Sure, you could read about the history of Twitter in long-form blog posts, but that seems to go against the spirit of the micro-messaging service. So instead, here’s a picture created by InfoShots for the blog Manolith that puts some key moments of the service’s history in visual form. This spans from the advent of UNIX “Talk” in the 1980s (an early real-time text update system), all the way to the Twipocalypse.
And here is InfoShots’ original concept for the image:
[Thanks Sean]
I think this just pretty much elaborating on the Twitter concept if I’m not mistaken.
I’m not sure if I can see properly, but it appears to not have Twitter Apps included, as that enpowers Twitter the most. Without Twitter Apps, It’d just be another “Cuil” clone over again.
And, also, if you can, check the Twitter App in my website address provided. It’s just released this morning.
Cheers, and sorry if I’m mistaken.
Even, for a moment, I thought MG has forgotten Twitter. How wrong! How far did you contribute to the story MG, why are you not there in the picture?
Way to go Twitter!
Very cool illustration. Hope the tree won;t grow to big at the top and break.
Love twitter.
Wow awesome, i mean freaking awesome !
The people at Infoshot did an amazing job, only such creative and exceptional things come out of hard work. Well done to ya’ll !
Three Cheers for the “ORIGINAL concept” (aka, the second design on the page above).
Long live the birds with the copy cats trying to “feed”
twitter = pets.com circa 2009
Well good picture. This pre history of twitter. Post history of twitter is very crappy. For many people twitter does not mean anything. Even techies find it very boring. For people that has lot of things to in life twitter is crap. Look at http://www.istwittercrap.com and see how people hate twitter
Pretty picture, but I think the article makes its own (unintentional) criticism of Twitter: “you could read…but that seems to go against the spirit [of Twitter]”
I like Twitter for zen koans and Confucian or Heraclitus like fragments of wisdom (or humor), but are we becoming so illiterate that in addition to only being able to process 140 characters in our 2 second attention span we also cannot process *history* without pretty pictures?
Somehow this depresses me. Possibly because the people most likely to desperately need to read more…haven’t managed to read this far.
Excellent diagram. I found the pre-Twitter history to be particularly interesting. Seeing which technologies and ideas came before and evolved to form Twitter.
Thanks for the post, please checkout the Infoshot guys if you’re looking to produce great visual info graphics like this.
Type “twitter is” in a google search box. An entire community of koolaide drinkers has jumped the shark over twitter, which basically, public email.
Nothing to see here folks, now lets move on to real innovation technologies.
It’s also kinda fun replacing “twitter” with “e-mail”, it makes perfect sense.
Time to move on…
2006 @biz discovers “fail whale” image…
Who knew it would be used sooooo much!
The evolution of the tree of knowledge:::twitter is about birds and flying – we will see how many years its going to take to get to the sky in terms of a pic. We’ll leave SPACE for future discussion….love the picture!!!
Pre-Twitter facts very cool, post Twitter tweets in a time line were boring to say the least.
I can’t see Winpopup mentioned anywhere there.
We used to use it for inter-office “IM” in the mid 90s until ICQ came along in the mid 90s.
I have to say that a history of twitter w/o Kevin Rose is a bit incomplete… he was the most followed twitter user for the longest time (and he promoted it to hundreds of thousands of Digg & Diggnation fans)… he was the micro-celebrity that launched micro-blogging
I work in an building design, landscape design and graphic design firm; this Twitter pictorial history is a great tool to share with the staff who need training on social media, and I always start them on Twitter.
I cannot believe you have not included IRC on this list.
IRC is by far the closest parallel in terms of it’s social importance and use habits to twitter.
Many of the Tag conventions etc, come from IRC command legacies. And certainly the way in which topic channels are formed and conversations flow asynchronously between multiple parties, is just like IRC.
Twitter is IRC 2.0 with more limitations.
Very cool illustration . and i love Twitter
Great idea! I’ve just had a meeting with one of my Directors at the Language Institute where I teach http://www.ccbeufranca.com.br and we talked a lot about twitter and a number of projects to make it more popular in our community.