021. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref> The ban drew criticism from conservatives and European leaders, who saw it as an interference on freedom of speech.<ref name="Jennen-2021">"Germany and France Oppose Trump's Twitter Exile". Bloomberg.com. January 11, 2021. Archived from the original on March 26, 2021. Retrieved January 11, 2021. 'The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic,' Steffen Seibert, her chief spokesman, said at a regular news conference in Berlin. Rights like the freedom of speech 'can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature – not according to a corporate decision.'</ref>

On June 5, 2021, the Nigerian government issued an indefinite ban on Twitter usage in the country, citing "misinformation and fake news spread through it have had real world violent consequences",<ref>"Nigeria's Twitter ban: Government orders prosecution of violators". BBC News. June 6, 2021. Archived from the original on January 11, 2022. Retrieved June 20, 2021.</ref> after the platform removed tweets made by the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.<ref>"Nigeria suspends Twitter after the social media platform freezes president's account". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on December 5, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.</ref> Nigeria's ban was criticized by Amnesty International.<ref>Ohuocha, Chijioke (June 5, 2021). "Nigerian telecoms firms suspend access to Twitter". Reuters. Archived from the original on June 11, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.</ref>

In 2021, Twitter began the research phase of Bluesky, an open source decentralized social media protocol where users can choose which algorithmic curation they want.<ref>Goldsmith, Jill (February 10, 2021). "Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey On Section 230, Transparency, Appeals And Twitter Turning 15". Deadline. Archived from the original on March 6, 2021. Retrieved March 26, 2021.</ref><ref>Matney, Lucas (January 15, 2021). "Twitter's decentralized future". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on June 29, 2023. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref> The same year, Twitter also released Twitter Spaces, a social audio feature;<ref>Rodriguez, Salvador (May 3, 2021). "Twitter launches Spaces live-audio rooms to all users with more than 600 followers". CNBC. Archived from the original on July 23, 2021. Retrieved August 10, 2021.</ref><ref>Lyons, Kim (May 3, 2021). "Twitter will now let anyone with 600 or more followers host its audio Spaces on mobile". The Verge. Archived from the original on August 10, 2021. Retrieved August 10, 2021.</ref> "super follows", a way to subscribe to creators for exclusive content;<ref>"Twitter launches subscription-based feature "super follows"". Reuters. September 1, 2021. Archived from the original on March 5, 2023. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref> and a beta of "ticketed Spaces", which makes access to certain audio rooms paid.<ref>Robertson, Adi (June 22, 2021). "Twitter is opening applications to test Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows". The Verge. Archived from the original on July 1, 2021. Retrieved June 23, 2021.</ref> Twitter unveiled a redesign in August 2021, with adjusted colors and a new Chirp font, which improves the left-alignment of most Western languages.<ref>Bonifac, Igor (August 11, 2021). "Twitter rolls out redesign with proprietary Chirp font". Engadget. Archived from the original on August 13, 2021. Retrieved August 11, 2021.</ref>

Since 2022

In June 2022, Twitter announced a partnership with e-commerce giant Shopify, and its plans to launch a sales channel app for U.S. Shopify merchants.<ref>"Twitter partners with Shopify to bring merchants' products to Twitter Shopping". TechCrunch. June 22, 2022. Archived from the original on June 29, 2022. Retrieved June 23, 2022.</ref>

On August 23, 2022, the contents of a whistleblower complaint by former information security head Peiter Zatko to the United States Congress were published. Zatko had been fired by Twitter in January 2022. The complaint alleges that Twitter failed to disclose several data breaches, had negligent security measures, violated United States securities regulations, and broke the terms of a previous settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over the safeguarding of user data. The report also claims that the Indian government forced Twitter to hire one of its agents to gain direct access to user data.<ref>Vincent, James (August 23, 2022). "Twitter's former security chief says company lied about bots and safety". The Verge. Archived from the original on August 25, 2022. Retrieved August 23, 2022.</ref>

Acquisition by Elon Musk

page-not-found

Post-acquisition

A week after the takeover, Musk revamped Twitter Blue, increasing its price to $8 per month and adding new features, including the "blue checkmark" verification that had previously been reserved for high-profile confirmed users. This plan was criticized by several outlets, fearing that the potential for misinformation would increase since anyone could pay to appear to be verified through Twitter Blue. Musk opted to delay the changes to blue checkmarks until after the 2022 United States elections over these concerns and stated that accounts that were faking identities, outside of parody accounts, would be terminated.<ref>Korn, Jennifer; O'Sullivan, Donie (November 6, 2022). "Twitter delays $8 'blue check' verification plan until after the midterms". CNN. Archived from the original on November 8, 2022. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref> Following the takeover, various brands and companies paused advertising on the platform.<ref>Fung, Brian (November 11, 2022). "A day of chaos brings Twitter closer to the brink". CNN. Archived from the original on November 13, 2022. Retrieved November 13, 2022.</ref>

In December 2022, Musk provided internal documentation to a number of independent journalists and writers including Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger which was then publicly disseminated through a series of posts known as the "Twitter Files". The files describe internal discussion as related to Twitter's moderation steps in events such as the breaking of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, shadow banning of some conservative commentators' accounts, and the decision to block Trump. While some on the right saw the documents as evidence of Twitter's liberal bias and hostility to free speech, many people on the left described them as a reflection of how difficult it is for social media platforms to make tough decisions about content moderation.<ref>Grynbaum, Michael (December 4, 2022). "Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, and a Very Modern Media Maelstrom". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 13, 2023. Retrieved December 9, 2022.</ref><ref>Folmar, Chloe (December 10, 2022). "American author Michael Shellenberger releases 'Twitter Files Part 4'". The Hill. Archived from the original on December 12, 2022. Retrieved December 11, 2022.</ref><ref name="alJazeeraDec7">"Musk says Twitter lawyer fired amid Hunter Biden laptop dispute". Al Jazeera. December 7, 2022. Archived from the original on January 22, 2023. Retrieved December 7, 2022.</ref>

The Twitter accounts of a number of journalists were permanently suspended on December 15, 2022. These journalists, including Mashable's Matt Binder, Aaron Rupar, Ryan Mac of The New York Times, and CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, had covered Twitter and recently had written articles about Musk's takeover. Several of the reporters had tweeted about the controversy over Musk's banning of ElonJet and other accounts which track private jets.<ref name=VergeJournalistsBanned>Elon Musk starts banning critical journalists from Twitter Archived December 16, 2022, at the Wayback Machine. The Verge, December 15, 2022</ref><ref name="CNNJournalistsBanned">Elon Musk's Twitter bans accounts of CNN, NYT, WaPo journalists Archived December 16, 2022, at the Wayback Machine. Oliver Darcy, CNN, December 15, 2022</ref> In response, Twitter Head of Trust and Safety Ella Irwin told The Verge that "we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk".<ref>"Re: the banning of reporters who have tweeted about Elon Musk's jet, Twitter's head of trust & safety Ella Irwin tells me: 'Without commenting on any specific accounts, I can confirm that we will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk.'" Archived December 16, 2022, at the Wayback Machine Alex Heath, Twitter, December 15, 2022</ref> Binder denied violating any of Twitter's policies, saying: "I did not share any location data, as per Twitter's new terms. Nor did I share any links to ElonJet or other location tracking accounts."<ref name=APJournalistsBanned>Twitter suspends journalists who wrote about owner Elon Musk Archived December 16, 2022, at the Wayback Machine. Associated Press, December 15, 2022</ref> European Union (EU) commissioner Vera Jourova stated that the EU Digital Services Act insists on media freedom. Jourova stated: "Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon."<ref>Twitter threatened with EU sanctions over journalists' ban Archived December 16, 2022, at the Wayback Machine BBC</ref> On December 17, 2022, several banned journalists' accounts were reinstated.<ref>Twitter reinstates banned journalists' accounts Archived December 17, 2022, at the Wayback Machine BBC</ref>

On December 18, 2022, Twitter announced that it was banning users linking to what was referred to as "prohibited platforms" including Facebook, Mastodon, Instagram and Truth Social, as well as third party link aggregators such as Linktree.<ref>"Twitter bans linking to Facebook, Instagram, other rivals". AP NEWS. December 18, 2022. Archived from the original on December 18, 2022. Retrieved December 18, 2022.</ref> Six hours after his announcement, Musk tweeted: "Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won't happen again." It is unclear if the earlier policy will be reversed. He also tweeted a poll asking users if he should remain as head of Twitter promising to abide by its results,<ref>"'Should I step down as head of Twitter?' asks Musk on Twitter". ANI News. Archived from the original on December 19, 2022. Retrieved December 19, 2022.</ref><ref>Brandon, John. "Elon Musk Just Started A Poll Asking Whether He Should Step Down As Head Of Twitter". Forbes. Archived from the original on December 18, 2022. Retrieved December 19, 2022.</ref> in which 57.5% of the 17.5m votes were in favour of him stepping down.<ref>"Will Elon Musk's ultimatum cost him Twitter?". BBC News. December 19, 2022. Archived from the original on December 19, 2022. Retrieved December 19, 2022.</ref> On December 20, 2022, Musk announced he would step down as CEO once a replacement had been found, and that he would then run the software and servers teams.<ref name="Miller-2022" /> Linda Yaccarino resigned from NBCUniversal on May 12, 2023, and on the same day Musk announced that Yaccarino would be the new chief executive officer of X Corp. and Twitter.<ref>Lillian Rizzo (May 12, 2023). "Elon Musk confirms Twitter CEO hire: Linda Yaccarino". CNBC. Archived from the original on May 12, 2023. Retrieved May 12, 2023.</ref>

Since the acquisition, Twitter's stability has been called into question, with reports that Musk had "disconnected one of the more sensitive server racks" in a data center used by Twitter, just before a large-scale outage of the platform occurred in December 2022.<ref>Conger, Kate (December 29, 2022). "Twitter Users Report Widespread Service Interruptions". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 19, 2023. Retrieved January 20, 2023.</ref> In 2023, many alternative third-party Twitter clients including Tweetbot, stopped working without warning and without any apparent explanation from the company.<ref>Clark, Mitchell (January 13, 2023). "Twitter apps are still broken and Musk is still silent". The Verge. Archived from the original on January 20, 2023. Retrieved January 20, 2023.</ref> Later, Twitter announced it was "enforcing long-standing API rules" and retroactively changed its Developer Terms of Service afterward to justify its unannounced banning of third-party Twitter clients.<ref>"The third-party apps Twitter just killed made the site what it is today". January 22, 2023. Archived from the original on January 22, 2023. Retrieved January 22, 2023.</ref>

In January 2023, The Guardian stated that Twitter reportedly needed to pay $300m in interest on debts, and a default could lead to bankruptcy. Advertising revenue, comprising over 90% of Twitter's turnover had fallen strongly. This happened because clients were concerned about moderation standards after Musk's takeover and also due to a miscalculated restart of its subscription service, leading to many falsely "verified" corporate accounts. Advertising had not improved and Twitter's daily revenue had fallen by 40%.<ref>Milmo, Dan (January 22, 2023). "Is Elon Musk's Twitter in too much trouble to cover its debts?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on December 3, 2023. Retrieved December 3, 2023.</ref> In October 2023, the company estimated its value at about $19 billion, down about 55 percent from the purchase price one year earlier.<ref>Robison, Kylie (October 30, 2023). "X, formerly Twitter, valued at $19 billion in new employee stock plan". Fortune. Archived from the original on October 30, 2023. Retrieved October 30, 2023.</ref> Fidelity at about the same time estimated the value to be down 65 percent from its purchase price.<ref>Mezistrano, Rebecca (October 31, 2023). "Twitter valuation slips to $19 billion, less than half of what Musk paid". TheStreet. Archived from the original on November 8, 2023. Retrieved November 7, 2023. Fidelity, which contributed $300 million to Musk's purchase, says it thinks the company is worth 65 percent less than what it was sold for.</ref>

On March 23, 2023, Twitter announced that "legacy" verification badges would be removed starting on April 1: this date passed with no change before Twitter and Musk both announced (at different dates) that the removal date for checkmarks from non-paying accounts was April 20.<ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref> The only way to acquire a blue checkmark would be through the paid Twitter Blue subscription.<ref name="Spangler-2023">Spangler, Todd (March 23, 2023). "Twitter to Revoke 'Legacy' Verified Badges in April, Leaving Only Paying Subscribers With Blue Check-Marks". Variety. Archived from the original on March 30, 2023. Retrieved March 24, 2023.</ref>

As of mid-April, Twitter no longer allows searching tweets without an account.<ref>"The login prompt for Twitter Search has returned just months after Elon Musk wanted it gone". Neowin. Archived from the original on July 5, 2023. Retrieved July 3, 2023.</ref><ref>"Twitter search is now only available to registered users". Mashable. April 27, 2023. Archived from the original on July 3, 2023. Retrieved July 3, 2023.</ref> On June 30, 2023, Twitter blocked unregistered users from viewing tweets or profiles on the platform. This not only blocked unregistered users from accessing tweets, but it also prevented search engines from indexing its pages, resulting in a loss of over half of its indexed URLs in the past few days.<ref>"Twitter didn't just block unregistered users, it blocked Google Search". searchengineland. July 3, 2023. Archived from the original on July 22, 2023. Retrieved July 22, 2023.</ref> Musk described the change as a "temporary emergency measure" on his own profile, blaming "several hundred organizations" for scraping data from the site.<ref>Weatherbed, Jess (June 30, 2023). "Twitter has started blocking unregistered users". The Verge. Archived from the original on June 30, 2023. Retrieved June 30, 2023.</ref><ref>"Twitter now blocks visitors from viewing tweets, and profiles unless they're logged in". Mashable. June 30, 2023. Archived from the original on July 3, 2023. Retrieved July 3, 2023.</ref> The following day further measures were implemented with temporary limits to the amount of tweets a user can see per day, with verified users having 6,000, unverified users having 600 and newly created users having 300.<ref>"Twitter temporarily restricts tweets users can see". BBC News. July 1, 2023. Archived from the original on July 1, 2023. Retrieved July 1, 2023.</ref> This limit was later increased to 8,000 for verified users, 800 for unverified users, and 400 for new accounts.<ref name="nbcnews.com">"Thousands of Twitter users report problems accessing site as Elon Musk says new limits have been installed". NBC News. July 2, 2023. Archived from the original on July 1, 2023. Retrieved July 2, 2023.</ref> Around three hours after this announcement, the limit was once again raised to 10,000 for verified users, 1,000 for unverified users, and 500 for new accounts.<ref name="nbcnews.com"/> After July 4, Twitter removed the block for unregistered users to view tweets and profiles; however, the ability to view threads and more than one tweet in a single page still requires an account.<ref>"Twitter silently removes login requirement for viewing tweets". Techcrunch. July 5, 2023. Archived from the original on July 13, 2023. Retrieved July 13, 2023.</ref>

Analysis conducted by research firm Sensor Tower found that global active daily users of the platform via mobile apps had steadily declined during the year after Musk acquired the company, down 16% by September 2023, while the metric showed positive growth for five other major social media platforms.<ref>Alexa Corse; Nate Rattner (October 25, 2023). "X's Tumultuous First Year Under Elon Musk, in Charts". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on October 26, 2023. Retrieved October 26, 2023.</ref> With a surge in the number of users trying to migrate from Twitter to other platforms, people have raised questions regarding what migration patterns are, how different platforms impact user behaviors, and how migrated users settle in during the migration process. While Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads are considered the main alternatives for this migration phenomenon, the enduring appeal of established platforms like Twitter poses a significant challenge in user retention for these new alternative platforms.<ref>Jeong, Ujun; Sheth, Paras; Tahir, Anique; Alatawi, Faisal; Bernard, H. Russell; Liu, Huan (November 19, 2023). "Exploring Platform Migration Patterns between Twitter and Mastodon: A User Behavior Study". arXiv:2305.09196 [cs.SI].</ref><ref>Jeong, Ujun; Nirmal, Ayushi; Jha, Kritshekhar; Tang, Xu; Bernard, H. Russell; Liu, Huan (September 22, 2023). "User Migration across Multiple Social Media Platforms". arXiv:2309.12613 [cs.SI].</ref> By December 2023, loss of advertising revenue had become so extreme that public media speculation suggested that Twitter would become bankrupt. Accusations of uncontrolled antisemitism on the platform led to many advertisers withdrawing.<ref>"Could X go bankrupt under Elon Musk?". BBC News. December 2, 2023. Archived from the original on December 3, 2023. Retrieved December 3, 2023.</ref><ref>"'Go fuck yourself!' Elon Musk tells fleeing advertisers". November 30, 2023. Archived from the original on December 5, 2023. Retrieved December 5, 2023.</ref>

In January 2024, the platform announced plans to roll out a forthcoming peer-to-peer payments system, with Musk saying he anticipated a mid-year introduction. He reaffirmed comments he and investor Cathie Wood made in 2023 that the company had licenses to operate in a majority of U.S. states, although available public data indicated the number was 15 at the time of the announcement, with two major states, California and New York, not included. The move came after Musk's previous statement that X should become an app that would allow users to "conduct [their] entire financial world". Earlier in 2023, the company partnered with brokerage eToro to offer trading of different financial products.<ref>"X plans payments launch for this year". Payments Dive. Archived from the original on January 11, 2024. Retrieved January 11, 2024.</ref><ref>Capoot, Ashley (January 9, 2024). "Elon Musk's X to launch peer-to-peer payments this year". CNBC. Archived from the original on January 11, 2024. Retrieved January 11, 2024.</ref><ref>"Twitter Partners With eToro To Offer Stock, Crypto Trading – Forbes Advisor". www.forbes.com. Archived from the original on January 11, 2024. Retrieved January 11, 2024.</ref>

