To celebrate eight years of 140-character bliss, Twitter is making some changes. Those alterations could change twitter as we know it, but also serve to make the entire platform more modern. Twitter is also allowing us to revisit our first tweet, which should be as hilarious as it is embarrassing.
By heading over to Twitter’s new #FirstTweet tool, you can check out first tweets of any Twitter handle you know. Enter the username, hit enter, and you’ll get a blast from the past. Be careful, though — we can’t promise it won’t bring back embarrassing memories. We will promise it will ruin your productivity for today.
Twitter’s Head of News, Vivian Schiller, also had something to add today. A tweet she sent out has caused some to wonder if Twitter’s tried-and-true mentioning system is getting a facelift. As it stands, we can just put “@“ in front of a name or handle to mention someone. According to Schiler, that may change. She tweets “We are working on moving the scaffolding of twitter into the background” in reference to the “@“ mentioning thing.
This will also affect hashtags, according to Schiller. Though she tried to deny changes were forthcoming, she further commented –cryptically — on how Twittr would move forward. Those are two systems that identify Twitter, and while the use of them may not be disappearing, the visibility might. It will probably make Twitter a little cleaner to use and view, but are we ready for the change? Not seeing an actual hashtag or “@“ mention will take some getting used to, that’s for sure.
