Twitter Feature History & chrrp Status

A comprehensive timeline of every major Twitter/X feature and whether chrrp has implemented it. Features marked with ✅ twttr are available on this platform.

Legend: ✅ = implemented in chrrp  |  — = not implemented  |  Sign in to vote on features!

2006 — The Beginning

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ Tweets (140 chars) March 21, 2006 Jack Dorsey sends the first tweet: “just setting up my twttr.” The 140-character limit was designed for SMS compatibility (160 chars minus 20 for username). On chrrp 140 is still the default and still the point of the whole thing — but it is a per-account setting, see 2017. shipped
✅ Following/Followers July 15, 2006 Core social graph feature at public launch. Users follow others to see their tweets in a personal timeline. shipped
✅ Public Timeline July 15, 2006 A firehose of all public tweets. Twitter later removed this due to scale; twttr still has it. shipped
✅ RSS feeds 2006–2013 Every timeline and profile was readable as RSS until Twitter killed the feeds along with API v1.0 in June 2013. chrrp still serves them: /rss for the public timeline, /:username/rss for any profile. shipped
✅ User Profiles July 15, 2006 Personal profile pages showing a user’s tweets, bio, and follower/following counts. shipped
✅ Direct Messages 2006 (SMS), 2008 (web) Private one-to-one messaging. Originally SMS-only, moved to web in 2008. shipped
✅ Public API September 20, 2006 An open API within months of launch — the reason Twitterrific, Tweetie and Tweetbot existed at all, until they were shut off in 2023. chrrp has a documented JSON API: /api/docs, an OpenAPI spec, personal keys, and rate limits instead of a ban. shipped
✅ SMS Integration 2006 Tweeting via text message. The original posting method before the web interface became dominant. chrrp does the 2026 version: RCS. Post, favourite and retweet straight from your messaging app — currently an invite-only beta, sign up at /rcs-beta. shipped

2007 — Hashtags & @Replies Emerge

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ Hashtags (#) August 23, 2007 Proposed by Chris Messina. Initially met with skepticism. Twitter didn’t officially support clickable hashtags until 2009, but the convention started here. shipped
✅ @Replies (user convention) 2007 Users organically started using @username to direct messages at others. Twitter hadn’t built this feature — the community invented it. shipped
— SXSW Breakout March 12, 2007 Twitter went from 20,000 to 60,000 tweets/day during SXSW Interactive. The event that put Twitter on the map.
60% (10)

2008 — @Replies Official, Search

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ @Replies (official) May 2008 Twitter officially adds @reply support, recognizing the user convention and building it into the interface with dedicated tabs. shipped
✅ DMs as web feature 2008 Direct Messages move beyond SMS to become a proper web inbox with read/write capability. shipped

2009 — Retweets, Trending, Verified, Lists

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ Verified Accounts (self-verified ✓) June 2009 Twitter launched verification after an impersonation lawsuit. Then Elon sold it for $8/month. twttr goes one better: put ✅ at the start of your bio and you’re verified. No payment, no ID check, no questions asked. It’s the honor system — just like the early internet. shipped
— Lists October 30, 2009 Curate groups of accounts into categorized timelines. Biz Stone announced with “There’s a List for That.”
73% (22)
✅ Retweets (official button) November 2009 Replaced the manual “RT @user” copy-paste convention (common since 2008) with a native one-click retweet button. shipped
✅ Favorites (star icon) 2009–2010 The yellow star. Used to bookmark or show appreciation for tweets. Later changed to “Likes” (heart) in 2015. shipped

2010 — Promoted Tweets, New Twitter, Inline Media

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ Promoted Tweets (ads) April 13, 2010 Twitter’s first advertising product. The beginning of monetization. chrrp does it the early-Twitter way: Promoted Chrrps live natively in the timeline, clearly labelled “📣 Promoted”, frequency-capped, dismissable with one click, and with no tracking. A feature demo — no real billing. shipped
✅ “New Twitter” redesign Sept–Oct 2010 Complete UI overhaul with inline media viewing. Photos and YouTube videos viewable without leaving Twitter. chrrp shows images inline and opens them in a Twitter-style lightbox; YouTube plays inline too. shipped

2011 — Photo Sharing, t.co, Who to Follow

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ URL auto-linking in tweets June 7, 2011 t.co URL shortening rolls out to all users. All links automatically wrapped and clickable. (twttr uses direct links instead of a shortener — and since September 2026 they don’t count toward the character limit either.) shipped
✅ Native photo sharing (pic.twitter.com) August 2011 Upload photos directly in tweets — and, since 2026, in direct messages too. Previously users relied on TwitPic, yFrog, and other third-party services. chrrp uploads natively: up to 4 images per tweet (or a single video / animated GIF), by clicking the photo button, dragging & dropping, or pasting straight into the compose box. Big photos are welcome — the source may be up to 32 MB. On upload each image is auto-rotated, down-scaled to at most 2048 px, and re-compressed at quality 85, so a 20 MB photo is stored at roughly 1–2 MB; the original never has to be kept at full size. EXIF/GPS metadata is stripped for privacy. You can add alt text for screen readers, media never counts toward the character limit, and everything lives on chrrp’s own EU object storage — no more chrrpic.eu. shipped
— “Who to Follow” suggestions 2011 Algorithm-based account recommendations based on user interests and social graph connections.
56% (18)
— Connect & Discover tabs December 8, 2011 Major redesign (“Fly”). New navigation with Connect and Discover alongside the Home tab.
44% (9)

