Twitter unearths your first tweet

Story highlights

Twitter has introduced a tool that lets users see their first-ever tweets

People can also look up the first tweet of any other Twitter user

Friday marks the eighth anniversary of the first Twitter message

CNN  — 

Unless you have a photographic memory or just joined Twitter last week, you probably don’t recall your first tweet.

That’s OK. Twitter would like to show it to you.

To commemorate Friday’s eighth anniversary of the first Twitter message, Twitter has introduced a tool that lets users relive their Twitter debuts. Type your Twitter handle into the search field and it spits out your first-ever tweet in its full, date-stamped glory – typos, clever witticisms, clumsy hashtags and all.

You can also look up the first tweet of any other user, from NBA star Kobe Bryant (“The antisocial has become social #mambatweets”) to billionaire Warren Buffett (“Warren is in the house”).

Previously, if you wanted to find someone’s old messages on Twitter you had to scour Google (if they’re famous), do a cumbersome Twitter search, try a social-search tool such as Topsy or – heaven forbid – scroll back through hundreds, even thousands, of tweets.

Based on a quick review of notable #FirstTweets (yes, it’s a trending topic now), many people seemed a little unsure in the beginning about this newfangled Twitter thing. Take Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn, whose first tweet in 2009 said, “Just started this tweety bird thing… We’ll see how it goes. Still skeptical.”

Vonn has since tweeted 1,850 more times. Guess she got the hang of it.

The first-ever tweet from CNN’s breaking-news account in 2007 wasn’t news at all (see below), although CNN didn’t actually own the account at the time.

On March 21, 2006, the first Twitter message was published by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who wrote, “just setting up my twttr.” Twitter didn’t launch to the public until July of that year, but grew steadily as it became recognized as a speedy source for news.

In recent years,Twitter has become arguably the leading platform for real-time chatter around breaking news and live TV events such as the Oscars and the Super Bowl. The service how has more than 241 million monthly active users.

Read on for some other notable first tweets:

.

.

.

.

.

.

Related