If you, like me, have published an ungodly number of tweets over the years, scrolling back to find out what your very first ever tweet was is about as tedious as building a sandcastle one grain at a time. But now, thanks to a new Twitter tool, you can zip back to the beginning in an instant.
Simply go to first-tweets.com, enter in your Twitter handle, and your first tweet will be right there for you to be embarrassed by. (If you’re already logged into Twitter, the tool will fill in your handle automatically.) You can also look up the first tweet of any user with a public account. For example, here’s Digital Trends’ first tweet:
The launch of the #FirstTweet tool is part of Twitter’s eighth birthday celebration. As the company explains the launch on its blog, “Millions of prolific tweeters have made Twitter an exciting, fun and powerful place to connect with others. But each of you had to start somewhere: Today we’re taking a look at some choice first Tweets – first Tweets that sparked a conversation, used imagery to tell a story, or revealed unfiltered self expression.”
As exciting as that sounds (is?), Twitter’s #FirstTweet tool does have some limitations. You can’t look up your second tweet, for example. Nor can you embed tweets directly from the tool. You can, however, tweet out anyone’s first tweet, which I can only imagine creates some type of rift in the space time continuum that might collapse the universe in on itself, destroying everything everyone has ever loved, for all of eternity past and future.
Okay, that won’t happen. What could happen is that whatever silly thing you happened to be into when you first discovered Twitter could come back to haunt you. For a lot of people, I imagine, the results are something along the lines of “Test” or “Giving this Twitter thing a try” or “Hello world” or some other #FirstTweet kind of thing. Whatever it is you posted, let this tool serve as a reminder that once something is on the Internet, it’s always on the Internet. So be careful what you say now – someone might just make it easier for it to come back and bite you where it hurts.
Enjoy your first tweet!