Rebrand to X

Following Twitter's change in ownership, Musk began referring to the platform as "X/Twitter"<ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref><ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref><ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref> and "X (Twitter)",<ref>"xAI: Understand the Universe". x.ai. Archived from the original on July 30, 2023. Retrieved July 30, 2023.</ref> and renamed several features, including Birdwatch to Community Notes<ref name="Biron-2022">Biron, Bethany. "Elon Musk said Twitter's Birdwatch feature will be renamed 'Community Notes' and is aimed at 'improving information accuracy' amid growing content-moderation concerns". Business Insider. Archived from the original on November 15, 2022. Retrieved November 15, 2022.</ref> and Quote Tweets to Quotes.<ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref> On July 23, 2023 Musk confirmed the rebrand, which started when the x.com domain (formerly associated with PayPal) began redirecting to Twitter;<ref>Davis, Wes (July 23, 2023). "Twitter's rebrand to X may actually be happening soon". The Verge. Archived from the original on October 13, 2023. Retrieved July 23, 2023.</ref> the logo was changed from the bird to the X the next day,<ref>"Twitter changes logo to 'X', replacing blue bird symbol". www.aljazeera.com. Archived from the original on July 24, 2023. Retrieved July 24, 2023.</ref> and the platform's official main and associated accounts also began using the letter X within their handles.<ref>Roth, Emma (July 25, 2023). "Elon Musk just changed Twitter's logo again — sort of". The Verge. Archived from the original on July 25, 2023. Retrieved July 25, 2023.</ref> The @x handle was originally owned by photographer Gene X Hwang, who registered it in 2007. Hwang had expressed willingness to sell the handle, but received an email on July 25, 2023, stating that the company was taking it. He was offered some X merchandise and a meeting with the company's leaders, but no financial benefits.<ref>Titcomb, James (July 26, 2023). "'They just took it': Elon Musk takes over @x Twitter account without paying owner". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on July 26, 2023. Retrieved July 26, 2023.</ref> The Android app's name and icon were changed to X on Google Play by July 27; the same change went live on the App Store on July 31 after Apple granted an exception to its minimum character length of 2.<ref>"X (Previously Twitter) 10.0.0-beta.0 (Arm64-v8a) (480-640dpi) (Android 6.0+) APK Download by X Corp". Archived from the original on July 30, 2023. Retrieved August 9, 2023.</ref><ref>"X (Previously Twitter) 10.0.0-release.0 (Nodpi) (Android 6.0+) APK Download by X Corp". Archived from the original on July 30, 2023. Retrieved August 9, 2023.</ref><ref>"Twitter gets special permission to be 'X' in the iOS App Store". July 31, 2023. Archived from the original on July 31, 2023. Retrieved July 31, 2023.</ref> Around that time, some more elements of the Twitter branding were removed from the web version, including tweets being renamed to "posts".<ref>"As Musk renames Twitter to X; 'Tweets' now 'posts', 'retweets' become 'reposts': Report". Hindustan Times. July 29, 2023. Archived from the original on August 13, 2023. Retrieved August 14, 2023.</ref>

The rebrand was described as unusual, given that Twitter's brand was already strong internationally, with words like "tweet" having entered common language.<ref name="CBC 2023 y171">"Twitter was the Holy Grail of branding. Then Elon Musk ditched it. Experts question why". CBC. July 26, 2023. Archived from the original on August 10, 2023. Retrieved August 9, 2023.</ref> The rebranding has been criticized on the basis that the trademarkability of the name and logo is weak: there are almost 900 companies in the U.S. that own an X trademark,<ref>"Why Twitter's rebrand to X could be legally challenging". CBS News. July 25, 2023. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023.</ref> including an existing social media-related logo owned by Meta Platforms.<ref>Sheth, Sonam; Sundar, Sindhu. "Meta already appears to hold the rights to 'X.' It could make Twitter's rebrand complicated". Business Insider. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023.</ref> The X logo uses a blackboard bold X, a character that has appeared in mathematical textbooks since the 1970s and that is included in Unicode as Template:Unichar;<ref>"Twitter's new 'X' logo looks suspiciously like a Unicode character - Business Insider". Business Insider. Archived from the original on November 10, 2023. Retrieved November 9, 2023.</ref>.<ref>Brodkin, Jon (July 24, 2023). "Musk rushes out new Twitter logo—it's just an X that someone tweeted at him". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on July 30, 2023. Retrieved August 4, 2023.</ref>

A few days after the rebrand took effect, an AP Stylebook update recommended that journalists refer to the platform as "X, formerly known as Twitter".<ref name=":1" /> In September 2023, Ad Age, citing The Harris Poll, noted that the rebranding had not publicly caught on, with the majority of users as well as notable brands still referring to X as "Twitter".<ref name="Nudd 2023 w646">Nudd, Tim (September 15, 2023). "Twitter users don't want to call it X — Inside the platform's marketing challenge". Ad Age. Archived from the original on September 15, 2023. Retrieved September 16, 2023.</ref>

Appearance and features

Template:Summarize

Posts

File:Twitter wikipedia.png

The X account page for Wikipedia as of November 2023

Posts (or tweets) are publicly visible by default, but senders can restrict message delivery to only their followers. Users can mute users they do not wish to interact with, block accounts from viewing their posts, and remove accounts from their followers list.<ref>"Know Your Twitter Terms: 'Block' vs. 'Mute'". Wired. Archived from the original on August 9, 2020. Retrieved July 20, 2020.</ref><ref>Gibbs, Samuel (May 13, 2014). "13 reasons to mute people on Twitter". The Guardian. Archived from the original on January 19, 2021. Retrieved July 21, 2020.</ref><ref>"Now every Twitter web user can 'soft block' annoying followers". The Verge. October 11, 2021. Archived from the original on October 14, 2021. Retrieved October 12, 2021.</ref> Users can post via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries.<ref>"Using Twitter with Your Phone". Twitter Support. Archived from the original on March 15, 2010. Retrieved June 1, 2010. We currently support 2-way (sending and receiving) Twitter SMS via short codes and one-way (sending only) via long codes.</ref> Users may subscribe to other users' posts—this is known as "following" and subscribers are known as "followers"<ref name="lists1">Stone, Biz (October 30, 2009). "There's a List for That". blog.twitter.com. Archived from the original on April 29, 2013. Retrieved February 1, 2010.</ref> or "tweeps", a portmanteau of Twitter and peeps.<ref>Brown, Amanda (March 2, 2011). "The tricky business of business tweeting". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on October 23, 2012. Retrieved April 28, 2011.</ref> Individual posts can be forwarded by other users to their own feed, a process known as a "repost" or "retweet". In 2015, Twitter launched "quote tweet" (originally called "retweet with comment"),<ref name=verge-quotetweet>Porter, Jon (September 1, 2020). "Twitter quote tweets are now easier to find". The Verge. Archived from the original on February 28, 2021. Retrieved May 23, 2021.</ref> a feature that allows users to add a comment to their post, imbedding one post in the other.<ref>Shu, Catherine (April 7, 2015). "Twitter Officially Launches Its "Retweet With Comment" Feature". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.</ref> Users can also "like" (formerly "favorite") individual tweets.<ref>"Twitter officially kills off favorites and replaces them with likes". The Verge. Vox Media. Archived from the original on October 9, 2017. Retrieved November 4, 2015.</ref>

The counters for "likes", "retweets/reposts", and replies appear next to the respective buttons in timelines such as on profile pages and search results. Counters for likes and reposts exist on a post's standalone page too. Since September 2020, quote tweets, formerly known as "retweet with comment", have their own counter on their post page.<ref name=verge-quotetweet /> Until the legacy desktop front end that was discontinued in 2020, a row with miniature profile pictures of up to ten liking or retweeting users was displayed (earliest documented implementation in December 2011 overhaul), as well as a tweet reply counter next to the according button on a tweet's page.<ref>Smith, Catharine (December 8, 2011). "9 Things You Need To Know About Twitter's Massive Redesign". HuffPost. Archived from the original on August 17, 2021. Retrieved August 16, 2021.</ref><ref>"Diese Tweets wurden am häufigsten geteilt". Capital.de (in Deutsch). May 27, 2020. Archived from the original on August 16, 2021. Retrieved August 16, 2021.</ref>

Twitter allows users to update their profile via their mobile phones either by text messaging or by apps released for certain smartphones and tablets.<ref>"Download the free Twitter app | Twitter". twitter.com. Archived from the original on May 25, 2019. Retrieved July 30, 2019.</ref> Twitter has been compared to a web-based Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client.<ref>Stutzman, Fred (April 11, 2007). "The 12-Minute Definitive Guide to Twitter". AOL Developer Network. Archived from the original on July 4, 2008. Retrieved November 12, 2008.</ref> Twitter announced in a tweet on September 1, 2022, that the ability to edit a tweet was being tested for select users. The company said the feature was being tested first to determine whether it could be abused. Editing would be allowed for 30 minutes, and previous versions of an edited post would be available. Eventually, all Twitter Blue subscribers would be able to use the feature.<ref>Santiago, Evan (September 3, 2022). "The edit button may finally be coming to Twitter. Here's when you'll be able to use it". The Charlotte Observer. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 4, 2022.</ref>

Users can group posts together by topic or type by use of hashtags – words or phrases prefixed with a "#" sign. Similarly, the "@" sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users.<ref>Strachan, Donald (February 19, 2009). "Twitter: How To Set Up Your Account". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022. Retrieved February 13, 2011.</ref> In 2014, Twitter introduced hashflags, special hashtags that automatically generate a custom emoji next to them for a certain period of time.<ref>Magdaleno, Alex (June 11, 2014). "Raise Your 'Hashflags': Twitter Reintroduces World Cup Hashtags". Mashable. Archived from the original on May 16, 2021. Retrieved May 16, 2021.</ref> Hashflags may be generated by Twitter themselves<ref>"Twitter hashflags call out support for the Asian American community: Thursday Wake-Up Call". adage.com. March 18, 2021. Archived from the original on May 16, 2021. Retrieved May 16, 2021.</ref> or be purchased by corporations.<ref>Johnson, Lauren (February 2, 2016). "Twitter's Branded Emojis Come With a Million-Dollar Commitment". Archived from the original on May 16, 2021. Retrieved May 16, 2021.</ref> To repost a message from another X user and share it with one's own followers, a user can click the repost button within the post. Users can reply to other accounts' replies. Users can hide replies to their messages and select who can reply to each of their tweets before sending them: anyone, accounts who follow the poster, specific accounts, and none.<ref>Peters, Jay (May 20, 2020). "Twitter is testing a way to let you limit replies to your tweets". Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved July 14, 2021.</ref><ref>Peters, Jay (July 13, 2021). "Twitter will let you change who can reply to a tweet after you post it". The Verge. Archived from the original on July 16, 2021. Retrieved July 14, 2021.</ref>

The original, strict 140 character limit was gradually relaxed. In 2016, Twitter announced that attachments, links, and media such as photos, videos, and the person's handle, would no longer count; a user photo post used to count for around 24 characters.<ref>"Coming soon to Twitter: More room to tweet". Associated Press. May 24, 2016. Archived from the original on February 6, 2017. Retrieved May 24, 2016.</ref><ref name="New Twitter Name">Lever, Rob (May 24, 2016). "Twitter eases 140 character limit". Yahoo Tech. Archived from the original on May 9, 2017. Retrieved May 25, 2016.</ref> In 2017, Twitter handles were similarly excluded.<ref>Newton, Casey (March 30, 2017). "Twitter redesigns replies so usernames don't count against the 140-character limit". The Verge. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved August 24, 2019.</ref> The same year, Twitter doubled its historical 140-character-limitation to 280.<ref name="new280limit">"Giving you more characters to express yourself". Archived from the original on September 27, 2017. Retrieved September 27, 2017.</ref> Under the new limit, glyphs are counted as a variable number of characters, depending upon the script they are from.<ref name="new280limit" /> In 2023, Twitter announced that Twitter Blue users could create posts with up to 4,000 characters in length.<ref name="eg-8feb2023">Fingas, John (February 8, 2023). "Twitter Blue users can now post tweets with up to 4,000 characters". Engadget. Archived from the original on February 8, 2023. Retrieved February 8, 2023.</ref>

t.co is a URL shortening service created by Twitter.<ref name="twitterhelpshort">"About Twitter's Link Service". Twitter Help Center (module of Twitter). Archived from the original on February 25, 2011. Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref> It is only available for links posted to Twitter and not available for general use.<ref name="twitterhelpshort" /> All links posted to Twitter use a t.co wrapper.<ref name="twitterblog">Garrett, Sean (June 8, 2010). "Links and Twitter: Length Shouldn't Matter". Twitter Blog (blog of Twitter). Archived from the original on February 23, 2011. Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref> Twitter intended the service to protect users from malicious sites,<ref name="twitterhelpshort" /> and to use it to track clicks on links within tweets.<ref name="twitterhelpshort" /><ref>Metz, Cade (September 2, 2010). "Twitter Tightens Grip on Own Firehose". The Register. Archived from the original on May 28, 2020. Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref> Twitter had previously used the services of third parties TinyURL and bit.ly.<ref>Weisenthal, Joe (May 6, 2009). "Twitter Switches from TinyURL to Bit.ly". Business Insider. Archived from the original on March 8, 2013. Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref>

In June 2011, Twitter announced its own integrated photo-sharing service that enables users to upload a photo and attach it to a Tweet right from Twitter.com.<ref>"Twitter now with integrated photo-sharing service and completely new twitter search". Techshrimp. June 1, 2011. Archived from the original on June 30, 2011. Retrieved June 1, 2011.</ref> Users now also have the ability to add pictures to Twitter's search by adding hashtags to the tweet.<ref name="twitpic">Mike Flacy "Twitter photo sharing goes live for all users" Archived March 14, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Digital Trends. August 9, 2011. Retrieved August 10, 2011.</ref> Twitter also plans to provide photo galleries designed to gather and syndicate all photos that a user has uploaded on Twitter and third-party services such as TwitPic.<ref name="twitpic" /> On March 29, 2016, Twitter introduced the ability to add a caption of up to 480 characters to each image attached to a tweet,<ref name="hc_420">Twitter Help center: Picture Descriptions – How to make images accessible for people Archived March 27, 2021, at the Wayback Machine</ref><ref name="420char">"Accessible images for everyone". blog.twitter.com. Archived from the original on January 24, 2021. Retrieved August 31, 2019.</ref> accessible via screen reading software or by hovering the mouse above a picture inside TweetDeck. In April 2022, Twitter made the ability to add and view captions globally available. Descriptions can be added to any uploaded image with a limit of 1000 characters. Images that have a description will feature a badge that says ALT in the bottom left corner, which will bring up the description when clicked.<ref name="AltDesc2022">Lyons, Kim (April 7, 2022). "Twitter rolls out its ALT badge and improved image descriptions". The Verge. Archived from the original on April 8, 2022. Retrieved April 7, 2022.</ref>

In 2015, Twitter began to roll out the ability to attach poll questions to tweets. Polls are open for up to 7 days, and voters are not personally identified.<ref>"Your Twitter Feed Is About to Be Flooded With Polls". Wired. October 21, 2015. Archived from the original on October 19, 2017. Retrieved October 23, 2015.</ref> In Twitter's early years, users could communicate with Twitter using SMS. Twitter discontinued this feature in most countries in April 2023, after hackers had exposed vulnerabilities in the feature.<ref>Binder, Matt (April 28, 2020). "Twitter quietly deletes millions of accounts from the old text message days". Mashable. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved January 6, 2021.</ref><ref name="VergeDiscontinuation">Kastrenakes, Jacob (April 27, 2020). "Twitter turns off its original SMS service in most countries". The Verge. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved January 6, 2021.</ref>

Multimedia content

In 2016, Twitter began to place a larger focus on live streaming video programming, hosting various events including streams of the Republican and Democratic conventions during the U.S. presidential campaign,<ref>"Twitter and CBS News to partner for live stream of Republican and Democratic National Conventions". CBS News. July 11, 2016. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved July 11, 2016.</ref> and winning a bid for non-exclusive streaming rights to ten NFL games in 2016.<ref name="verge-twitterstreamingvideo">"Twitter plans to broadcast live video 24 hours a day". The Verge. April 26, 2017. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved May 12, 2017.</ref><ref name="ars-tnftwitter">Brodkin, Jon (April 5, 2016). "Twitter buys NFL streaming rights for 10 Thursday Night Football games". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on April 5, 2016. Retrieved April 5, 2016.</ref> During an event in New York in May 2017, Twitter announced that it planned to construct a 24-hour streaming video channel hosted within the service, featuring content from various partners.<ref name="verge-twitterstreamingvideo" /><ref name="recode-twittervideo">"Twitter still thinks it's a TV platform — and here are its dozen new shows". Re/code. Vox Media. May 2, 2017. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved May 12, 2017.</ref> Twitter announced a number of new and expanded partnerships for its streaming video services at the event, including Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, Cheddar, IMG Fashion, Live Nation Entertainment, Major League Baseball, MTV and BET, NFL Network, the PGA Tour, The Players' Tribune, Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens' Propagate, The Verge, Stadium and the WNBA.<ref name="variety-streamingchannel" /> as of the first quarter of 2017^[update], Twitter had over 200 content partners, who streamed over 800 hours of video over 450 events.<ref name="variety-streamingchannel">"Twitter Pushes Live-Video Deals With MLB, NFL, Viacom, BuzzFeed, Live Nation, WNBA and More". Variety. May 2017. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved May 12, 2017.</ref>

Twitter Spaces is a social audio feature that enables users to host or participate in a live-audio virtual environment called space for conversation. A maximum of 13 people are allowed onstage. The feature was initially limited to users with at least 600 followers, but since October 2021, any Twitter user can create a Space.<ref>Roth, Emma (October 21, 2021). "Twitter is finally letting everyone create Spaces". The Verge. Archived from the original on October 28, 2021. Retrieved October 22, 2021.</ref>

In March 2020, Twitter began to test a stories feature known as "fleets" in some markets,<ref name="Perez-2020">"Twitter starts testing its own version of Stories, called 'Fleets,' which disappear after 24 hours". TechCrunch. March 4, 2020. Archived from the original on March 5, 2020. Retrieved September 27, 2020.</ref><ref>"Twitter brings Fleets to India, for 'those uncomfortable with public tweets'". The Indian Express. June 10, 2020. Archived from the original on November 28, 2020. Retrieved September 27, 2020.</ref> which officially launched on November 17, 2020.<ref>Hayes, Dade (November 17, 2020). "Twitter Launches Disappearing 'Fleets' Globally After Tests In Select Markets". Deadline. Archived from the original on November 28, 2020. Retrieved January 6, 2021.</ref><ref>Newton, Casey (November 18, 2020). "What Twitter Fleets signals about the future of the company". The Verge. Archived from the original on March 11, 2021. Retrieved November 18, 2020.</ref> Fleets could contain text and media, are only accessible for 24 hours after they are posted, and are accessed within the Twitter app;<ref name="Perez-2020" /> Twitter announced it would start implementing advertising into fleets in June 2021.<ref>Lyons, Kim (June 1, 2021). "Twitter's Fleets are getting Stories-like ads". The Verge. Archived from the original on June 6, 2021. Retrieved June 6, 2021.</ref> Fleets were removed in August 2021; Twitter had intended for fleets to encourage more users to tweet regularly, but instead they were generally used by already-active users.<ref name="expiringfeature">Heath, Alex (July 14, 2021). "Twitter is shutting down Fleets, its expiring tweets feature". The Verge. Archived from the original on August 3, 2021. Retrieved July 14, 2021.</ref>

Curation

Lists

In late 2009, the "Twitter Lists" feature was added, making it possible for users to follow a curated list of accounts all at once, rather than following individual users.<ref name="lists1" /><ref>"Twitter Lists!". Support forum at help.twitter.com. n.d. Archived from the original on December 22, 2009. Retrieved February 13, 2011.</ref> Currently, lists can be set to either public or private. Public lists may be recommended to users via the general Lists interface and appear in search results.<ref>"Twitter gets a new 'List Search' feature; Know what it is all about". HT Tech. May 26, 2023. Archived from the original on May 29, 2023. Retrieved May 29, 2023.</ref> If a users follows a public list, it will appear in the "View Lists" section of their profile, so that other users may quickly find it and follow it as well.<ref>Chin, Monica (March 5, 2020). "How to create a Twitter List (and join others)". The Verge. Archived from the original on May 29, 2023. Retrieved May 29, 2023.</ref> Private lists can only be followed if the creator shares a specific link to their list. Lists add a separate tab to the Twitter interface with the title of the list, such as "News" or "Economics".

