Hello, dear readers, and welcome to another episode of Friday Factday. This week I'm going to take a look at one of the social media giants and now billionaires playground, Twitter - err, sorry, X.
Let's get to it, shall we?
A Different Start
It was all the way back in 2006 - which feels like an absolute lifetime ago, now - when Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone launched Twitter, and the rest, they say, is history. These days, it seems strange to think of Twitter as anything but a social media platform, but when Dorsey first proposed the idea, it was pitched as an instant messaging service.
Since then, the service has gone through many tweaks and changes and facelifts, though it's easy to trick yourself into thinking things were always this way...
#MandelaEffect
Hashtags are as intrinsic to Twitter - damnit, X! - as the little blue bird, and if you asked almost anyone whether they thought hashtags had always been a part of Twitter, most would say yes.
But it wasn't until 2007, a year after the first-ever tweet was sent by Dorsey, that hashtags were first suggested; yes, that's right, suggested, as in, not even an in-house idea! So if you're one of those who can't stand the hashtag spam at the end of posts on a wide range of social media platforms, then feel free to direct your ire at Chris Messina, the blogger who suggested them.
Well-Known But Not As Well-Used
Twitter/X is one of the most well-known social media platforms in the world and its monthly active users as of January 2024 stand at an impressive 619 million. Phew. That's a lot of tweeters. Or twitters. X'ers? Hip lingo is so hard to keep up with.
The surprising part, however, is just how big a gap there is between TwiX and its competitors. According to Statista, Musk's "free speech platform" isn't even in the Top 10, and the undisputed King, Facebook, has almost five times as many monthly active users.
Big Names and Small Dick Energy
The Top 5 most liked tweets of all time are a strange mix of characters and subject matters, from Musk cracking a joke about putting crack back in Coke, to my personal favorite on the list, Greta Thunberg's comeback to Andrew Tate that just drips of an exaggerated eye roll.
The list also features two Presidents, with Obama having formerly held the number 1 spot for a long time, and Joe Biden just about managing to make it into the number 5 spot without falling over and hurting himself.
The top spot, however, goes to the account of the late, great Chadwick Boseman, where the announcement of his death received 6.7 million reactions - over 2 million more than Musk's number 2 spot.
Find Us There
It's practically mandatory to have a TwiX account for any company these days and we're no different - but we do like to think we're a bit funnier and more approachable than most others. If you want to chat with us, you can find us @windscribecom. Who knows, maybe we'll win you over with our charm and wit, and you'll become a fellow Windscriber... Or who knows, maybe you're already convinced...
