With Twitter being acquired Elon Musk, here are five lesser known facts about the platform

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the world’s richest person, acquired Twitter for $44 billion earlier this week. He plans to take the social networking platform private, and has said that he wants Twitter to be a free speech platform. The acquisition of Twitter, which has over 400 million users including some of the most popular politicians, celebrities and journals, will have a major impact.
With Musk controlling Twitter, it will mark a shift in its current content moderation policies, which, in recent years, have been aimed at limiting hate speech and reducing misinformation. While many may be familiar with Twitter and the Indian-origin CEO Parag Agrawal, here are five facts about Twitter that may surprise you.

Twitter was almost called ‘Twitch’
Twitter was nearly called Twitch. “We all looked at the Oxford English dictionary at the T-W’s, and we found the word Twitter,” says co-founder Jack Dorsey in the WNYC interview. “And Twitter means a short inconsequential burst of information, chirps from birds. And we were like, that describes exactly what we’re doing here.” Once the name was finalised, the founding team wasn’t sure about using Twitter “because in certain cultures it could be demeaning,” Dorsey explains. “For example, Twit is not necessarily associated with the best things.” It took two months or so for the team to get used to the name. Twitter paid a “minuscule” amount for Twitter.com, Dorsey says.  Incidentally, Dorsey has given Elon Musk his full approval post the acquisition announcement.

Facebook tried buying Twitter – twice
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg allegedly once told close friends that ‘[Twitter is] such a mess, it’s as if they drove a clown car into a gold mine and fell in.’ The claim is made in Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, a book the New York Times’ Nick Bilton where he documented Twitter’s journey. The book claims that twice Zuckerberg tried to acquire Twitter through official channels and via co-founder Jack Dorsey. He apparently made the comment after both acquisitions failed.

And the crown of the most retweeted tweet goes to…
A tweet a Japanese billionaire became the most retweeted tweet of all time. Maezawa, the founder of Japanese online retailer Zozo Inc, took to Twitter on January 5, 2019, to give 100 randomly selected retweeters the chance to win a share of 100 million Japanese yen . “To participate, all you have to do is follow me and RT this tweet,” he said. The tweet produced over 5 million retweets, becoming the most retweeted tweet of all time. The last time a tweet made a sensation at such scale was from the TV show host Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscar selfie, which clocked in at more than 3.43 million retweets.

The very first tweet was posted on March 21, 2006
​​Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter’s co-founders, was the first person to post anything to Twitter. The tweet, which said “just setting up my twttr,” was first published on March 21, 2006. Dorsey posted the first tweet at 9:50 pm. Last year, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first ever tweet was sold for the equivalent of $2.9m to a Malaysia-based businessman. It was sold as a nonfungible token (NFT). Dorsey said he would convert the proceeds to bitcoin and then donate them to the Give Directly’s Africa Response fund.
Twitter did not invent the hashtag
Twitter never invented the hashtag but it was Chris Messina who invented it. Jack Dorsey’s Twitter was launched in July 2006 while the hashtag was used in August 2007 Twitter user Chris Messina. Messina originally proposed using the hash or pound symbol before the keyword to make tweets easier to search. Twitter was a new platform back then and Massina wanted to make tweets more searchable.
A product designer profession, Messina got the idea of using a hashtag from Internet chat rooms. He decided to pitch the idea to Twitter, but the company told him it was “nerdy” and that it would never catch on. “I was a little bit dejected but I laughed,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I thought, I just don’t know how else we’re gonna solve this problem.” Two months later, Chris urged users to tweet about the San Diego wildfire using hashtags, which prompted Twitter to update its algorithm that made hashtags clickable. And the rest is hory. Hashtags are used millions on social media platforms to raise their voice.