Moments

In October 2015, Twitter introduced "Moments"—a feature that allows users to curate tweets from other users into a larger collection. Twitter initially intended the feature to be used by its in-house editorial team and other partners; they populated a dedicated tab in Twitter's apps, chronicling news headlines, sporting events, and other content.<ref>Pierce, David (October 6, 2015). "Meet Moments, Twitter's Most Important New Feature Ever". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref><ref>Newton, Casey (October 6, 2015). "Twitter launches Moments, its dead-simple tab for browsing the best tweets". The Verge. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref> In September 2016, creation of moments became available to all Twitter users.<ref>Kastrenakes, Jacob (September 28, 2016). "Twitter opens its Moments feature up to everyone". The Verge. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref>

Algorithm

On October 21, 2021, report based on a "long-running, massive-scale randomized experiment" that analyzed "millions of tweets sent between 1 April and 15 August 2020", found that Twitter's machine learning recommendation algorithm amplified right-leaning politics on personalized user Home timelines.<ref name="Huszár_20211021">Huszár, Ferenc; Ktena, Sofia Ira; O'Brien, Conor; Belli, Luca; Schlaikjer, Andrew; Hardt, Moritz (October 21, 2021). "Algorithmic Amplification of Politics on Twitter" (PDF). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (1): 27. arXiv:2110.11010. doi:10.1073/pnas.2025334119. PMC 8740571. PMID 34934011. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 22, 2021. Retrieved October 23, 2021.</ref>^: 1<ref name="BBC_20211022">"Twitter's algorithm favours right-leaning politics, research finds". BBC News. October 22, 2021. Archived from the original on October 29, 2021. Retrieved October 23, 2021.</ref> The report compared seven countries with active Twitter users where data was available—Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, and Spain—and examined Tweets "from major political groups and politicians".<ref name="Huszár_20211021" />^: 4 Researchers used the 2019 Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHESDATA) to position parties on political ideology within each country.<ref name="Huszár_20211021" />^: 4 The "machine learning algorithms"—introduced by Twitter in 2016—personalized 99% of users' feeds by displaying Tweets—even older Tweets and Retweets from accounts the user had not directly followed—but that the algorithm had "deemed relevant" to the users' past preferences.<ref name="Huszár_20211021" />^: 4 Twitter randomly chose 1% of users whose Home timelines displayed content in reverse-chronological order from users they directly followed.<ref name="Huszár_20211021" />^: 2

Mobile

Twitter has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.<ref>"Twitter apps for phones, tablets and computers". Twitter. Archived from the original on April 2, 2017. Retrieved April 6, 2017.</ref> In April 2017, Twitter introduced Twitter Lite, a progressive web app designed for regions with unreliable and slow Internet connections, with a size of less than one megabyte, designed for devices with limited storage capacity.<ref>Byford, Sam (April 6, 2017). "Twitter Lite is a faster, leaner mobile web version of Twitter". The Verge. Vox Media. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved April 6, 2017.</ref><ref>Russell, Jon (April 6, 2016). "Twitter launches a 'lite' mobile web app that's optimized for emerging markets". TechCrunch. AOL. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved April 6, 2017.</ref>

Premium (formerly Twitter Blue)

On June 3, 2021, Twitter announced a paid subscription service called Twitter Blue. Following Twitter's ongoing "X" name change, the subscription was rebranded to X Blue (or simply Blue), and, on August 5, 2023, was rebranded to X Premium (or simply Premium).<ref>"Twitter Blue Seemingly Getting X Rebranding". ComicBook.com. Archived from the original on August 6, 2023. Retrieved August 6, 2023.</ref><ref>"X (Twitter) Blue is Dead, Welcome X Premium • iPhone in Canada Blog". iPhone in Canada. August 5, 2023. Archived from the original on August 6, 2023. Retrieved August 6, 2023.</ref> The subscription provides additional premium features to the service.<ref name="Perez-2021">Perez, Sarah (June 3, 2021). "Twitter launches its premium subscription, Twitter Blue, initially in Canada and Australia". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on August 3, 2021. Retrieved July 14, 2021.</ref><ref>Peters, Jay (November 9, 2021). "Twitter will now let you pay to undo tweets and read ad-free news in the US". The Verge. Archived from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved April 24, 2022.</ref> In November 2023 a "Premium+" subscription was launched, with a higher monthly fee giving benefits such as the omission of adverts.<ref>Sankaran, Vishwam (November 6, 2023). "Elon Musk unveils new sarcasm-loving AI chatbot for premium X subscribers". The Independent. Archived from the original on November 6, 2023. Retrieved December 7, 2023.</ref>

Verification of paid accounts

In November 2022, Musk announced plans to add account verification and the ability to upload longer audio and video to Twitter Blue. A previous perk offering advertising-free news articles from participating publishers was dropped, but Musk stated that Twitter did want to work with publishers on a similar "paywall bypass" perk.<ref name="Roth-2022">Roth, Emma (November 1, 2022). "Twitter discontinues ad-free articles for Blue subscribers". The Verge. Archived from the original on November 6, 2022. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref><ref name="Peters-2022">Peters, Jay (November 1, 2022). "Elon Musk will let you pay $8 to be a verified 'lord' on Twitter". The Verge. Archived from the original on April 21, 2023. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref><ref name="Roth-2022a">Roth, Emma (November 5, 2022). "Elon Musk's $7.99 Twitter Blue with verification is 'coming soon' on iOS". The Verge. Archived from the original on November 6, 2022. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref> Musk had pushed for a more expensive version of Twitter Blue following his takeover, arguing that it would be needed to offset a decline in advertising revenue.<ref>Binder, Matt (November 8, 2022). "Can an $8 Twitter subscription bail out Elon Musk? Let's look at the numbers". Mashable. Archived from the original on November 18, 2022. Retrieved November 18, 2022.</ref> Twitter states that paid verification is required to help reduce fraudulent accounts.<ref name="Sawers-2023">Sawers, Paul (April 21, 2023). "Twitter seemingly now requires all advertisers to have a verified checkmark". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on April 22, 2023. Retrieved April 26, 2023.</ref>

The verification marker was included in a premium tier of Twitter Blue introduced on November 9, 2022, priced at US$7.99.<ref>O'Sullivan, Donie; Korn, Jennifer (November 6, 2022). "Elon Musk delays $8 'blue check' Twitter verification plan until after the midterms". CNN. Archived from the original on November 8, 2022. Retrieved November 9, 2022.</ref> On November 11, 2022, after the introduction of this feature led to prominent issues involving accounts using the feature to impersonate public figures and companies, Twitter Blue with verification was temporarily suspended.<ref>Belanger, Ashley (November 11, 2022). "Twitter quietly drops $8 paid verification; "tricking people not OK," Musk says". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on November 11, 2022. Retrieved November 12, 2022.</ref><ref name="Lerman-2022">Lerman, Rachel; Zakrzewski, Cat (November 11, 2022). "Elon Musk's first big Twitter product paused after fake accounts spread". Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 16, 2022. Retrieved November 17, 2022.</ref> After about a month, Twitter Blue was relaunched on December 12, 2022, though for those purchasing the service through the iOS app store, the cost will be $10.99 a month as to offset the 30% revenue split that Apple takes.<ref>Allyn, Bobby (December 12, 2022). "Elon Musk relaunches Twitter Blue with higher price for iPhone users". NPR. Archived from the original on December 12, 2022. Retrieved December 12, 2022.</ref>

Twitter initially grandfathered users and entities that had gained verification due to their status as public figures, referring them as "legacy verified accounts" that "may or may not be notable".<ref>Silberling, Amanda (December 8, 2022). "Schrödinger's blue check: According to Twitter, I may or may not be notable". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on March 28, 2023. Retrieved March 28, 2023.</ref> On March 25, 2023, it was announced that "legacy" verification status would be removed; a subscription will be required to retain verified status, costing $1,000 per-month for organizations (which are designated with a gold verified symbol),<ref name="Sawers-2023" /> plus an additional $50 for each "affiliate".<ref name="Gans-2023">Gans, Jared (March 25, 2023). "Twitter to start phasing out legacy verification system on April 1, but not all will lose blue checks". The Hill. Nexstar Media, Inc. Archived from the original on March 28, 2023. Retrieved March 28, 2023.</ref><ref name="Spangler-2023" /> The change was originally scheduled for April 1, 2023, but was delayed to April 20, 2023, following criticism of the changes.<ref>Goswami, Rohan (April 20, 2023). "Twitter finally removes legacy verification check marks". CNBC. Archived from the original on April 25, 2023. Retrieved April 25, 2023.</ref> Musk also announced plans for the "For You" timeline to prioritize verified accounts and user followers only beginning April 15, 2023, and threatened to only allow verified users to participate in polls (although the latter change has yet to occur).<ref>Schroeder, Stan (April 25, 2023). "Elon Musk says verified Twitter accounts are now prioritized, whatever that means". Mashable. Archived from the original on April 25, 2023. Retrieved April 25, 2023.</ref>

Effective April 21, 2023, Twitter requires companies to participate in the verified organizations program in order to purchase advertising on the platform, although companies that spend at least $1,000 on advertising per-month automatically receive membership in the program at no additional cost.<ref name="Sawers-2023" />

From April 25, 2023, verified users are now prioritized in replies to tweets.<ref>Schroeder, Stan (April 25, 2023). "Elon Musk says verified Twitter accounts are now prioritized, whatever that means". Mashable. Archived from the original on April 25, 2023. Retrieved April 30, 2023.</ref><ref name="Kaustubh-2023">"Twitter to prioritise replies from followed and verified users". The Times of India. March 20, 2023. ISSN 0971-8257. Archived from the original on July 21, 2023. Retrieved July 21, 2023.</ref>

User monetization

In June 2021, the company opened applications for its premium subscription options called Super Follows. This lets eligible accounts charge $2.99, $4.99 or $9.99 per month to subscribe to the account.<ref>Hatmaker, Taylor (September 1, 2021). "Twitter rolls out paid subscription 'Super Follows' to let you cash in on your tweets". Tech Crunch. Archived from the original on September 9, 2021. Retrieved September 28, 2021.</ref> The launch only generated about $6,000 in its first two weeks.<ref>Perez, Sarah (September 12, 2021). "Twitter Super Follows has generated only around $6k+ in its first two weeks". Tech Crunch. Archived from the original on September 28, 2021. Retrieved September 28, 2021.</ref> In 2023, the Super Follows feature was rebranded as simply "subscriptions", allowing users to publish exclusive long-form posts and videos for their subscribers; the pivot in marketing was reportedly intended to help compete with Substack.<ref>"Twitter replaces 'Super Follows' with 'Subscriptions'". Engadget. April 14, 2023. Archived from the original on April 25, 2023. Retrieved April 25, 2023.</ref>

In May 2021, Twitter began testing a Tip Jar feature on its iOS and Android clients. The feature allows users to send monetary tips to certain accounts, providing a financial incentive for content creators on the platform. The Tip Jar is optional and users can choose whether or not to enable tips for their account.<ref>Gartenberg, Chaim (March 6, 2021). "Twitter is testing a new Tip Jar feature for sending money to your favorite accounts". The Verge. Archived from the original on May 6, 2021. Retrieved May 7, 2021.</ref> On September 23, 2021, Twitter announced that it will allow users to tip users on the social network with bitcoin. The feature will be available for iOS users. Previously, users could tip with fiat currency using services such as Square's Cash App and PayPal's Venmo. Twitter will integrate the Strike bitcoin lightning wallet service. It was noted that at this current time, Twitter will not take a cut of any money sent through the tips feature.<ref>Rodriguez, Salvador (September 23, 2021). "You can now get paid in bitcoin to use Twitter". CNBC. Archived from the original on September 24, 2021. Retrieved September 23, 2021.</ref>

On August 27, 2021, Twitter rolled out Ticketed Spaces, which let Twitter Spaces hosts charge between $1 and $999 for access to their rooms.<ref>Carman, Ashley (August 27, 2021). "Twitter starts launching Ticketed Spaces for some iOS users". The Verge. Archived from the original on September 29, 2021. Retrieved September 28, 2021.</ref> In April 2022, Twitter announced that it will partner with Stripe, Inc. for piloting cryptocurrency payouts for limited users in the platform. Eligible users of Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows will be able to receive their earnings in the form of USD coin, a stablecoin whose value is that of the U.S. dollar. Users can also hold their earnings in crypto wallets, and then exchange them into other cryptocurrencies.<ref>Mattackal, Lisa Pauline (April 22, 2022). "Twitter, Stripe pilot cryptocurrency payments for creators". Reuters. Archived from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 24, 2022.</ref>

E-commerce

From 2014 to 2017, Twitter offered a "Buy button" feature, allowing tweets to embed products that could be purchased from within the service. Users could also add their billing and shipping information directly to their accounts. The buy button's platform partners at launch included Stripe, Gumroad, Musictoday, and The Fancy,<ref>Popper, Ben (September 8, 2014). "You can now buy things directly on Twitter". The Verge. Archived from the original on November 6, 2022. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref>

In July 2021, Twitter began testing a "Shop module" for iOS users in the United States, allowing accounts associated with brands to display a carousel of cards on their profiles showcasing products. Unlike the Buy button, where order fulfillment was handed from within Twitter, these cards are external links to online storefronts from which the products may be purchased.<ref>Porter, Jon (July 28, 2021). "Twitter pilots a new shopping section for brands". The Verge. Archived from the original on July 31, 2021. Retrieved July 28, 2021.</ref> In March 2022, Twitter expanded the test to allow companies to showcase up to 50 products on their profiles.<ref>"Twitter begins testing 'Shops' feature to grow ecommerce". The Express Tribune. March 10, 2022. Archived from the original on March 10, 2022. Retrieved March 10, 2022.</ref>

In November 2021, Twitter introduced support for "shoppable" live streams, in which brands can hold streaming events that similarly display banners and pages highlighting products that are featured in the presentation.<ref>"Walmart will be the first retailer to test Twitter's new livestream shopping platform". TechCrunch. November 22, 2021. Archived from the original on December 3, 2021. Retrieved December 2, 2021.</ref>

Usage

Daily user estimates vary as the company does not publish statistics on active accounts. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits.<ref name="Kazeniac">Kazeniac, Andy (February 9, 2009). "Social Networks: Facebook Takes Over Top Spot, Twitter Climbs". Compete.com. Archived from the original on July 21, 2011. Retrieved February 17, 2009.</ref> An April 2017 a statista.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the tenth most used social network based on their count of 319 million monthly visitors.<ref>"Global Social Networks Ranked by Number of Users". Statista. Archived from the original on January 29, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2017.</ref> Its global user base in 2017 was 328 million.<ref>Fiegerman, Seth. "Twitter is now losing users in the U.S." CNNMoney. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved March 23, 2018.</ref>

Demographics

In 2009, Twitter was mainly used by older adults who might not have used other social sites before Twitter.<ref name="teensdonttweet">Miller, Claire Cain (August 25, 2009). "Who's Driving Twitter's Popularity? Not Teens". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved September 18, 2009.</ref> According to comScore only 11% of Twitter's users were aged 12 to 17.<ref name="teensdonttweet" /> According to a study by Sysomos in June 2009, women made up a slightly larger Twitter demographic than men—53% over 47%. It also stated that 5% of users accounted for 75% of all activity.<ref>Cheng, Alex; Evans, Mark (June 2009). "Inside Twitter – An In-Depth Look Inside the Twitter World". Sysomos. Archived from the original on April 3, 2023. Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref> According to Quancast, 27 million people in the US used Twitter in September 2009; 63% of Twitter users were under 35 years old; 60% of Twitter users were Caucasian, but a higher than average (compared to other Internet properties) were African American/black (16%) and Hispanic (11%); 58% of Twitter users have a total household income of at least US$60,000.<ref>Bluff, Brian (May 2010). "Who Uses Twitter?". site-seeker.com. Archived from the original on May 31, 2010. Retrieved September 22, 2010.</ref> The prevalence of African American Twitter usage and in many popular hashtags has been the subject of research studies.<ref>Chen, Adrian (May 17, 2011). "Why So Many Black People Are On Twitter". Gawker. Univision Communications. Archived from the original on May 11, 2019. Retrieved May 5, 2017.</ref><ref>Saint, Nick (April 30, 2010). "Why Is Twitter More Popular With Black People Than White People?". Business Insider. Axel Springer SE. Archived from the original on April 10, 2019. Retrieved May 5, 2017.</ref>

Twitter grew from 100 million monthly active users (MAUs) in September 2011,<ref>Taylor, Chris (September 8, 2011). "Twitter has 100 million active users". Mashable. Archived from the original on April 20, 2012. Retrieved September 16, 2011.</ref> to 255 million in March 2014,<ref name="investor.twitterinc.com">"Twitter Reports First Quarter 2014 Results". Archived from the original on June 9, 2014. Retrieved June 9, 2014.</ref> and more than 330 million in early 2019.<ref>Evette Alexander, Polarization in the Twittersphere: What 86 million tweets reveal about the political makeup of American Twitter users and how they engage with news Archived June 7, 2021, at the Wayback Machine Knight Foundation/</ref><ref>Deen Freelon Associate Professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, Tweeting Left, Right & Center: How users and attention are distributed across Twitter Archived August 1, 2021, at the Wayback Machine, Knight Foundation.</ref><ref name="Twitter" /> In 2013, there were over 100 million users actively using Twitter daily and about 500 million tweets every day.<ref>"Twitter, Inc Common Stock". Archived from the original on November 7, 2019. Retrieved June 9, 2014.</ref> A 2016 Pew research poll found that Twitter is used by 24% of all online US adults. It was equally popular with men and women (24% and 25% of online Americans respectively), but more popular with younger generations (36% of 18–29 year olds).<ref>"Social Media Update 2016". Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. November 11, 2016. Archived from the original on October 29, 2019. Retrieved March 23, 2018.</ref> A 2019 survey conducted by the Pew Foundation found that Twitter users are three times as likely to be younger than 50 years old, with the median age of adult U.S. users being 40. The survey found that 10% of users who are most active on Twitter are responsible for 80% of all tweets.<ref>Wojcik, Stefan; Hughes, Adam (April 24, 2019). "Sizing Up Twitter Users". Pew Research Center. Archived from the original on October 29, 2019. Retrieved January 9, 2021.</ref>

Content

San Antonio-based market-research firm Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the United States and in English) over a two-week period in August 2009 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm (CST) and separated them into six categories.<ref>Kelly, Ryan, ed. (August 12, 2009). "Twitter Study – August 2009". Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage (PDF). San Antonio, Texas: Pear Analytics. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 15, 2011.</ref> Pointless babble made up 40%, with 38% being conversational. Pass-along value had 9%, self-promotion 6% with spam and news each making 4%.

