St. Louisan Sends the First Tweet: March 21, 2006

Jack Dorsey, St. Louis native and founder of Twitter, sent the very first post on the platform (called a Tweet) on this date in 2006. It was posted at 12:50 PM PST and it read: “just setting up my twttr.” The service began as an internal messaging system for employees of a podcasting company before becoming the social media platform we know it as today. Although its current owner has changed the platform’s name to “X,” users still access the website at Twitter.com.

Jack Dorsey was born on November 19, 1976, in St. Louis, Missouri, Dorsey grew up in a Catholic family with strong ties to the community. His early fascination with computers and programming led him to start tinkering with software and hardware at a young age. He attended Bishop DuBourg High School, a private Catholic high school. Dorsey would eventually enroll as an undergraduate at Missouri S&T in Rolla in 1995, and attended for two years and change before transferring to NYU.

Dorsey has also helped create Block, Inc., a company whose first product, Square, allows small businesses to process credit and debit card payments with a mobile device. Chances are you’ve paid with one of their devices. Dorsey is now on the board of directors for a Twitter-like social media company known as Bluesky.