Congratulations! Twitter just turned 18

While much has changed at Twitter over the years, including its name, and it has lost advertisers under Mr Musk, the big cake at its 18th birthday celebrations is well-deserved

Earlier in the week, Twitter turned 18 —a landmark birthday for the world’s most popular microblogging site.

Not many know that Twitter, which has now become X, emerged from the podcasting venture Odeo, which was founded in 2004 by Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass. (Messrs Williams and Stone had previously worked at Google, and Williams created the popular Web authoring tool Blogger.) Apple announced in 2005 that it would add podcasts to its digital media application iTunes. Odeo’s leadership felt that the company could not compete with Apple and needed a new direction.

Odeo’s employees were asked