Despite Jack Dorsey's own open contention that a message on Twitter is "a short burst of inconsequential information", social networking researcher danah boyd responded to the Pear Analytics survey by arguing that what the Pear researchers labeled "pointless babble" is better characterized as "social grooming" or "peripheral awareness" (which she justifies as persons "want[ing] to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn't viable").<ref>boyd, danah (August 16, 2009). "Twitter: "pointless babble" or peripheral awareness + social grooming?". Archived from the original on March 7, 2012. Retrieved September 19, 2009.</ref> Similarly, a survey of Twitter users found that a more specific social role of passing along messages that include a hyperlink is an expectation of reciprocal linking by followers.<ref>Avery Holton; Kang Baek; Mark Coddington; Yaschur; Carolyn (2014). "Seeking and Sharing: Motivations for Linking on Twitter". Communication Research Reports. 31 (1): 33–40. doi:10.1080/08824096.2013.843165. S2CID 143390964.</ref>

Levels of use

According to research published in April 2014, around 44% of user accounts have never tweeted.<ref>Murphy, David (April 13, 2014). "44 Percent of Twitter Accounts Have Never Tweeted". PC Magazine. Archived from the original on September 21, 2018. Retrieved September 17, 2017.</ref> About 22% of Americans say they have ever used Twitter, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.<ref>"Share of U.S. adults using social media, including Facebook, is mostly unchanged since 2018". Pew Research Center. Archived from the original on March 31, 2021. Retrieved July 11, 2020.</ref> In 2009, Nielsen Online reported that Twitter had a user-retention rate of forty percent. Many people stop using the service after a month; therefore the site may potentially reach only about ten percent of all Internet users.<ref>Goldsmith, Belinda (April 29, 2009). "Many Twitters Are Quick Quitters: Study". Reuters. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved February 22, 2011.</ref> Noting how demographics of Twitter users differ from the average Americans, commentators have cautioned against media narratives that treat Twitter as representative of the population,<ref>Madrigal, Alexis C. (April 24, 2019). "Twitter Is Not America". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on March 20, 2021. Retrieved July 11, 2020.</ref> adding that only 10% of users Tweet actively, and that 90% of Twitter users have Tweeted no more than twice. In 2016, shareholders sued Twitter, alleging it "artificially inflated its stock price by misleading them about user engagement". The company announced on September 20, 2021, that it would pay $809.5 million to settle this class-action lawsuit.<ref>Hals, Tom; Balu, Nivedita (September 20, 2021). "Twitter seeks to settle 2016 class action lawsuit for $800 million". Denver Gazette. Archived from the original on September 21, 2021. Retrieved September 20, 2021.</ref>

User engagement

User engagement is usually measured by the number of likes, replies and reposts. A 2023 study showed that retweets are more likely to contain positive content and address larger audiences using the first-person pronoun "we". Replies, on the other hand, are more likely to contain negative content and address individuals using the second-person pronoun "you" and the third-person pronouns "he" or "she". While influencers with many followers tend to post positive messages, often using the word "love" when addressing larger audiences, users with less followers tend to engage in interpersonal conversations to provoke user engagement.<ref>Segev, Elad (April 2023). "Sharing Feelings and User Engagement on Twitter: It's All About Me and You". Social Media + Society. 9 (2). doi:10.1177/20563051231183430. S2CID 259304684.</ref>

Branding

The Twitter logo from September 14, 2010, to June 5, 2012, featuring the silhouette version of "Larry the Bird"

When it was known as Twitter, X was internationally identifiable by its signature bird logo, or the Twitter Bird. The original logo, which was simply the word Twitter, was in use from its launch in March 2006. It was accompanied by an image of a bird which was later discovered to be a piece of clip art created by the British graphic designer Simon Oxley.<ref name="nytimes logo">Rehak, Melanie (August 8, 2014). "Who Made That Twitter Bird?". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on August 9, 2014. Retrieved November 22, 2021.</ref> A new logo had to be redesigned by founder Biz Stone with help from designer Philip Pascuzzo, which resulted in a more cartoon-like bird in 2009. This version had been named "Larry the Bird" after Larry Bird of the NBA's Boston Celtics fame.<ref name="nytimes logo" /><ref>Freeman, Eric (August 2011). "Twitter's Logo Is Named After Larry Bird". Yahoo!Sports. Archived from the original on October 19, 2017. Retrieved March 1, 2012.</ref>

Within a year, the Larry the Bird logo underwent a redesign by Stone and Pascuzzo to eliminate the cartoon features, leaving a solid silhouette of Larry the Bird that was used from 2010 through 2012.<ref name="nytimes logo" /> In 2012, Douglas Bowman created a further simplified version of Larry the Bird, keeping the solid silhouette but making it more similar to a mountain bluebird.<ref>Halliday, Josh (June 7, 2012). "No flipping the bird! Twitter unveils strict usage guidelines for new logo". The Guardian. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved October 11, 2014.</ref> This logo was simply called the "Twitter Bird" and was used until July 2023.<ref name="nytimes logo" /><ref>Griggs, Brandon (June 7, 2012). "Twitter's bird logo gets a makeover". CNN. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved June 7, 2012.</ref><ref name="independent2">Cuthbertson, Anthony (July 24, 2023). "Twitter rebrands to X as part of Elon Musk's plan to create an 'everything app'". The Independent. Archived from the original on July 24, 2023. Retrieved July 24, 2023.</ref>

The official X profile, on the site, as of August 2023.

On July 22, 2023, Elon Musk announced that the service would be re-branded to "X",<ref>"Twitter logo change: Five facts about the now-dead Twitter blue bird". Storyboard18. July 24, 2023. Archived from the original on July 23, 2023. Retrieved July 24, 2023.</ref> in his pursuit of creating an "everything app".<ref name="independent2" /> Musk's X profile picture, along with the official X accounts, and the icons when browsing/signing up for the platform, were updated to reflect the new logo.<ref>Savov, Vlad (July 24, 2023). "Musk Declares Fan-Submitted 'X' New Twitter Logo in Abrupt Shift". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on July 24, 2023. Retrieved July 24, 2023.</ref> The logo (Template:Proper name) is a Unicode mathematical alphanumeric symbol for the letter "X" styled in double-strike bold.

Mike Proulx of The New York Times was critical of this change, saying the brand value has been "wiped out". Mike Carr says the new logo gives a Template:" 'Big Brother' tech overlord vibe" in contrast to the "cuddly" nature of the previous bird logo.<ref>Mac, Ryan; Hsu, Tiffany (July 24, 2023). "From Twitter to X: Elon Musk Begins Erasing an Iconic Internet Brand". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on July 31, 2023. Retrieved August 1, 2023.</ref> Users review bombed the newly rebranded "X" app on the iOS App Store on the day it was revealed, and Rolling Stone's Miles Klee said that the rebrand "reeks of desperation".<ref>Perez, Sarah (August 2, 2023). "App Store users are downrating Twitter's rebranding to X with 1-star reviews". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on October 3, 2023. Retrieved September 18, 2023.</ref><ref>Klee, Miles (July 24, 2023). "Twitter's 'X' Rebrand Is Elon Musk's Most Desperate Gimmick Yet". Rolling Stone. Retrieved September 18, 2023.</ref>

Finances

Revenue sources

On April 13, 2010, Twitter announced plans to offer paid advertising for companies that would be able to purchase "promoted tweets" to appear in selective search results on the Twitter website, similar to Google Adwords' advertising model.<ref>Arthur, Charles (April 13, 2010). "Twitter Unveils 'Promoted Tweets' Ad Plan – Twitter To Let Advertisers Pay for Tweets To Appear in Search Results". The Guardian. London. Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref><ref>Kimberley, Sara (April 13, 2010). "Twitter Debuts 'Promoted Tweets' Ad Platform". MediaWeek (U.K. edition). Retrieved February 5, 2011.</ref> Users' photos can generate royalty-free revenue for Twitter, and an agreement with World Entertainment News Network (WENN) was announced in May 2011.<ref>Laurent, Olivier (May 11, 2011). "Photo agency's CEO addresses TwitPic controversy". British Journal of Photography. London. Archived from the original on August 3, 2011. Retrieved August 17, 2011. The deal will give WENN exclusive rights to sell images posted on the TwitPic service.</ref> Twitter generated an estimated US$139.5 million in advertising sales during 2011.<ref>"Twitter Ad Revenues to Grow 210% to $139.5 Million in 2011". Retrieved May 9, 2022.</ref>

In June 2011, Twitter announced that it would offer small businesses a self-service advertising system.<ref>Wasserman, Todd (June 9, 2011). "Twitter Will Automate Ad-Buying by the End of the Year". Mashable.com. Retrieved November 14, 2011.</ref> The self-service advertising platform was launched in March 2012 to American Express card members and merchants in the U.S. on an invite-only basis.<ref name="Zach">Miners, Zach (April 30, 2013). "Twitter opens self-service ads to everyone". CMO. IDG Communications. Retrieved August 18, 2014.</ref> To continue their advertising campaign, Twitter announced on March 20, 2012, that promoted tweets would be introduced to mobile devices.<ref>"Twitter Rolls Out Promoted Tweets for Mobile"; Wasserman, Todd. March 20, 2012. mashable.com.</ref> In April 2013, Twitter announced that its Twitter Ads self-service platform, consisting of promoted tweets and promoted accounts, was available to all U.S. users without an invite.<ref name="Zach" />

On August 3, 2016, Twitter launched Instant Unlock Card, a new feature that encourages people to tweet about a brand in order to earn rewards and utilize the social media network's conversational ads. The format itself consists of images or videos with call-to-action buttons and a customizable hashtag.<ref>Swant, Mary. "Twitter Is Helping Brands Drive Conversations With Instant Unlock Cards". Adweek. Retrieved August 4, 2016.</ref>

Advertising bans

In October 2017, Twitter banned the Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik from advertising on their website following the conclusions of the U.S. national intelligence report the previous January that both Sputnik and RT had been used as vehicles for Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election.<ref>Dwoskin, Elizabeth (October 26, 2017). "Twitter bans Russian government-owned news sites RT and Sputnik from buying ads". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 25, 2020.</ref> Maria Zakharova for the Russian foreign ministry said the ban was a "gross violation" by the US of free speech.<ref>"Twitter Bans Ads From Russia Today and the Sputnik Network, Citing Election Meddling". Time. October 27, 2017. Archived from the original on October 27, 2017. Retrieved July 26, 2018.</ref>

In October 2019, Twitter announced it would stop running political ads on its ad platform effective November 22. This resulted from several spurious claims made by political ads. Company CEO Dorsey clarified that internet advertising had great power and was extremely effective for commercial advertisers, the power brings significant risks to politics where crucial decisions impact millions of lives.<ref>"Twitter Bans Political Ads on Its Platform, Pressure Up on Defiant Facebook". News18. October 31, 2019. Retrieved October 31, 2019.</ref> The company reversed the ban in August 2023,<ref>Paul, Kari (August 30, 2023). "Twitter allows US political candidates and parties to advertise in policy switch". The Guardian.</ref> publishing criteria governing political advertising which do not allow the promotion of false or misleading content, and requiring advertisers to comply with laws, with compliance being the sole responsibility of the advertiser.<ref>"Political Content". X for Business. Retrieved November 17, 2023.</ref>

In April 2022, Twitter announced a ban on "misleading" advertisements that go against "the scientific consensus on climate change". While the company did not give full guidelines, it stated that the decisions would be made with the help of "authoritative sources", including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.<ref>Calma, Justine (April 22, 2022). "Twitter bans 'misleading' ads about climate change". The Verge. Retrieved April 23, 2022.</ref>

Fines

Twitter, and X, has been fined several times for non-compliance with laws and regulations. On May 25, 2022, Twitter was fined $150 million by the Federal Trade Commission and the United States Department of Justice for collecting users' contact details and using them for targeted advertising.<ref>Milmo, Dan (May 26, 2022). "Twitter fined $150m for handing users' contact details to advertisers". The Guardian.</ref><ref>Zakrzewski, Cat (May 25, 2022). "Twitter to pay $150 million fine over deceptively collected data". Washington Post.</ref>

In August 2023, Twitter was fined US$350,000 for failing to meet two deadlines to comply with a U.S. Department of Justice search warrant for the account of former president Donald Trump.<ref>"Special counsel obtained search warrant for Donald Trump's Twitter account". Politico. August 9, 2023.</ref><ref>"Twitter Fined $350,000 in Secret DOJ Fight Over Trump Records". Time. August 9, 2023. Archived from the original on August 11, 2023. Retrieved August 11, 2023.</ref>

In October 2023, X was fined AU$610,500 by Australia's e-Safety Commission for failing to properly disclose information about how it polices child abuse content.<ref>Kaye, Ron (October 16, 2023). "Australia fines Musk's X platform $386,000 over anti-child abuse gaps". Reuters. Retrieved October 22, 2023.</ref><ref>Picciotto, Rebecca (October 15, 2023). "Australia fines X, formerly Twitter, for not answering questions on child abuse content". CNBC. Retrieved October 22, 2023.</ref>

As of 2023^[update] other fines were being considered.<ref>Johnson, Khari (November 23, 2022). "Elon Musk's Twitter Risks Big Fines From US Regulators". WIRED.</ref><ref>Anand, Vijay (April 10, 2023). "Twitter faces a whopping fine in Germany which is more than its net worth". CNBC TV.</ref>

Technology

Implementation

Twitter relies on open-source software.<ref name="zdnet vaughannichols 2012">Vaughan-Nichols, Steven (August 30, 2012). "How Twitter tweets your tweets with open source". ZDNet. Retrieved September 10, 2012.</ref> The Twitter Web interface uses the Ruby on Rails framework,<ref>Gomes, Lee (June 22, 2009). "The Pied Piper of Pay". Forbes. Retrieved June 16, 2009.</ref> deployed on a performance enhanced Ruby Enterprise Edition implementation of Ruby.<ref>King, Ryan (September 25, 2009). "Twitter on Ruby". Retrieved October 31, 2009. We recently migrated Twitter from a custom Ruby 1.8.6 build to a Ruby Enterprise Edition release candidate, courtesy of Phusion. Our primary motivation was the integration of Brent's MBARI patches, which increase memory stability.</ref>^{[needs update]}

In the early days of Twitter, tweets were stored in MySQL databases that were temporally sharded (large databases were split based on time of posting). After the huge volume of tweets coming in caused problems reading from and writing to these databases, the company decided that the system needed re-engineering.<ref name="Krikorian-2013">Krikorian, Raffi (August 16, 2013). "New Tweets per second record, and how!". Twitter Blogs. Archived from the original on August 22, 2013. Retrieved November 22, 2021.</ref>

From Spring 2007 to 2008, the messages were handled by a Ruby persistent queue server called Starling.<ref>Payne (January 16, 2008). "Announcing Starling". Twitter. Archived from the original on January 20, 2008. Retrieved January 11, 2009.</ref> Since 2009, implementation has been gradually replaced with software written in Scala.<ref>Venners, Bill (April 3, 2009). "Twitter on Scala". Artima Developer. Retrieved June 17, 2009.</ref> The switch from Ruby to Scala and the JVM has given Twitter a performance boost from 200 to 300 requests per second per host to around 10,000–20,000 requests per second per host. This boost was greater than the 10x improvement that Twitter's engineers envisioned when starting the switch. The continued development of Twitter has also involved a switch from monolithic development of a single app to an architecture where different services are built independently and joined through remote procedure calls.<ref name="Krikorian-2013" />

As of April 6, 2011, Twitter engineers confirmed that they had switched away from their Ruby on Rails search stack to a Java server they call Blender.<ref name="Twitter coding">"Twitter Search Is Now 3x Faster". April 6, 2011.</ref>

Individual tweets are registered under unique IDs called snowflakes, and geolocation data is added using 'Rockdove'. The URL shortener t.co then checks for a spam link and shortens the URL. Next, the tweets are stored in a MySQL database using Gizzard, and the user receives an acknowledgement that the tweets were sent. Tweets are then sent to search engines via the Firehose API. The process is managed by FlockDB and takes an average of 350 ms.<ref name="zdnet vaughannichols 2012" />

On August 16, 2013, Raffi Krikorian, Twitter's vice president of platform engineering, shared in a blog post that the company's infrastructure handled almost 143,000 tweets per second during that week, setting a new record. Krikorian explained that Twitter achieved this record by blending its homegrown and open source technologies.<ref name="Krikorian-2013" /><ref>Malik, Om (August 17, 2013). "How Twitter scaled its infrastructure to handle record tweet-per-second days". GIGAOM. Archived from the original on February 24, 2021. Retrieved August 17, 2013.</ref>

API and developer platform

Twitter was recognized for having one of the most open and powerful developer APIs of any major technology company.<ref>"Top 10 Web APIs – Bridging Today's Technology". WebDAM. January 11, 2012. Retrieved December 18, 2016.</ref> The service's API allows other web services and applications to integrate with Twitter.<ref>"Twitter API Wiki / FrontPage". Apiwiki.twitter.com. Retrieved September 18, 2010.</ref> Developer interest in Twitter began immediately following its launch, prompting the company to release the first version of its public API in September 2006.<ref>"Introducing the Twitter API | Twitter Blogs". blog.twitter.com. Archived from the original on December 23, 2016. Retrieved December 18, 2016.</ref> The API quickly became iconic as a reference implementation for public REST APIs and is widely cited in programming tutorials.<ref>"Ruby on Rails Tutorial (Rails 5)". Softcover.io. Retrieved December 18, 2016.</ref>

From 2006 until 2010, Twitter's developer platform experienced strong growth and a highly favorable reputation. Developers built upon the public API to create the first Twitter mobile phone clients as well as the first URL shortener. Between 2010 and 2012, however, Twitter made a number of decisions that were received unfavorably by the developer community.<ref>"Twitter's 10 Year Struggle with Developer Relations | Nordic APIs |". Nordic APIs. March 23, 2016. Retrieved December 18, 2016.</ref> In 2010, Twitter mandated that all developers adopt OAuth authentication with just 9 weeks of notice.<ref>Parr, Ben (April 25, 2010). "Twitter Launches Countdown to OAuthcalypse". Mashable. Retrieved December 18, 2016.</ref> Later that year, Twitter launched its own URL shortener, in direct competition with some of its most well-known third-party developers.<ref>"Twitter to launch URL shortener and may block TinyURL and bit.ly". ComputerWeekly. Retrieved December 18, 2016.</ref> And in 2012, Twitter introduced stricter usage limits for its API, "completely crippling" some developers.<ref>Streams, Kimber (November 11, 2012). "Tweetro says it's 'completely crippled' by Twitter's strict 100,000 user token limit". The Verge. Retrieved December 18, 2016.</ref><ref>Wauters, Robin (August 17, 2012). "Twitter API Changes Set Maximum User Cap for 3rd Parties". Thenextweb.com. Retrieved May 9, 2013.</ref> While these moves successfully increased the stability and security of the service, they were broadly perceived as hostile to developers, causing them to lose trust in the platform.<ref>Ha, Anthony (August 16, 2012). "Twitter Handcuffs Client Apps With New API Changes". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 18, 2016.</ref>

