March 21, 2011

WATCH: Twitter Turns 5 (Video)

Twitter's fail whale.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Like the first telephone call (“Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you”), the world’s first tweet lacks a certain gravitas. “Just setting up my twttr” 29-year-old Jack Dorsey wrote five years ago today. Since then, notes the Guardian:

[Twitter] has woven itself into tumultuous events: the news that a plane had crash-landed in the Hudson River (with picture); the election protests in Iran; the rapid dispersal of the news of an 7.8-magnitude earthquake; updates from the ground about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Not bad for a kindergartener, don’t you think? [Read MoJo‘s 2009 interview with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone here.] But lest you (still) think Twitter is all Beliebers and #tigerblood, the star-studded cast of Twitter’s promo cake-and-candles video shows off the platform’s wider range. Per the LA Times:

Entrepreneur Richard Branson, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, decorating maven Martha Stewart, US Speaker of the House John Boehner, Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli and entertainer Snoop Dogg, all explain how they use Twitter. One of the best moments: Snoop Dogg follows Stewart because “she loves to wake and bake with the big Snoop Dogg.” And Nespoli offers a breathtaking view of Earth from the International Space Station.

Below, watch this year’s Twitter birthday video:

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate