Twitter/X turns 20: from the first public tweet to Elon Musk's rebranded empire

The first public tweets appeared on July 15, 2006, several months after a quiet soft launch of the platform. Over two decades, Twitter became a global arena for memes, social movements and political hot takes before Elon Musk acquired and rebranded it as X. The anniversary marks twenty years of a platform that fundamentally shaped online public discourse.