In July 2020, Twitter released version 2.0 of the public API<ref>"Twitter introduces a new, fully rebuilt developer API, launching next week". TechCrunch. July 16, 2020. Retrieved April 28, 2022.</ref> and began showcasing Twitter apps made by third-party developers on its Twitter Toolbox section in April 2022.<ref>"Twitter wants to win back developer trus". TechCrunch. April 21, 2022. Retrieved April 28, 2022.</ref>

In January 2023, Twitter ended third party access to its APIs, forcing all third party Twitter clients to shut down.<ref>"RIP Third-Party Twitter Clients". PCMag. Retrieved April 5, 2023.</ref> This was controversial among the developer community, as many third-party apps predated the company's official apps, and the change was not announced beforehand. Twitterrific's Sean Heber confirmed in a blog post that the 16-year-old app has been discontinued. "We are sorry to say that the app's sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter – a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer."<ref>"Twitterrific: End of an Era". Iconfactory: The Breakroom. Retrieved April 5, 2023.</ref>

In February 2023, Twitter announced it would be ending free access to Twitter API, and began offering paid tier plans with a more limited access.<ref>"Twitter is shutting down its free API, here's what's going to break". Engadget. February 8, 2023. Retrieved April 5, 2023.</ref>

Innovators patent agreement

On April 17, 2012, Twitter announced it would implement an "Innovators Patent Agreement" which would obligate Twitter to only use its patents for defensive purposes.^[clarify]<ref>O'Brien, Terrence (April 17, 2012). "Twitter introduces Innovators Patent Agreement, vows to not abuse patent system". Engadget. AOL. Retrieved August 11, 2012.</ref>

Open source

Twitter has a history of both using and releasing open-source software while overcoming technical challenges of their service.<ref>"Twitter / OpenSource". Twitter.com. Archived from the original on April 15, 2013. Retrieved April 18, 2013.</ref> A page in their developer documentation thanks dozens of open-source projects which they have used, from revision control software like Git to programming languages such as Ruby and Scala.<ref>"Open Source Thanks". Twitter. Archived from the original on April 15, 2013. Retrieved April 18, 2013.</ref> Software released as open source by the company includes the Gizzard Scala framework for creating distributed datastores, the distributed graph database FlockDB, the Finagle library for building asynchronous RPC servers and clients, the TwUI user interface framework for iOS, and the Bower client-side package manager.<ref>"Open Source". Twitter. Retrieved January 4, 2017.</ref> The popular Bootstrap frontend framework was also started at Twitter and is 10th most popular repository on GitHub.<ref>"Search: Stars>1". GitHub. Retrieved February 27, 2020.</ref>

On March 31, 2023, Twitter released the source code for Twitter's recommendation algorithm,<ref>"Source code for Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm". GitHub. March 31, 2023. Retrieved April 1, 2023.</ref> which determines what tweets show up on the user's personal timeline, to GitHub. According to Twitter's blog post: "We believe that we have a responsibility, as the town square of the internet, to make our platform transparent. So today we are taking the first step in a new era of transparency and opening much of our source code to the global community."<ref>"A new era of transparency for Twitter". Twitter blog. March 31, 2023. Retrieved April 1, 2023.</ref> CEO Elon Musk had been promising the move for a while — on March 24, 2022, before he owned the site, he polled his followers about whether Twitter's algorithm should be open source, and around 83 percent of the responses said "yes". In February, he promised it would happen within a week before pushing back the deadline to March 31 earlier this month.<ref>Castro, Alex (March 31, 2023). "Twitter takes its algorithm 'open-source,' as Elon Musk promised". The Verge. Retrieved April 1, 2023.</ref>

Also in March 2023, Twitter suffered a security attack which resulted in proprietary code being released. Twitter then had the source code removed.<ref>"Twitter says portions of source code leaked online | CNN Business". March 27, 2023.</ref>

Interface

Twitter introduced the first major redesign of its user interface in September 2010, adopting a dual-pane layout with a navigation bar along the top of the screen, and an increased focus on the inline embedding of multimedia content. Critics considered the redesign an attempt to emulate features and experiences found in mobile apps and third-party Twitter clients.<ref>"A Brief History Of Twitter's Many Redesigns". Adweek.com. April 26, 2014. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref><ref>Calore, Michael (September 16, 2010). "Take a Tour of the New Twitter". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref><ref>Ostrow, Adam. "Here Comes the New Twitter.com". Mashable. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref><ref>Grove, Jennifer Van (September 15, 2010). "The New Twitter Is an Attack on All Desktop Apps". Mashable. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref>

The new layout was revised in 2011 with a focus on continuity with the web and mobile versions, introducing "Connect" (interactions with other users such as replies) and "Discover" (further information regarding trending topics and news headlines) tabs, an updated profile design, and moving all content to the right pane (leaving the left pane dedicated to functions and the trending topics list).<ref>Houston, Thomas (December 8, 2011). "Twitter app and website redesign: hands-on pictures and video". The Verge. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref> In March 2012, Twitter became available in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu, the first right-to-left language versions of the site.<ref>"Twitter Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu version launch". BBC News. March 7, 2012. Retrieved March 7, 2012.</ref> In 2023 the Twitter Web site listed 34 languages supported by Twitter.com.<ref>"Supported languages and browsers". Twitter Developer Platform. June 30, 2020. Retrieved November 17, 2023.</ref>

In September 2012, a new layout for profiles was introduced, with larger "covers" that could be customized with a custom header image, and a display of the user's recent photos posted.<ref>O'Carroll, Lisa (September 18, 2012). "Twitter redesign makes more of photos". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref> The "Discover" tab was discontinued in April 2015,<ref>Popper, Ben (April 8, 2015). "Twitter is killing off its Discover tab". The Verge. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref> and was succeeded on the mobile app by an "Explore" tab—which features trending topics and moments.<ref>Newton, Casey (January 26, 2017). "Twitter replaces the Moments tab with Explore". The Verge. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref>

In September 2018, Twitter began to migrate selected web users to its progressive web app (based on its Twitter Lite experience for mobile web), reducing the interface to two columns. Migrations to this iteration of Twitter increased in April 2019, with some users receiving it with a modified layout.<ref>Musil, Steven. "Twitter tests new desktop layouts". CNET. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref><ref>Bright, Peter (September 6, 2018). "Progressive Web Apps moving mainstream as Twitter makes its mobile site the main one". Ars Technica. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref>

In July 2019, Twitter officially released this redesign, with no further option to opt-out while logged in. It is designed to further-unify Twitter's user experience between the web and mobile application versions, adopting a three-column layout with a sidebar containing links to common areas (including "Explore" that has been merged with the search page) which previously appeared in a horizontal top bar, profile elements such as picture and header images and biography texts merged into the same column as the timeline, and features from the mobile version (such as multi-account support, and an opt-out for the "top tweets" mode on the timeline).<ref>Gallagher, Sean (July 15, 2019). "Twitter is changing Twitter.com to be more like mobile app". Ars Technica. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref><ref>Lee, Dami (July 15, 2019). "Twitter desktop redesign adopts some of its mobile app's best features". The Verge. Retrieved July 17, 2019.</ref>

Security

In response to early Twitter security breaches, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought charges against the service; the charges were settled on June 24, 2010. This was the first time the FTC had taken action against a social network for security lapses. The settlement requires Twitter to take a number of steps to secure users' private information, including maintenance of a "comprehensive information security program" to be independently audited biannually.<ref>Gonsalves, Antone (June 25, 2010). "Twitter, Feds Settle Security Charges – Twitter Must Establish and Maintain a 'Comprehensive Information Security Program' and Allow Third-Party Review of the Program Biannually for the 10 Years". InformationWeek. Archived from the original on October 23, 2010. Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref>

After a number of high-profile hacks of official accounts, including those of the Associated Press and The Guardian,<ref>"Twitter Warns news Organisations Amid Syrian Hacking Attacks". Descrier. April 30, 2013. Retrieved April 30, 2013.</ref> in April 2013, Twitter announced a two-factor login verification as an added measure against hacking.<ref>Rodriguez, Salvador (May 23, 2013). "Twitter adds two-step verification option to help fend off hackers". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 10, 2013.</ref>

On July 15, 2020, a major hack of Twitter affected 130 high-profile accounts, both verified and unverified ones such as Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk; the hack allowed bitcoin scammers to send tweets via the compromised accounts that asked the followers to send bitcoin to a given public address, with the promise to double their money.<ref name="Statt">Statt, Nick (July 15, 2020). "Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Apple, and others hacked in unprecedented Twitter attack". The Verge. Retrieved July 15, 2020.</ref> Within a few hours, Twitter disabled tweeting and reset passwords from all verified accounts.<ref name="Statt" /> Analysis of the event revealed that the scammers had used social engineering to obtain credentials from Twitter employees to access an administration tool used by Twitter to view and change these accounts' personal details as to gain access as part of a "smash and grab" attempt to make money quickly, with an estimated Template:USD in bitcoin deposited in various accounts before Twitter intervened.<ref>Conger, Kate; Popper, Nathaniel (July 17, 2020). "Hackers Tell the Story of the Twitter Attack From the Inside". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 17, 2020. Retrieved July 17, 2020.</ref> Several law enforcement entities including the FBI launched investigations into the attack.<ref>McMillan, Robert; Volz, Dustin (July 19, 2020). "FBI Investigates Twitter Hack Amid Broader Concerns About Platform's Security". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 7, 2020.</ref>

On August 5, 2022, Twitter disclosed that a bug introduced in a June 2021 update to the service allowed threat actors to link email addresses and phone numbers to twitter user's accounts.<ref>"Twitter confirms zero-day used to expose data of 5.4 million accounts". BleepingComputer. Retrieved August 11, 2022.</ref><ref>"Twitter Confirms Data Breach That Exposed Data Of 5.4 Million Users; Attackers May Still Have Data". News18. August 8, 2022. Retrieved August 11, 2022.</ref> The bug was reported through Twitter's bug bounty program in January 2022 and subsequently fixed. While Twitter originally believed no one had taken advantage of the vulnerability, it was later revealed that a user on the online hacking forum Breached Forums had used the vulnerability to compile a list of over 5.4 million user profiles, which they offered to sell for $30,000.<ref>Paganini, Pierluigi (August 5, 2022). "Twitter confirms zero-day used to access data of 5.4 million accounts". Security Affairs. Retrieved August 11, 2022.</ref><ref>Carter, Dylan. "Twitter admits to data breach exposing contact info for 5.4 million accounts". www.brusselstimes.com. The Brussels Times. Retrieved August 11, 2022.</ref> The information compiled by the hacker includes user's screen names, location and email addresses which could be utilised in phishing attacks or used to deanonymize accounts running under pseudonyms.

Outages

File:Failwhale.png

The Twitter fail whale error message

During an outage, Twitter users were at one time shown the "fail whale" error message image created by Yiying Lu,<ref>Walker, Rob (February 15, 2009). "Consumed – Fail Whale". The New York Times Magazine. p. 17. Retrieved February 15, 2009.Template:Registration required</ref> illustrating eight orange birds using a net to hoist a whale from the ocean captioned "Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again."<ref>Whyte, Murray (June 1, 2008). "Tweet, Tweet – There's Been an Earthquake". Toronto Star. Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref> Web designer and Twitter user Jen Simmons was the first to coin the term "fail whale" in a September 2007 tweet.<ref>"La vera storia della balena di Twitter" [The real story of the Twitter whale]. La Stampa (in italiano). January 24, 2015. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2019.</ref><ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref> In a November 2013 Wired interview Chris Fry, VP of Engineering at that time, noted that the company had taken the "fail whale" out of production as the platform was now more stable.<ref>"Killing the Fail Whale With Twitter's Christopher Fry". Wired. November 25, 2013. Retrieved May 4, 2018.</ref> Twitter had approximately ninety-eight percent uptime in 2007 (or about six full days of downtime).<ref>"Twitter Growing Pains Cause Lots of Downtime in 2007". Royal Pingdom (blog of Pingdom). December 19, 2007. Archived from the original on December 29, 2010. Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref> The downtime was particularly noticeable during events popular with the technology industry such as the 2008 Macworld Conference & Expo keynote address.<ref>Dorsey, Jack (January 15, 2008). "MacWorld". Twitter Blog (blog of Twitter). Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref><ref name="downtime4">Kuramoto, Jake (January 15, 2008). "MacWorld Brings Twitter to its Knees". Oracle AppsLab. Archived from the original on July 16, 2011. Retrieved May 7, 2008.</ref>

User accounts

Verified accounts

In June 2009, after being criticized by Kanye West and sued by Tony La Russa over unauthorized accounts run by impersonators, the company launched their "Verified Accounts" program.<ref>Stone, Biz (June 6, 2009). "Not Playing Ball". Twitter.</ref><ref name="verifiedhistory">Kanalley, Craig (March 12, 2013). "Why Twitter Verifies Users: The History Behind the Blue Checkmark". Huffington Post. Retrieved June 9, 2014.</ref> Twitter stated that an account with a "blue tick" verification badge indicates "we've been in contact with the person or entity the account is representing and verified that it is approved".<ref name="verifiedlaunch">Cashmore, Pete (June 11, 2009). "Twitter Launches Verified Accounts". Mashable. Retrieved June 9, 2014.</ref> In July 2016, Twitter announced a public application process to grant verified status to an account "if it is determined to be of public interest" and that verification "does not imply an endorsement".<ref>"About verified accounts". Archived from the original on July 20, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)</ref><ref>"Announcing an Application Process for Verified Accounts". Twitter. July 19, 2016.</ref><ref>Burgess, Matt (July 20, 2016). "Twitter opens verification to all". Wired. Retrieved September 16, 2016.</ref> Verified status allows access to some features unavailable to other users, such as only seeing mentions from other verified accounts.<ref>Wagner, Kurt (September 12, 2013). "Twitter Unveils Exclusive Feature For Verified Users". Mashable. Retrieved June 9, 2014.</ref>

In November 2020, Twitter announced a relaunch of its verification system in 2021. According to the new policy, Twitter verifies six different types of accounts; for three of them (companies, brands, and influential individuals like activists), the existence of a Wikipedia page will be one criterion for showing that the account has "Off Twitter Notability".<ref>Harrison, Stephen (December 4, 2020). "Twitter Wants to Use Wikipedia to Help Determine Who Gets a Blue Checkmark". Slate Magazine. Retrieved December 4, 2020.</ref> Twitter states that it will re-open public verification applications at some point in "early 2021".<ref>Statt, Nick (December 17, 2020). "Twitter is launching its new verification policy on January 20th". The Verge. Retrieved February 19, 2021.</ref>

In October 2022, after the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, it was reported that verification would instead be included in the paid Twitter Blue service, and that existing verified accounts would lose their status if they do not subscribe.<ref>Heath, Alex (October 31, 2022). "Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification". The Verge. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref> On November 1, Musk confirmed that verification would be included in Blue in the future, dismissing the existing verification system as a "lords & peasants system".<ref name="Roth-2022" /><ref name="Peters-2022" /><ref name="Roth-2022a" /> Following concerns over the possibility of impersonation, Twitter subsequently reimplemented a second "Official" marker, consisting of a grey tick and "Official" text displayed under the username, for high-profile accounts of "government and commercial entities".<ref>Sato, Mia (November 9, 2022). "Twitter's new gray "official" checks are rolling out to some high-profile accounts". The Verge. Retrieved November 9, 2022.</ref><ref>Lopatto, Elizabeth (November 11, 2022). "Twitter 'Official' gray check mark returns, now that 'Verified' is meaningless". The Verge. Retrieved November 18, 2022.</ref>

In December 2022, the "Official" text was replaced by a gold checkmark for organizations, as well as a grey checkmark for government and multilateral accounts.<ref name="Schroeder-2023">"Twitter now lets businesses handle their employees' blue ticks, for a hefty price". Mashable. March 31, 2023. Retrieved July 24, 2023.</ref><ref name="Wiggers-2022">Wiggers, Kyle (December 12, 2022). "Twitter launches Blue for Business, grants gold checkmarks to 'corporate entities'". TechCrunch. Retrieved July 24, 2023.</ref>

In March 2023, the gold checkmark was made available for organizations to purchase through the Verified Organizations program (formerly called Twitter Blue for Business).<ref name="Schroeder-2023" /><ref name="Wiggers-2022" />

Privacy

Tweets are public, but users can also send private "direct messages".<ref name=Rushe /> Information about who has chosen to follow an account and who a user has chosen to follow is also public, though accounts can be changed to "protected" which limits this information (and all tweets) to approved followers.<ref>"How to Hide Your Followers & Who You Are Following on Twitter | The Classroom | Synonym". Classroom.synonym.com. November 9, 2015. Retrieved December 7, 2015.</ref> Twitter collects personally identifiable information about its users and shares it with third parties as specified in its privacy policy. The service also reserves the right to sell this information as an asset if the company changes hands.<ref>"Twitter Privacy Policy". Twitter. May 14, 2007. Archived from the original on June 25, 2009. Retrieved March 11, 2009.</ref> Advertisers can target users based on their history of tweets and may quote tweets in ads<ref>Hansell, Saul (July 16, 2009). "Advertisers Are Watching Your Every Tweet". The New York Times. Retrieved July 17, 2009.</ref> directed specifically to the user.

