#10YearsOfTwitter: 10 first-of-its-kind tweets

On this day 10 years ago (March 21, 2006), Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, posted the first ever tweet. "just setting up my twttr," read the tweet from @jack. At only 24 characters, the first tweet was way within Twitter's 140 character limit.

The reason Jack Dorsey mentions Twitter as twttr is because that was the original code name for the project. The public launch of what was to soon become the world's most popular microblogging platform happened a few months later on July 15, 2006.

It's been 10 years and billions of tweets since that first tweet but within those billions of tweets there are some firsts that will always remain so. Here is a selection of 10 first-of-its-kind tweets on the 10th anniversary of the first tweet:

1. The first tweet

2. The first tweet from space

The first tweet from outer space was posted by NASA astronaut TJ Creamer from the International Space Station.

3. First pregnancy tweet

Sarah from Geraldton, Australia posted the news about her pregnancy on Twitter. The first known pregnancy announcement tweet.

4. First firing announcement on Twitter

Sam Sethi announced on Twitter that he was fired by Michael Arrington from TechCrunch.

5. First product launch on Twitter

Raja Bhatia announced the launch of fivelimes.com, a social bookmarking site for eco-friendly products, via a twitter post that he seems to have since deleted.

In a tweet posted at 6:25 AM (PST) October 28, 2006 via Twitter's web interface, @raja had tweeted, "Launched http://fivelimes.com even though it's pretty basic....getting it out there."

6. First tweet with a hashtag

Early user Chris Messina proposed the use of a hashtag to denote people at the same live event. Since that first hashtag, hashtags have evolved into a powerful marketing and political tool and have spread beyond Twitter to other services.

7. First tweet that was deleted

Because you cannot edit tweets, they are often deleted. In fact, the 5th tweet ever posted ended up being deleted. We don't know what was there in that deleted tweet, but of the first 10 tweets posted on Twitter 3 are now deleted and 6 have the same text as the first: "just setting up my twttr."

8. First tweet with a URL

It is now common practice to add URLs to tweets. And it was twitter and its character restrictions that spawned the popularity of URL shortening services. The earliest tweet to include an URL was posted by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. "using twttr.com," @biz posted, but unlike now, Twitter then didn't auto-hyperlink domain names and URLs.

9. First Tweet by a user of Indian origin

Don't we love to find an Indian connection to any top lists. So here it is, the first Tweet sent out by an user of Indian origin. Nothing profound in the Tweet, but a first nevertheless.

10. First tweet from an Indian news organisation

Yes, we are also here in this list of firsts. But that shouldn't come as a surprise. Here at IBNLive.com we always have been eager to explore the new. And back in June 2007, Twitter wasn't the rage it went to become, when @codelust set up the @ibnlive Twitter account.