Happy birthday Twitter: First ever tweet was sent nine years ago today

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The first ever tweet was posted nine years ago today and the rest, they say, is history.

Most of us probably cannot remember what we did without the convenience and distraction of Twitter – the global watercooler of news and inane chatter.

However the beauty, or even the beast, of the Twitter timeline is that you can scroll way back or use handy archives to see historical posts.

Co-founder of the social media network Jack Dorsey took to the brand spanking new invention on 21 March 2006 to compose the succinct message: “just setting up my twttr”.

“Twttr” was the first name that was used to refer to the 140-character messaging network before it was padded out with the vowels and was publicly-launched four months after its first hatching.

Around 288 million people use the service each month and about 500 million tweets are sent per day, making it the second most popular social site. Facebook takes first place with around 900 million people logging in every month.

To celebrate, Twitter “took to Twitter” to post nine things it is most proud of covering over the past nine years. Some of which are happy and some catastrophic.

These include US President Barack Obama winning another term, footballer Lukas Podolski posting about Germany’s World Cup win last summer, and events such as a plane crashing into the Hudson River in New York.

Mr Dorsey explains why they came up with the name in the first place to Los Angeles Times: “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 legendary #hashtag also came about after a short public consultation carried out over Twitter.

Soon after, other social networks such as Facebook and Instagram started taking its lead by using the simple link element to get conversations flowing.

Twitter said today: “At our nine-year mark, we continue to say that Twitter is what it is because of the people who use it.

“We will continue to thank you and celebrate you in the coming years as you use Twitter to reflect both the world at large and the world immediately around you.”