Twitter launched the beta version of their "Verified Accounts" service on June 11, 2009, allowing people with public profiles to announce their account name. The profile pages of these accounts display a badge indicating their status.<ref>McCarthy, Caroline (June 12, 2009). "Twitter Power Players Get Shiny 'Verified' Badges". CNET. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on May 3, 2012. Retrieved February 23, 2011.</ref>

On December 14, 2010, the United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena directing Twitter to provide information for accounts registered to or associated with WikiLeaks.<ref>"Twitter Subpoena" (PDF). Salon.com. January 17, 2009. Retrieved January 10, 2011.</ref> Twitter decided to notify its users and said in a statement, "... it's our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so."<ref name="Rushe">Rushe, Dominic (January 8, 2011). "Icelandic MP Fights US Demand for Her Twitter Account Details". The Guardian. London. Retrieved January 10, 2011.</ref>

In May 2011, a claimant known as "CTB" in the case of CTB v Twitter Inc. took action against Twitter at the High Court of Justice of England and Wales,<ref>"Twitter Inc., Unknown Posters Sued by Athlete Known as 'CTB' at U.K. Court" bloomberg.com May 20, 2011</ref> requesting that the company release details of account holders. This followed gossip posted on Twitter about professional footballer Ryan Giggs's private life. This led to the 2011 British privacy injunctions controversy and the "super-injunction".<ref>"Twitter users served with privacy injunction". Politics.co.uk. Archived from the original on May 23, 2011. Retrieved May 22, 2011.</ref> Tony Wang, the head of Twitter in Europe, said that people who do "bad things" on the site would need to defend themselves under the laws of their own jurisdiction in the event of controversy and that the site would hand over information about users to the authorities when it was legally required to do so.<ref name="wang">"Twitter's European boss Tony Wang gives legal warning". BBC News. UK. May 25, 2011. Retrieved May 25, 2011.</ref> He also suggested that Twitter would accede to a UK court order to divulge names of users responsible for "illegal activity" on the site.<ref name="independent">Smith, Lewis (May 26, 2011). "Twitter chief hints he may have to divulge users' names". The Independent. UK. Retrieved December 13, 2011.</ref>

Twitter acquired Dasient, a startup that offers malware protection for businesses, in January 2012. Twitter announced plans to use Dasient to help remove hateful advertisers on the website.<ref>"Twitter Buys Dasient Security Startup To Combat Spam". The Huffington Post. January 24, 2012.</ref> Twitter also offered a feature which would allow tweets to be removed selectively by country, before deleted tweets used to be removed in all countries.<ref name="BBC_censor">"Twitter to selectively 'censor' tweets by country". BBC News. January 27, 2012.</ref><ref>"Twitter Blog – Tweets still must flow" January 26, 2012. Retrieved January 27, 2012.</ref> The first use of the policy was to block the account of German neo-Nazi group Besseres Hannover on October 18, 2012.<ref>Kulish, Nicholas (October 18, 2012). "Twitter Blocks Germans' Access to Neo-Nazi Group". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 18, 2012. Retrieved May 5, 2017.</ref> The policy was used again the following day to remove anti-Semitic French tweets with the hashtag #unbonjuif ("a good Jew").<ref>"Twitter removes French anti-Semitic tweets". BBC News. BBC. October 19, 2012. Retrieved May 5, 2017.</ref>

Followed the sharing of images showing the killing of American journalist James Foley in 2014, Twitter said that in certain cases it would delete pictures of people who had died after requests from family members and "authorized individuals".<ref>"Twitter Is Trying to Block Images of James Foley's Death". Yahoo! Tech. August 20, 2014. Retrieved September 6, 2014.</ref><ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref>

In 2015, following updated terms of service and privacy policy, Twitter users outside the United States were legally served by the Ireland-based Twitter International Company instead of Twitter, Inc. The change made these users subject to Irish and European Union data protection laws<ref name="irishtimes-twitterint">"Ireland to become privacy regulator for 300m Twitter users". Irish Times. Retrieved May 12, 2015.</ref>

On April 8, 2020, Twitter announced that users outside of the European Economic Area or United Kingdom (thus subject to GDPR) will no longer be allowed to opt out of sharing "mobile app advertising measurements" to Twitter third-party partners.<ref>Kastrenakes, Jacob (April 8, 2020). "Twitter notifies users that it's now sharing more data with advertisers". The Verge. Retrieved April 9, 2020.</ref>

On October 9, 2020, Twitter took additional steps to counter misleading campaigns ahead of the 2020 US Election. Twitter's new temporary update encouraged users to "add their own commentary" before retweeting a tweet, by making 'quoting tweet' a mandatory feature instead of optional. The social network giant aimed at generating context and encouraging the circulation of more thoughtful content.<ref>"Twitter is fighting election chaos by urging users to quote tweet instead of retweet". The Verge. October 9, 2020. Retrieved October 9, 2020.</ref> After limited results, the company ended this experiment in December 2020.<ref>Bell, K. (December 17, 2020). "Retweets are back to normal as Twitter ends its quote tweet experiment". Engadget. Retrieved March 20, 2022.</ref>

On May 25, 2022, Twitter was fined $150 million for collecting users' phone numbers and email addresses used for security and using them for targeted advertising, required to notify its users, and banned from profiting from 'deceptively collected data'.<ref>Milmo, Dan (May 26, 2022). "Twitter fined $150m for handing users' contact details to advertisers". The Guardian. Retrieved May 27, 2022.</ref> The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice stated that Twitter violated a 2011 agreement to not use personal security data for targeted advertising.

Harassment

In August 2013, Twitter announced plans to introduce a "report abuse" button for all versions of the site following uproar, including a petition with 100,000 signatures, over Tweets that included rape and death threats to historian Mary Beard, feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and the member of parliament Stella Creasy.<ref>"Twitter's Tony Wang issues apology to abuse victims", BBC News, August 3, 2013. Retrieved August 3, 2013.</ref><ref>"Of Pride, Prejudice and Harassment on Twitter" The New York Times, August 3, 2013. Retrieved August 3, 2013.</ref><ref>"Twitter updates its rules for users, after uproar over rape, bomb threats", CNET, August 3, 2013. Retrieved August 3, 2013.</ref> Twitter announced new reporting and blocking policies in December 2014,<ref>"Twitter announces sweeping update to reporting, blocking tools". Ars Technica. December 2, 2014.</ref><ref>"Building a safer Twitter". blog.twitter.com. Retrieved July 30, 2019.</ref><ref>"Twitter unveils new tools to fight harassment". CBS News.</ref><ref>"Twitter Gives Harassed Users a Little Ammo". www.technewsworld.com. December 4, 2014. Retrieved July 30, 2019.</ref> including a blocking mechanism devised by Randi Harper, a target of GamerGate.<ref>Saleem, Fahad (December 4, 2014). "Twitter Inc (TWTR) Could Use Gamergate Autoblocker Model To Block Millions of Fake Accounts?". TechInsider.</ref><ref>"Blocked on Twitter: Software's limits in the fight against online hate". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. December 4, 2014.</ref><ref>Wofford, Taylor (November 29, 2014). "One Woman's New Tool to Stop Gamergate Harassment on Twitter". Newsweek. Retrieved December 6, 2014.</ref> In February 2015, CEO Dick Costolo said he was 'frankly ashamed' at how poorly Twitter handled trolling and abuse, and admitted Twitter had lost users as a result.<ref>Tiku, Nitasha (February 5, 2015). "Twitter CEO: 'We suck at dealing with abuse'". The Verge. Retrieved February 5, 2015.</ref>

As per a research study conducted by IT for Change on abuse and misogynistic trolling on Twitter directed at Indian women in public-political life, women perceived to be ideologically left-leaning, dissenters, Muslim women, political dissenters, and political commentators and women from opposition parties received a disproportionate amount of abusive and hateful messages on Twitter.<ref>"Profitable Provocations" (PDF). IT for Change. July 2022. Retrieved July 4, 2023.</ref>

In 2016, Twitter announced the creation of the Twitter Trust & Safety Council to help "ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter". The council's inaugural members included 50 organizations and individuals.<ref>Twitter's corporate blog, "Announcing the Twitter Trust & Safety Council"</ref> The announcement of Twitter's "Trust & Safety Council" was met with objection from parts of its userbase.<ref>Siegfried, Evan (August 23, 2016). GOP GPS. Skyhorse. ISBN 9781510717336. Retrieved November 12, 2017.</ref><ref>Albright, Dann (February 29, 2016). "Is Twitter's Trust & Safety Council a Front for Censorship?". Makeuseof. Retrieved November 12, 2017.</ref> Critics accused the member organizations of being heavily skewed towards "the restriction of hate speech" and a Reason article expressed concern that "there's not a single uncompromising anti-censorship figure or group on the list".<ref>Puddephatt, Andrew (February 11, 2016). "Just Another 'Black Box'? First Thoughts on Twitter's Trust And Safety Council". CircleID. Retrieved November 12, 2017.</ref><ref>Soave, Robby (February 20, 2016). "Did Twitter's Orwellian 'Trust and Safety' Council Get Robert Stacy McCain Banned?". Reason.com. Retrieved November 12, 2017.</ref>

Twitter banned 7,000 accounts and limited 150,000 more that had ties to QAnon on July 21, 2020. The bans and limits came after QAnon-related accounts began harassing other users through practices of swarming or brigading, coordinated attacks on these individuals through multiple accounts in the weeks prior. Those accounts limited by Twitter will not appear in searches nor be promoted in other Twitter functions. Twitter said they will continue to ban or limit accounts as necessary, with their support account stating "We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension".<ref>Collins, Ben; Zadrozny, Brandy (July 21, 2020). "Twitter bans 7,000 QAnon accounts, limits 150,000 others as part of broad crackdown". NBC News. Retrieved July 21, 2020.</ref>

In September 2021, Twitter began beta testing a feature called Safety Mode.<ref name="Peters-2021">Peters, Jay (September 1, 2021). "Twitter's new Safety Mode autoblocks abusive accounts". The Verge. Retrieved September 23, 2021.</ref> The functionality aims to limit unwelcome interactions through automated detection of negative engagements. If a user has Safety Mode enabled, authors of tweets that are identified by Twitter's technology as being harmful or exercising uninvited behavior will be temporarily unable to follow the account, send direct messages, or see tweets from the user with the enabled functionality during the temporary block period.<ref>Vasile, Cosmin (September 2, 2021). "Twitter launches Super Follows and Safety Mode". Phone Arena. Retrieved May 18, 2022.</ref> Jarrod Doherty, senior product manager at Twitter, stated that the technology in place within Safety Mode assesses existing relationships to prevent blocking accounts that the user frequently interacts with.<ref name="Peters-2021" />

Suspect and contested accounts

In January 2016, Twitter was sued by the widow of a U.S. man killed in the 2015 Amman shooting attack, claiming that allowing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to continually use the platform, including direct messages in particular,<ref name="verge-revisedisillawsuit">"Revived lawsuit says Twitter DMs are like handing ISIS a satellite phone". The Verge. August 30, 2016. Retrieved August 31, 2016.</ref> constituted the provision of material support to a terrorist organization, which is illegal under U.S. federal law. Twitter disputed the claim, stating that "violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear".<ref name="wsj-isistwitter">"Lawsuit Blames Twitter for ISIS Terrorist Attack". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 16, 2016.</ref><ref name="wsj-twitterliable">"Can Twitter Be Liable for ISIS Tweets?". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 20, 2016.</ref> The lawsuit was dismissed by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, upholding the Section 230 safe harbor, which dictates that the operators of an interactive computer service are not liable for the content published by its users.<ref name="wsj-twitterliable" /><ref name="verge-section230isis">"Twitter is not legally responsible for the rise of ISIS, rules California district court". The Verge. Vox Media. August 10, 2016. Retrieved August 11, 2016.</ref> The lawsuit was revised in August 2016, providing comparisons to other telecommunications devices.<ref name="verge-revisedisillawsuit" />

Twitter suspended multiple parody accounts that satirized Russian politics in May 2016, sparking protests and raising questions about where the company stands on freedom of speech.<ref>"Twitter Suspends Russian Satirical Accounts, Raising Free Speech Questions | News". The Moscow Times. June 2016. Retrieved June 2, 2016.</ref> Following public outcry, Twitter restored the accounts the next day without explaining why the accounts had been suspended.<ref>Times, The Moscow; network, part of the New East (June 2, 2016). "Twitter unblocks spoof Putin account after widespread criticism". The Guardian. Retrieved June 2, 2016.</ref> The same day, Twitter, along with Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, jointly agreed to a European Union code of conduct obligating them to review "[the] majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech" posted on their services within 24 hours.<ref name="guardian-euhatespeech">Hern, Alex (May 31, 2016). "Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft sign EU hate speech code". The Guardian. Retrieved June 7, 2016.</ref> In August 2016, Twitter stated that it had banned 235,000 accounts over the past six months, bringing the overall number of suspended accounts to 360,000 accounts in the past year, for violating policies banning use of the platform to promote extremism.<ref>Weise, Elizabeth (August 18, 2016). "Twitter suspends 235,000 accounts for extremism". USA Today. Retrieved November 20, 2016.</ref>

On May 10, 2019, Twitter announced that they suspended 166,513 accounts for promoting terrorism in the July–December 2018 period, stating there was a steady decrease in terrorist groups trying to use the platform owing to its "zero-tolerance policy enforcement". According to Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy and Trust and Safety Lead at Twitter, there was a reduction of 19% terror related tweets from the previous reporting period (January–June 2018).<ref>"Twitter suspended over 1.6 lakh terror-promoting accounts in six months". Economic Times. May 10, 2019. Archived from the original on May 31, 2019. Retrieved February 22, 2021.</ref><ref>Holt, Kris (May 10, 2019). "Twitter suspensions for promoting terrorism drop yet again". Engadget. Retrieved May 10, 2019.</ref><ref>Abril, Danielle (May 10, 2019). "Twitter's User-Reported Violations Jumped 19%—but the Number of Accounts Punished Dropped". Fortune.</ref><ref>"Twitter reports fall in extreme content". SBS News. May 10, 2019. Retrieved May 10, 2019.</ref><ref>"Twitter has suspended more than 166,000 accounts related to promotion of terrorism". Tech2. Firstpost. May 10, 2019. Retrieved May 10, 2019.</ref>

As of July 30, 2020, Twitter will block URLs in tweets that point to external websites that contain malicious content (such as malware and phishing content) as well or hate speech, speech encouraging violence, terrorism, child sexual exploitation, breaches of privacy, and other similar content that is already banned as part of the content of tweets on the site. Users that frequently point to such sites may have their accounts suspended. Twitter said this was to bring their policy in line to prevent users from bypassing their tweet content restrictions by simply linking to the banned content.<ref>Bell, Karissa (July 28, 2020). "Twitter will block links promoting hate speech and violence". Engadget. Retrieved July 28, 2020.</ref>

Following the onset of protests by Donald Trump's supporters across the US in January 2021, Twitter suspended more than 70,000 accounts, stating that they shared "harmful QAnon-associated content" at a large scale, and were "dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service". The rioters that broke into the U.S. Capitol included a large number of QAnon followers.<ref>"Twitter bans 70,000 QAnon accounts as conservatives report lost followers". The Verge. Retrieved January 12, 2020.</ref>

Malicious and fake accounts

Between January and late July 2017, Twitter had identified and shut down over 7,000 fake accounts created by Iranian influence operations.<ref>Timberg, Craig; Romm, Tony (July 25, 2019). "It's not just the Russians anymore as Iranians and others turn up disinformation efforts ahead of 2020 vote". The Washington Post.</ref>

In May 2018, in response to scrutiny over the misuse of Twitter by those seeking to maliciously influence elections, Twitter announced that it would partner with the nonprofit organization Ballotpedia to add special labels verifying the authenticity of political candidates running for election in the U.S.<ref>"Twitter to add labels to U.S. political candidates". CBS. May 23, 2018. Retrieved May 23, 2018.</ref><ref>Scola, Nancy (May 23, 2018). "Twitter to verify election candidates in the midterms". Politico. Retrieved May 23, 2018.</ref>

In December 2019, Twitter removed 5,929 accounts for violating their manipulation policies. The company investigated and attributed these accounts to a single state-run information operation, which originated in Saudi Arabia. The accounts were reported to be a part of a larger group of 88,000 accounts engaged in spammy behavior. However, Twitter did not disclose all of them as some could possibly be legitimate accounts taken over through hacking.<ref>"Twitter and Facebook remove accounts in interference crackdown". York Press. December 20, 2019. Retrieved December 20, 2019.</ref>

In March 2021, Twitter suspended around 3,500 fake accounts that were running a campaign to influence the American audience, after the US intelligence officials concluded that the assassination of The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was "approved" by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. These Saudi accounts were working in two languages, English and Arabic, to influence public opinion around the issue. Many accounts commented directly on the tweets of US-based media houses, including The Post, CNN, CBS News and The Los Angeles Times. Twitter was unable to identify the source of the influence campaign.<ref>"When U.S. blamed Saudi crown prince for role in Khashoggi killing, fake Twitter accounts went to war". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 7, 2021.</ref>

As of 2022^[update], the top four countries spreading state-linked Twitter misinformation are Russia, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.<ref name="aspi2022">"Understanding Global Disinformation and Information Operations: Insights from ASPI's new analytic website". Australian Strategic Policy Institute. March 30, 2022. Archived from the original on April 29, 2022.</ref>

X bots

An X bot is a computer program that can automatically post, repost, and follow other accounts. X's open application programming interface and the availability of cloud servers make it possible for X bots to exist within the social networking site.<ref>Dubbin, Rob. "The Rise Of Twitter Bots". The New Yorker. Retrieved May 15, 2014.</ref> Benign X bots may generate creative content and relevant product updates whereas malicious bots can make unpopular people seem popular, push irrelevant products on users and spread misinformation, spam or slander.<ref>Miners, Zach (May 6, 2014). "Bot or Not? Researchers make an app to sniff out bots on Twitter". PC World. Retrieved May 15, 2014.</ref> Bots amass significant influence and have been noted to sway elections, influence the stock market, public appeal, and attack governments.<ref>Urbina, Ian (August 10, 2013). "I Flirt and Tweet. Follow Me at No. Socialbot". The New York Times. Retrieved May 15, 2014.</ref> As of 2013^[update], Twitter said there were 20 million fake accounts on Twitter, representing less than 5% of active users.<ref>D'onfro, Jillian (October 4, 2013). "Twitter Admits 5% Of Its 'Users' Are Fake". Business Insider. Retrieved May 15, 2014.</ref> A 2020 estimate put the figure at 15% of all accounts or around 48 million accounts.<ref name=Rodriguez>Rodrıguez-Ruiz, Jorge; Mata-Sanchez, Javier Israel; Monroy, Raul; Loyola-Gonzalez, Octavio; Ĺopez-Cuevas, Armando (April 2020). "A one-class classification approach for bot detection on Twitter". Computers & Security. 91: 101715. doi:10.1016/j.cose.2020.101715. S2CID 212689495. Retrieved June 17, 2022.</ref>

Society

Usage

Template:Summarize

Protesters

X has been used for a variety of purposes in many industries and scenarios. For example, it has been used to organize protests, including the protests over the 2009 Moldovan election, the 2009 student protests in Austria, the 2009 Gaza–Israel conflict, the 2009 Iranian green revolution, the 2010 Toronto G20 protests, the 2010 Bolivarian Revolution, the 2010 Stuttgart21 protests in Germany, the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, 2011 England riots, the 2011 United States Occupy movement, the 2011 anti-austerity movement in Spain, the 2011 Aganaktismenoi movements in Greece, the 2011 demonstration in Rome, the 2011 Wisconsin labor protests, the 2012 Gaza–Israel conflict, the 2013 protests in Brazil, and the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey.<ref name="Buettner2016a">Buettner, Ricardo & Buettner, Katharina (2016). A Systematic Literature Review of Twitter Research from a Socio-Political Revolution Perspective. 49th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Kauai, Hawaii: IEEE. doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.4239.9442.</ref>

The service is also used as a form of civil disobedience: In 2010, users expressed outrage over the Twitter joke trial by copying a controversial joke about bombing an airport and attaching the hashtag #IAmSpartacus, a reference to the film Spartacus (1960) and a sign of solidarity and support to a man controversially prosecuted after posting a tweet joking about bombing an airport if they canceled his flight. #IAmSpartacus became the number one trending topic on Twitter worldwide.<ref>Siddique, Haroon (November 12, 2010). "#IAmSpartacus campaign explodes on Twitter in support of airport joker". The Guardian. Retrieved November 20, 2016.</ref> Another case of civil disobedience happened in the 2011 British privacy injunction debate, where several celebrities who had taken out anonymized injunctions were identified by thousands of users in protest to traditional journalism being censored.<ref>Gabbatt, Adam; Taylor, Matthew (May 22, 2011). "Scottish newspaper identifies injunction footballer". The Guardian. Retrieved May 22, 2011.</ref>

During the Arab Spring in early 2011, the number of hashtags mentioning the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt increased.<ref>"Twitter's influence on the Arab Spring". The Globe and Mail. August 19, 2011. Archived from the original on July 7, 2017. Retrieved November 20, 2016.</ref> A study by the Dubai School of Government found that only 0.26% of the Egyptian population, 0.1% of the Tunisian population and 0.04% of the Syrian population are active on Twitter.<ref>Fox, Zoe (June 8, 2012). "How the Arab World Uses Facebook and Twitter". Mashable. Retrieved November 20, 2016.</ref>

Governments

According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published in July 2014, the United Kingdom's GCHQ has a tool named BIRDSONG for "automated posting of Twitter updates", and a tool named BIRDSTRIKE for "Twitter monitoring and profile collection".<ref>"GCHQ leak lists UK cyber-spies' hacking tools". BBC News. July 15, 2014. Retrieved July 16, 2014.</ref><ref>"JTRIG Tools and Techniques". Retrieved July 16, 2014.</ref>

During the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, Twitter suspended a core group of 1,000 "fake" accounts and an associated network of 200,000 accounts for operating a disinformation campaign that was linked to the Chinese government. In their announcement, Twitter released two data sets detailing the core group's account activity.<ref>Kelly, Makena (August 19, 2019). "Facebook and Twitter uncover Chinese trolls spreading doubts about Hong Kong protests". The Verge. Retrieved August 28, 2019.</ref><ref>Inocencio, Ramy (August 20, 2019). "Hong Kong protests: Twitter and Facebook crack down on "deceptive" accounts linked to China". CBS News. Retrieved August 28, 2019.</ref><ref>"Information operations directed at Hong Kong". Twitter Blog. August 19, 2019.</ref> Geng Shuang, the spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, did not comment on the suspensions but suggested that the activity could be attributed to overseas Chinese citizens.<ref>"China cries foul over Facebook, Twitter block of fake accounts". Reuters. August 20, 2019. Retrieved August 28, 2019.</ref><ref>"China Resists Charge by Twitter, Facebook of Disinformation Effort". The Wall Street Journal. August 20, 2019. Retrieved August 28, 2019.</ref>

On June 12, 2020, Twitter suspended over 7,000 accounts from Turkey because those accounts were fake profiles, designed to support the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and were managed by a central authority. Turkey's communication director said that the decision was illogical, biased and politically motivated.<ref>"Ankara reacts to Twitter's move to suspend accounts". hurriyetdailynews. June 13, 2020.</ref> Turkey blocked access to Twitter twice, once after voice recordings appeared on Twitter in which Erdoğan ordered his son to stash away millions of dollars and another time for 12 hours in the aftermath of the earthquake of February 2023, when Erdoğan blamed the people of a disinformation campaign as they criticized the Government for their lack of help.<ref>Burga, Solcyre (February 15, 2023). "How Turkey's Earthquake Response Failed Its People". Time. Retrieved February 17, 2023.</ref>

In May 2021, Twitter labeled one of the tweets by Sambit Patra, a spokesman of the local ruling party BJP in India, as "manipulated media", leading to Twitter's offices in Delhi and Gurgaon being raided by the local police.<ref name=DelhiRaid>Singh, Manish (May 24, 2021). "Police in India visited Twitter offices over 'manipulated media' label". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 27, 2021.</ref> Twitter issued a statement, calling the police visit "a form of intimidation".<ref>Singh, Manish (May 27, 2021). "Twitter says concerned with India intimidation, requests 3 more months to comply with new IT rules". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 27, 2021.</ref> Later, the Indian government released a statement in July 2021 claiming Twitter has lost its liability protection concerning user-generated content. This was brought on by Twitter's failure to comply with the new IT rules introduced in 2021 with a filing stating that the company failed to appoint executives to govern user content on the platform.<ref>"Twitter loses immunity over user-generated content in India". Reuters. July 6, 2021. Retrieved July 6, 2021.</ref> Twitter stated to India's government in August 2021 that they have appointed permanent executives and staff to provide for compliance to these new IT rules.<ref>Trivedi, Upmanyu (August 6, 2021). "Twitter Says Has Appointed Officials to Comply With India Rules". Bloomberg News. Retrieved August 6, 2021.</ref>

Pornography

Twitter allows pornographic content as long as it is marked "sensitive" by uploaders, which puts it behind an interstice and hides it from minors.<ref>"Twitter's sensitive media policy | Twitter Help". help.twitter.com. Retrieved April 14, 2022.</ref> The "super-follow" feature is said to enable competition with the subscription site OnlyFans, used mainly by sex workers.<ref>"How Twitter is becoming more like OnlyFans - and what that means for users". The Independent. March 4, 2021. Retrieved April 14, 2022.</ref> Content filtering services for families and schools have noted that the company makes "it really easy to find" porn, and advise blocking the entire domain.<ref>Zapal, Haley (March 16, 2021). "Twitter Porn: Here's What Every Parent Needs to Know". Bark. Retrieved April 14, 2022.</ref> Many performers use Twitter's service to market and grow their porn businesses, attracting users to paywalled services like OnlyFans by distributing photos and short video clips as advertisements.

In April 2022, Twitter convened a "Red Team" for the project of ACM, "Adult Content Monetization", as it is known internally. Eventually the project was abandoned, because of the difficulty of implementing Real ID.<ref name="Newton-2022"/>

Child sexual exploitation

A February 2021 report from the company's Health team begins, "While the amount of CSE (child sexual exploitation) online has grown exponentially, Twitter's investment in technologies to detect and manage the growth has not."

Until February 2022, the only way for users to flag illegal content was to flag it as "sensitive media" — a broad category that left much of the worst material not prioritized for moderation. In a February report, employees wrote that Twitter along with other Tech Companies have "accelerated the pace of CSE content creation and distribution to a breaking point where manual detection, review, and investigations no longer scale" by allowing pornography and failing to invest in systems that could effectively monitor it. The working group made several recommendations, but they were not taken up and the group was disbanded.

As part of its efforts to monetize porn, Twitter held an internal investigation that reported in April 2022, "Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale."<ref name="Newton-2022">Newton, Casey (August 30, 2022). "How Twitter's child porn problem ruined its plans for an OnlyFans competitor". The Verge. Retrieved September 30, 2022.</ref>

John Doe et al. v. Twitter, a civil lawsuit filed in the 9th Circuit Court, alleges that Twitter benefited from sex trafficking and refused to remove the illegal tweets when first informed of them.<ref>"Twitter Faces Claim It Benefited From Child Sex Trafficking". news.bloomberglaw.com. Retrieved September 30, 2022.</ref><ref>"Doe v. Twitter, Inc., 555 F. Supp. 3d 889 (N.D. Cal. 2021), Court Opinion". www.bloomberglaw.com. Retrieved September 30, 2022.</ref> In an amicus brief filed in the case, the NCMEC said, "The children informed the company that they were minors, that they had been 'baited, harassed, and threatened' into making the videos, that they were victims of 'sex abuse' under investigation by law enforcement" but Twitter failed to remove the videos, "allowing them to be viewed by hundreds of thousands of the platform's users".<ref name="Newton-2022" />

Some major brands including Dyson, Mazda, Forbes, and PBS Kids suspended their marketing campaigns and pulled their ads from the platform, after an investigation into child porn on twitter showed that Twitter failed to suspend 70% of the accounts that shared or solicited the prohibited content. A brand president at Cole Haan said, "We're horrified ... either Twitter is going to fix this, or we'll fix it by any means we can, which includes not buying Twitter ads."<ref>Dang, Sheila; Paul, Katie (September 29, 2022). "Exclusive: Brands blast Twitter for ads next to child pornography accounts". Reuters. Retrieved September 30, 2022.</ref>

Impact

Template:Summarize section

On communication

In May 2008, The Wall Street Journal wrote that social networking services such as Twitter "elicit mixed feelings in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters. Fans say they are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel too connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they're having for dinner."<ref>Lavallee, Andrew (March 16, 2007). "Friends Swap Twitters, and Frustration – New Real-Time Messaging Services Overwhelm Some Users with Mundane Updates from Friends". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on March 14, 2015. Retrieved February 22, 2011.</ref> The following year, John C. Dvorak described Twitter as "the new CB radio".<ref>Dvorak, John C. (August 25, 2009). "Twitter Is the New CB Radio". PC Magazine.</ref>

In April 2023, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York City announced that it would no longer post real-time service updates on Twitter. The transportation system claimed that the platform cannot be trusted to provide consistent updates that riders need. According to an MTA spokesperson, this decision was made after it experienced two Application Programming Interface (API) interruptions over the previous two weeks. However, only the updates were discontinued and the MTA planned to continue to respond to riders' queries.<ref>"New York City's transportation system ending updates on Twitter, says platform is 'no longer reliable'". FOX News.</ref>

In 2023, Twitter introduced a paywall system that required businesses to pay for access to its platform. The payment scheme's upper limit amounts to an annual fee of up to $2.5 million for top-tier access. With the paywall implementation, public agencies issued numerous alerts about potential interruptions to transit and weather alerts. Shanifah Rieara, MTA Acting Chief Customer Officer, revealed that Twitter attempted to demand over $500,000 annually from MTA for platform access, which the latter declined. On May 4, 2023, Twitter backtracked its paywall system, allowing the free posting of automated tweets by verified government profiles. In light of Twitter's decision, MTA announced its resumption of posting automated alerts on the platform.<ref>"New York MTA resumes transit alerts on Twitter". CNN.</ref>

Emergency use

A practical use for Twitter's real-time functionality is as an effective de facto emergency communication system for breaking news. It was neither intended nor designed for high-performance communication, but the idea that it could be used for emergency communication was not lost on the creators, who knew that the service could have wide-reaching effects early on when the company used it to communicate during earthquakes.<ref>Mills, Alexander; Chen, Rui; Lee, JinKyu; Rao, H. Raghav (2009). "Web 2.0 Emergency Applications: How Useful Can Twitter Be for Emergency Response?" (PDF). Twitter for Emergency Management and Mitigation: 3. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 6, 2017. Retrieved November 20, 2016.</ref>

Another practical use that is being studied is Twitter's ability to track epidemics and how they spread.<ref>Jarvis, Brooke (March 4, 2013). "Twitter becomes a tool for tracking flu epidemics and other public health issues". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 21, 2016.</ref> Additionally Twitter serves as a real-time sensor for natural disasters such as bush fires and earthquakes.<ref>Power, Robert; Robinson, Bella; Ratcliffe, David (2013). "Finding Fires with Twitter" (PDF). Proceedings of Australasian Language Technology Association Workshop. Retrieved November 21, 2016.</ref><ref>Earle, Paul; Bowden, Daniel; Guy, Michelle (2011). "Twitter earthquake detection: earthquake monitoring in a social world". Annals of Geophysics. 54 (6). Retrieved November 21, 2016.</ref>

Education

Twitter has been adopted as a communication and learning tool in educational and research<ref>Grandjean, Martin (2016). "A social network analysis of Twitter: Mapping the digital humanities community". Cogent Arts & Humanities. 3 (1): 1171458. doi:10.1080/23311983.2016.1171458. S2CID 114999767.</ref> settings mostly in colleges and universities.<ref>Rankin, M. (2010). "Some general comments on the 'Twitter Experiment'"</ref><ref>Grosseck & Holotescu (2008). "Can we use Twitter for educational activities?" Archived May 18, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Proceedings of the 4th International Scientific Conference: eLearning and Software forEducation, Bucharest, Romania.</ref> It has been used as a backchannel to promote student interactions, especially in large-lecture courses.<ref>Elavsky, CM, Mislan, C & Elavsky, S (2011). When talking less is more: exploring outcomes of Twitter usage in the large-lecture hall. Learning, Media and Technology Volume 36, Issue 3.</ref> Research has found that using Twitter in college courses helps students communicate with each other and faculty, promotes informal learning, allows shy students a forum for increased participation, increases student engagement, and improves overall course grades.<ref>Junco, R., Heiberger, G., & Loken, E. (2011). "The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades". Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27(2), 119–132. Archived May 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine</ref><ref>Junco, R., Elavsky, C. M., Heiberger, G. (2012). "Putting Twitter to the test: assessing outcomes for student collaboration, engagement, and success". British Journal of Educational Technology. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01284.x Archived January 20, 2013, at the Wayback Machine</ref><ref>Ebner, Lienhardt, Rohs, & Meyer (2010). "Microblogs in Higher Education – A chance to facilitate informal and process-oriented learning?" Archived June 26, 2011, at the Wayback Machine Computers & Education, 55, 92–100.</ref>

Twitter has been an increasingly growing in the field of education, as an effective tool that can be used to encourage learning and idea, or knowledge sharing, in and outside the classroom.<ref name="Carrie-2015">Carrie, Ross; Maninger, Robert; LaPrairie, Kimberly; Sullivan, Sam (Spring 2015). "The Use of Twitter in the Creation of Educational Professional Learning Opportunities". Administrative Issues Journal: Connecting Education, Practice, and Research. 5: 55–76. doi:10.5929/2015.5.1.7. ISSN 2153-7615. Template:ERIC.</ref> By using or creating hashtags, students and educators are able to communicate under specific categories of their choice, to enhance and promote education. A broad example of a hashtag used in education is "edchat", to communicate with other teachers, and people using that hashtag. Once teachers find someone they want to talk to, they can either direct message the person, or narrow down the hashtag to make the topic of the conversation more specific using hashtags for scichat (science), engchat (English), sschat (social studies).<ref name="Carrie-2015" />

In a 2011 study, researchers found that young peoples use of Twitter helped to improve relationships with teachers, encourage interactive learning, and ultimately lead to high grades.<ref name="Carrie-2015" /> In the same study it was found that out of a group of 158 educators, 92% agreed that the reason they use Twitter is because of how user friendly it is,<ref name="Carrie-2015" /> another 86% agreed that they started and continue using Twitter because of how easy it is to learn, and finally,<ref name="Carrie-2015" /> 93% said they use Twitter because it is free. People found sifting through large amounts of data to be challenging; however, with the simple nature of Twitter, large amount of information became easily accessible.<ref name="Greenhow-2012">Greenhow, Christine; Gleason, Benjamin (October 3, 2012). "Twitteracy: Tweeting as a New Literacy Practice". The Educational Forum. 76 (4): 464–478. doi:10.1080/00131725.2012.709032. S2CID 145800002.</ref> Much of this simplicity comes from the use of the hashtag, and the intuitive nature of how Twitter as a microblogging site operates.<ref name="Greenhow-2012" /> These features help to promote education outside the classroom in a global setting where students and educators are easily able to create, connect, and share knowledge. This ultimately promotes growth and learning among students and educators, not just in the classroom, but virtually and around the world.

Public figures

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School, said that "the qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful."<ref>Template:Registration required Cohen, Noam (June 20, 2009). "Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned". The New York Times. Retrieved June 21, 2009.</ref> In that same vein, and with Sigmund Freud in mind, political communications expert Matthew Auer observed that well-crafted tweets by public figures often deliberately mix trivial and serious information so as to appeal to all three parts of the reader's personality: the id, ego, and superego.<ref>Auer, Matthew (2011). "The Policy Sciences of Social Media". Policy Studies Journal. 39 (4): 709–736. doi:10.1111/j.1541-0072.2011.00428.x. S2CID 153590593.</ref> The poets Mira Gonzalez and Tao Lin published a book titled Selected Tweets featuring selections of their tweets over some eight years.<ref>Escoria, Julia (June 8, 2015). "Mira Gonzalez And Tao Lin's Selected Tweets Is Deeper Than It Seems". The Fader. Retrieved January 6, 2021.</ref> The novelist Rick Moody wrote a short story for Electric Literature called "Some Contemporary Characters", composed entirely of tweets.<ref>Kurutz, Steven (December 1, 2009). "Rick Moody's Twitter Short Story Draws Long List of Complaints". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved May 19, 2012.</ref>

Many commentators have suggested that Twitter radically changed the format of reporting due to instant, short, and frequent communication.<ref>"The Impact of Twitter on Journalism | Off Book". PBS LearningMedia. Retrieved January 31, 2021.</ref><ref>Chamberlain, Craig. "How has Twitter changed news coverage?". news.illinois.edu. Retrieved January 31, 2021.</ref> According to The Atlantic writers Benjamin M. Reilly and Robinson Meyer, Twitter has an outsized impact on the public discourse and media. "Something happens on Twitter; celebrities, politicians and journalists talk about it, and it's circulated to a wider audience by Twitter's algorithms; journalists write about the dustup." This can lead to an argument on a Twitter feed looking like a "debate roiling the country... regular people are left with a confused, agitated view of our current political discourse".<ref>"Twitter Is Not as Important as Journalists Make It Seem". The Atlantic. February 12, 2020. Retrieved January 31, 2021.</ref> In a 2018 article in the Columbia Journalism Review, Matthew Ingram argued much the same about Twitter's "oversized role" and that it promotes immediacy over newsworthiness.<ref name="Ingram-2021">"Do journalists pay too much attention to Twitter?". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved January 31, 2021.</ref> In some cases, inauthentic and provocative tweets were taken up as common opinion in mainstream articles. Writers in several outlets unintentionally cited the opinions of Russian Internet Research Agency-affiliated accounts.<ref name="Ingram-2021" /><ref name="Luk">"Most major outlets have used Russian tweets as sources for partisan opinion: study". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved January 31, 2021.</ref>

World leaders

World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter's rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy, the use of Twitter to engage with foreign publics and their own citizens. US Ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul has been attributed as a pioneer of international Twitter diplomacy. He used Twitter after becoming ambassador in 2011, posting in English and Russian.<ref>Ländler, Mark (February 4, 2014). "In the Scripted World of Diplomacy, a Burst of Tweets". International New York Times. Retrieved April 28, 2014.</ref> On October 24, 2014, Queen Elizabeth II sent her first tweet to mark the opening of the London Science Museum's Information Age exhibition.<ref>Cellan-Jones, Rory (October 24, 2014). "Queen's first tweet". BBC News.</ref> A 2013 study by website Twiplomacy found that 153 of the 193 countries represented at the United Nations had established government Twitter accounts.<ref name="twiplomacy">"Twiplomacy Study 2013 – International Organisations". Twiplomacy.com. Retrieved April 27, 2014.</ref> The same study also found that those accounts amounted to 505 Twitter handles used by world leaders and their foreign ministers, with their tweets able to reach a combined audience of over 106 million followers.<ref name=twiplomacy />

According to an analysis of accounts, the heads of state of 125 countries and 139 other leading politicians have Twitter accounts that have between them sent more than 350,000 tweets and have almost 52 million followers. However, only 30 of these do their own tweeting, more than 80 do not subscribe to other politicians and many do not follow any accounts.<ref>John Heilprin Leaders all a twitter but few do own tweets The Advertiser July 28, 2012, Pg 64</ref>

Religion

As of October 2015^[update], more than twenty Roman Catholic cardinals managed active Twitter accounts,<ref>"A List of Cardinals on Twitter (October 2015)". sixfortyone.co.uk. Archived from the original on January 19, 2016. Retrieved October 12, 2015.</ref> nine of whom were cardinal electors for the 2013 Papal conclave.<ref>Newcomb, Alyssa (March 6, 2013). "Tweeting Cardinals Share Pre-Conclave Thoughts". ABC News. Retrieved September 24, 2013.</ref> Pope Benedict XVI's Twitter account was set up in 2012. As of April 2022^[update], his successor, Pope Francis, has 18.7 million followers of his Twitter account (@Pontifex).<ref>Sharkey, Linda (May 23, 2014). "The reason why the Pope has a Twitter and not a Facebook account". The Independent. Retrieved April 11, 2016.</ref>^{[needs update]}

Censorship and moderation

Twitter is banned completely in Russia,<ref>Sganga, Nicole (March 4, 2022). "Russia blocks Facebook and Twitter access". CBS News. Retrieved March 14, 2022.</ref> Iran, China and North Korea,<ref>"Religion, Twitter and freedom: A peaceful explosion". The Economist. May 27, 2015. Retrieved June 2, 2015.</ref> and has been intermittently blocked in numerous countries including Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Turkey, Venezuela and Turkmenistan on different bases.<ref>Branigan, Tania. "China blocks Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Hotmail ahead of Tiananmen anniversary". The Guardian. London.</ref><ref>"Iraq Crisis: Twitter, Google, YouTube and Facebook Blocked by Government to Stop Isis Plotting". International Business Times UK. June 13, 2014.</ref><ref name="guardian-4jun2021">"Nigeria suspends Twitter after president's tweet was deleted". The Guardian. Reuters. June 4, 2021. Retrieved June 4, 2021.</ref><ref>"Challenging the access ban in Turkey". twitter.com.</ref><ref>Laya, Patricia (February 15, 2014). "Venezuelans Blocked on Twitter as Opposition Protests Mount". Bloomberg.com.</ref><ref>BBC Monitoring (February 26, 2018). "Turkmenistan country profile". BBC News.</ref> In 2016, Twitter cooperated with the Israeli government to remove certain content originating outside Israel from tweets seen in Israel.<ref>Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man (August 9, 2016). "How Israel is trying to enforce gag orders beyond its borders". 972 Mag. Retrieved September 23, 2016.</ref> In the 11th biannual transparency report published on September 19, 2017, Twitter said that Turkey was the first among countries where about 90 percent of removal requests came from, followed by Russia, France and Germany.<ref>"Turkey top country seeking removal of content on Twitter: Report". hurriyet. September 20, 2017. Retrieved September 20, 2017.</ref> Twitter stated that between July 1 and December 31, 2018, "We received legal demands relating to 27,283 accounts from 47 different countries, including Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, and Slovenia for the first time."<ref>"Turkey had highest request for content removal on Twitter". IPA News. May 11, 2019. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved September 14, 2019.</ref> As part of evidence to a U.S. Senate Enquiry, the company admitted that their systems "detected and hid" several hundred thousand tweets relating to the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak.<ref>"United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism: Testimony of Sean J. Edgett, Acting General Counsel, Twitter Inc" (PDF). October 31, 2017. Retrieved November 6, 2017.</ref> During the curfew in Jammu and Kashmir after revocation of its autonomous status on August 5, 2019, the Indian government approached Twitter to block accounts accused of spreading anti-India content;<ref>"Govt tells Twitter to block accounts inciting anti-India content using Kashmir". Hindustan Times. August 12, 2019.</ref> by October 25, nearly one million tweets had been removed as a result.<ref>"Twitter removes almost 1 million tweets in Kashmir, accused of bowing to Indian censorship". Newsweek. October 25, 2019. Retrieved November 5, 2020.</ref>

In March 2022, shortly after Russia's censorship of Twitter, a Tor onion service link was created by the platform to allow people to access the website, even in countries with heavy Internet censorship.<ref>"Twitter Launches Tor Onion Service Making Site Easier to Access in Russia". www.vice.com. March 8, 2022. Retrieved May 26, 2022.</ref><ref>Robertson, Adi (March 8, 2022). "Twitter is launching a Tor service for more secure and private tweeting". The Verge. Retrieved May 26, 2022.</ref>

Moderation of tweets

Twitter removed more than 88,000 propaganda accounts linked to Saudi Arabia.<ref>"Twitter just suspended over 88,000 accounts tied to a Saudi disinformation campaign". Business Insider. December 20, 2019.</ref> Twitter removed tweets from accounts associated with the Russian Internet Research Agency that had tried to influence public opinion during and after the 2016 US election.<ref name="Ingram-2021" /><ref name="Luk" /> In June 2020, Twitter also removed 175,000 propaganda accounts that were spreading biased political narratives for the Chinese Communist Party, the United Russia Party, or Turkey's President Erdogan, identified based on centralized behavior.<ref>Winder, Davey. "Twitter's Powerful Move Silences 175,000 Chinese And Russian Fake News Accounts". Forbes. Retrieved January 31, 2021.</ref><ref>"Disclosing networks of state-linked information operations we've removed". blog.twitter.com. Retrieved January 31, 2021.</ref> Twitter also removed accounts linked to the governments of Armenia, Egypt, Cuba, Serbia, Honduras, Indonesia and Iran.<ref>"Twitter suspends government-run accounts in Cuba". BBC News. September 12, 2019.</ref><ref>"Twitter removes accounts linked to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, other countries". Reuters. April 2, 2020.</ref><ref>"Twitter removes hundreds of accounts it says are linked to Iran, Russia, Armenia". Reuters. February 23, 2021.</ref> Twitter suspended Pakistani accounts tied to government officials for posting tweets about the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan.<ref>"200 accounts suspended over Kashmir reported to Twitter". Dawn. August 20, 2019.</ref> In February 2021, Twitter removed accounts in India that criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government for its conduct during Indian farmers' protests in 2020–2021.<ref>"Twitter Blocks Accounts in India as Modi Pressures Social Media". The New York Times. February 10, 2021. Archived from the original on December 28, 2021.</ref>

At the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, numerous tweets reported false medical information related to the pandemic. Twitter announced a new policy in which they would label tweets containing misinformation going forward.<ref name="Roth-2020" /> In April 2020, Twitter removed accounts which defended President Rodrigo Duterte's response to the spread of COVID-19 in the Philippines.<ref>"Twitter suspends accounts defending Duterte's COVID-19 response – report". Inquirer.net. April 10, 2020.</ref>

In November 2020, then Chief Technology Officer and future CEO of Twitter Parag Agrawal, when asked by MIT Technology Review about balancing the protection of free speech as a core value and the endeavour to combat misinformation, said: "Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation ... focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed."<ref>"EmTech Stage: Twitter's CTO on misinformation". technologyreview.com. November 18, 2020. Retrieved November 30, 2021.</ref>

Musk had been critical of Twitter's moderation of misinformation prior to his acquisition of the company.<ref>Bergengruen, Vera (April 27, 2022). "'We're Back.' Far-Right Groups Celebrate Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover". Time. Retrieved May 27, 2023.</ref> After the transition, Musk eliminated the misinformation moderation team,<ref>Collins, Ben; Zadrozny, Brandy; Ingram, David (November 4, 2023). "Days before the midterms, Twitter lays off employees who fight misinformation". NBC News. Retrieved May 27, 2023.</ref> and stopped enforcing its policy on labeling tweets with misleading information about coronavirus.<ref>"Twitter ends Covid misinformation policy under Musk". BBC News. November 30, 2022. Retrieved November 30, 2022.</ref> While Twitter had joined a voluntary program under the European Union's to fight disinformation in June 2022, Musk pulled the company out of the program in May 2023.<ref>Gillett, Francesca (May 27, 2023). "Twitter pulls out of voluntary EU disinformation code". BBC News. Retrieved May 27, 2023.</ref>

Community Notes

page-not-found

Court cases and lawsuits

Twitter Inc. v. Taamneh, alongside Gonzalez v. Google, were heard by the United States Supreme Court during its 2022–2023 term. Both cases dealt with Internet content providers and whether they are liable for terrorism-related information posted by their users. In the case of Twitter v. Taamneh, the case asked if Twitter and other social media services are liable for user-generated terrorism content under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and are beyond their Section 230 protections. The court ruled in May 2023 that the charges brought against Twitter and other companies were not permissible under the Antiterrorism Act, and did not address the Section 230 question. This decision also supported the Court's per curiam decision in Gonzalez returning that case to the lower court for review in light of the Twitter decision.<ref name="nbcnews decision">Hurley, Lawrence (May 18, 2023). "Supreme Court sidesteps ruling on scope of internet companies' immunity from lawsuits over user content". NBC News. Retrieved May 18, 2023.</ref><ref>Masnick, Mike (May 18, 2023). "Supreme Court Leaves 230 Alone For Now, But Justice Thomas Gives A Pretty Good Explanation For Why It Exists In The First Place". Techdirt. Retrieved August 4, 2023.</ref>

In 2016, Twitter shareholder Doris Shenwick filed a lawsuit against Twitter, Inc., claiming executives misled investors over the company's growth prospects.<ref name="time.com">"Twitter Agrees to Pay $809.5 Million Settlement in Shareholder Growth Lawsuit". Time. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref> In 2021, Twitter agreed to pay $809.5 million to settle.<ref name="time.com" />

In May 2022, Twitter agreed to pay $150 million to settle a lawsuit started by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. The lawsuit concerned Twitter's use of email addresses and phone numbers of Twitter users to target advertisements at them. The company also agreed to third-party audits of its data privacy program.<ref>Robertson, Adi (May 25, 2022). "Twitter will pay $150 million for using people's security phone numbers to target ads". The Verge. Retrieved May 26, 2022.</ref>

On November 3, 2022, on the eve of expected lay-offs, a group of Twitter employees based in San Francisco and Cambridge filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Naming five current or former workers as plaintiffs, the suit accused the company of violating federal and state laws that govern notice of employment termination.<ref>"Twitter sued over short-notice layoffs as Elon Musk's takeover rocks company". NBC News. November 4, 2022. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref> The federal law in question is the Work Adjustment and Re training Notification (WARN) Act, and the state law in question is California's state WARN Act.<ref>"Twitter sued by workers over impending layoffs they say are illegal". finance.yahoo.com. November 4, 2022. Retrieved November 6, 2022.</ref>

On November 20, 2023, Twitter filed a lawsuit against Media Matters, a media watchdog group. The lawsuit alleges defamation by Media Matters following its publication of a report claiming that advertisements for major brands were displayed alongside posts promoting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.<ref>"Elon Musk's X sues Media Matters over antisemitism analysis". November 21, 2023. Retrieved November 21, 2023.</ref>

Statistics

User accounts with large follower base

As of 12 February 2024^[update], the ten X accounts with the most followers were:

Top ten most-followed X accounts
Rank	Change <ref group="lower-alpha">Raw number of followers compared to June 12, 2023</ref>	Account name	Owner	Followers (millions)	Activity	Country
1	Template:Up	@elonmusk	Elon Musk	172.3	Business magnate and Chairman	ZAF CAN USA
2	Template:Same	@BarackObama	Barack Obama	131.9	44th U.S. president	USA
3	Template:Same	@justinbieber	Justin Bieber	111.2	Musician	CAN
4	Template:Up	@Cristiano	Cristiano Ronaldo	110.5	Footballer	PRT
5	Template:Same	@rihanna	Rihanna	108.2	Musician and businesswoman	BRB
6	Template:Down	@katyperry	Katy Perry	106.8	Musician	USA
7	Template:Up	@narendramodi	Narendra Modi	95.3	Prime Minister of India	IND
8	Template:Up	@taylorswift13	Taylor Swift	95.2	Musician	USA
9	Template:Up	@realDonaldTrump	Donald Trump	87.4	45th U.S. president	USA
10	Template:Up	@ArianaGrande	Ariana Grande	85.2	Musician and actress	USA

Record tweets

A selfie orchestrated by 86th Academy Awards host Ellen DeGeneres during the March 2, 2014, broadcast<ref name="ertw">DeGeneres, Ellen (March 2, 2014). "If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars". Twitter. Retrieved November 15, 2022.</ref> was at the time the most retweeted image ever.<ref name="ellen_2014">"Selfie at Oscars breaks retweet record". BBC News. March 3, 2014. Retrieved March 3, 2014.</ref> DeGeneres said she wanted to pay homage to Meryl Streep's record 17 Oscar nominations by setting a new record with her, and invited other Oscar celebrities to join them. The resulting photo of twelve celebrities broke the previous retweet record within forty minutes, and was retweeted over 1.8 million times in the first hour.<ref name="bbcrt">BBC Trending (March 3, 2014). "#BBCtrending: Selfie at Oscars breaks retweet record". BBC News. Bbc.com. Retrieved July 28, 2014.</ref><ref>"Ellen DeGeneres' Selfie at Oscars Sets Retweet Record, Crashes Twitter". The Ledger. Associated Press. March 3, 2014. Archived from the original on March 3, 2014. Retrieved March 3, 2014.</ref><ref name="latos">Hubbard, Amy (March 2, 2014). "Oscars 2014, the year of the selfie: Ellen tweet grabs retweet record". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 7, 2014.</ref> By the end of the ceremony it had been retweeted over 2 million times.<ref name=bbcrt /> On May 9, 2017, Ellen's record was broken by Carter Wilkerson (@carterjwm) by collecting nearly 3.5 million retweets in a little over a month.<ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref> This record was broken when Yusaku Maezawa announced a giveaway on Twitter in January 2019, accumulating 4.4 million retweets. A similar tweet he made in December 2019 was retweeted 3.8 million times.<ref>"The 20 Most-Retweeted Tweets". July 30, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2022.</ref>

The most tweeted moment in the history of Twitter occurred on August 2, 2013; during a Japanese television airing of the Studio Ghibli film Castle in the Sky, fans simultaneously tweeted the word Template:Nihongo—the incantation for a destruction spell used during its climax, after it was uttered in the film. There was a global peak of 143,199 tweets in one second, beating the previous record of 33,388.<ref>Oremus, Will (August 19, 2013). "Balse Festival: Japan "Castle in the Sky" airing breaks Twitter record for tweets per second". Slate. Retrieved June 26, 2014.</ref><ref>Ashcraft, Brian. "How an Old Japanese Anime Broke a Twitter Record". Kotaku. Retrieved August 31, 2018.</ref>

The most discussed event in Twitter history occurred on October 24, 2015; the hashtag ("#ALDubEBTamangPanahon") for Tamang Panahon, a live special episode of the Filipino variety show Eat Bulaga! at the Philippine Arena, centering on its popular on-air couple AlDub, attracted 41 million tweets.<ref>"Fans in the Philippines & around the world sent 41M Tweets mentioning #ALDubEBTamangPanahon". Twitter Data Verified Account. October 27, 2015. Retrieved October 30, 2015.</ref><ref>Mendoza, Arvin (October 25, 2015). "'AlDub' breaks FIFA World Cup's Twitter record". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved October 25, 2015.</ref> The most-discussed sporting event in Twitter history was the 2014 FIFA World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Germany on July 8, 2014.<ref>Tomchak, Anne-Marie (July 9, 2014). "#BBCtrending: Brazil's World Cup thrashing breaks Twitter records". BBC Online. Retrieved July 9, 2014.</ref>

According to Guinness World Records, the fastest pace to a million followers was set by actor Robert Downey Jr. in 23 hours and 22 minutes in April 2014.<ref>"Fastest time to reach one million followers on Twitter". Guinness World Records. April 12, 2014. Retrieved May 19, 2015.</ref> This record was later broken by Caitlyn Jenner, who joined the site on June 1, 2015, and amassed a million followers in just 4 hours and 3 minutes.<ref>Parkinson, Hannah Jane (June 2, 2015). "Caitlyn Jenner smashes Twitter world record, reaching a million followers". the Guardian. Retrieved May 20, 2022.</ref>

Notes

References

<references group="" responsive="1"><ref name="Twitter_500">"Twitter Passed 500M Users In June 2012, 140M Of Them In US; Jakarta 'Biggest Tweeting' City". TechCrunch. July 30, 2012.</ref></references>

External links

Scholia has a topic profile for [[:toolforge:scholia/topic/Lua error in Module:WikidataIB at line 2818: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).|Twitter]].

Lua error in Module:Official_website at line 90: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
Template:Onion URL
Twitter at Curlie

Template:Twitter navbox Template:Microblogging Template:Online social networking

Template:Elon Musk Lua error in mw.title.lua at line 318: bad argument #2 to 'title.new' (unrecognized namespace name 'Portal'). Lua error in Module:Sister_project_links at line 469: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). Lua error in Module:Authority_control at line 181: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).

v t e Censorship and websites
Censorship of	Chinese censorship abroad Facebook File sharing sites GitHub iTunes Store The Pirate Bay TikTok in the United States Twitter Wikipedia in China in Russia in Turkey in Venezuela YouTube in Germany
Censorship by	AOL Apple Cisco in China Facebook TikTok Twitter Yahoo Google YouTube Microsoft in China Skype in China Myspace in China
Websites blocked in	Belgium Mainland China list India Russia list South Korea North Korean websites Syria Turkey United Kingdom Web blocking list United States Singapore List

Anonymous

Search

Twitter

History

2006–2007: Creation and initial reaction

2007–2010

2010–2014

2014–2020

2020–2021

Since 2022

Acquisition by Elon Musk

Post-acquisition

Rebrand to X

Appearance and features

Posts

Multimedia content

Curation

Trending topics

Lists

Moments

Algorithm

Mobile

Premium (formerly Twitter Blue)

Verification of paid accounts

User monetization

E-commerce

Usage

Demographics

Content

Levels of use

User engagement

Branding

Finances

Revenue sources

Advertising bans

Fines

Technology

Implementation

API and developer platform

Innovators patent agreement

Open source

Interface

Security

Outages

User accounts

Verified accounts

Privacy

Harassment

Suspect and contested accounts

Malicious and fake accounts

X bots

Society

Usage

Protesters

Governments

Pornography

Child sexual exploitation

Impact

On communication

Emergency use

Education

Public figures

World leaders

Religion

Censorship and moderation

Moderation of tweets

Community Notes

Court cases and lawsuits

Statistics

User accounts with large follower base

Record tweets

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

Navigation

Wiki tools

Page tools

Categories