2012 — Vine Acquired, New Bird Logo, Archive Download

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ “Your Twitter Archive” (data export) December 19, 2012 Request a download of everything you ever posted — Twitter mailed you a link days later. chrrp hands it over immediately: /settings/export returns a ZIP with profile, tweets, DMs, follows and favourites as JSON. shipped
— Vine acquired October 5, 2012 Twitter acquires Vine, a short-form video clip service. Vine launches January 2013 and is shut down in October 2016.
40% (10)

2013 — Conversations, Line Breaks, IPO, Login Verification

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
— Vine (6-second looping videos) January 24, 2013 Standalone app for creating and sharing 6-second looping video clips. Became a cultural phenomenon. Discontinued 2016.
57% (14)
✅ Conversation view December 2013 Replies stop being loose tweets and become a conversation: the chain up to the original above, the tweet itself, its direct replies below — one level per page, deeper ones a click away. chrrp works exactly like that; the connecting line means “same thread”, never “these happen to be adjacent”. shipped
✅ Line breaks in tweets March 2013 Tweets could now contain newlines for formatting. Previously all text ran together. shipped
✅ Login verification (two-factor auth) May 22, 2013 Added after a run of high-profile account takeovers, SMS-based at first; authenticator apps came years later. chrrp skips the phone entirely: TOTP app plus one-time backup codes, under /settings/2fa. shipped
— Twitter IPO November 7, 2013 NYSE: TWTR. Shares priced at $26, closed at $44.90, valuing the company at ~$31 billion.
50% (12)

2014 — Photo Galleries, Pinned Tweets, Mute, Hashflags

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ Up to four photos per tweet (galleries) March 26, 2014 Several photos in one tweet, laid out as a collage that opens into a gallery. chrrp: four images, or a single video or GIF on its own, with a full-screen lightbox that shows the alt text. shipped
✅ Pinned tweets April 8, 2014 Pin one tweet to the top of your profile so visitors see it first. chrrp: pin and unpin from your own profile. shipped
— Facebook-style profile redesign April 2014 Full-width header image with parallax scrolling, profile picture and bio in a left column. Controversial.
11% (9)
✅ Mute users May 12, 2014 Keep following someone but stop seeing their tweets — unfollowing without the social fallout. chrrp has it, and shows everything you muted under /settings/mutes. shipped
✅ Hashflags (custom emoji for hashtags) June 2014 Introduced for the FIFA World Cup. Special hashtags automatically generate a custom emoji next to them. On chrrp an admin maps any hashtag to an image and it shows up inline wherever the tag appears. shipped
✅ Notifications tab 2014 “Connect” becomes “Notifications”: mentions, follows, favourites and retweets in one list. chrrp has /notifications, plus a separate /mentions for replies only. shipped
✅ Emoji picker in the composer November 2014 Twitter open-sources Twemoji so an emoji looks the same everywhere, and the composer gets a picker instead of an OS keyboard detour. chrrp has the picker in the compose bar, by category and searchable. shipped
— “While You Were Away” November 2014 (announced) Curated highlights of tweets you missed. First step toward a non-chronological timeline.
0% (10)

2015 — Quote Tweets, Moments, Heart Replaces Star, Video, Polls

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ Native video upload January 27, 2015 Record and upload videos directly through the mobile app. chrrp: one video or GIF per tweet, up to 50 MB and 60 seconds, played inline in the timeline. shipped
— Group Direct Messages January 27, 2015 DMs expand beyond 1:1 to support group conversations.
57% (14)
— Periscope (live streaming) March 9, 2015 Twitter acquires Periscope for live video. Integrated into the platform; shut down March 2021.
9% (11)
✅ Quote Tweets (“Retweet with Comment”) April 7, 2015 Add your own commentary when sharing another tweet. Previously you had to manually copy-paste. On chrrp the quoted tweet renders as a card inside yours — and if the original is deleted the card says so instead of quietly disappearing. shipped
✅ Polls 2015 Embedded polls in tweets allowing followers to vote on multiple-choice questions. chrrp: 2–4 options, runs from 5 minutes to 7 days, one vote per account, live results with a percentage bar. Poll authors can vote in their own poll too. When a poll closes, everyone who wrote or voted in it gets a notification with the result — not just a hint to go and look. /polls collects every poll in one place: running ones first, the one closing soonest at the top. shipped
— Moments October 6, 2015 Curated collections of tweets about breaking news and events. Later replaced by the Explore tab in 2017.
11% (9)
— ❤️ Like replaces ★ Favorite November 3, 2015 The star icon is replaced by a heart. “Favorites” become “Likes.” Twitter reports a 6% increase in engagement. One of the most controversial UI changes ever.
0% (16)

2016 — Algorithmic Timeline, Character Limit, Night Mode, Muted Words

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ Algorithmic timeline (non-chronological) Feb–March 2016 Recommended tweets become the default instead of reverse chronological. twttr offers both: “Normal” (chronological, like God intended) and “The Algorithm™” (engagement-ranked chaos). Available as tabs on the Public Timeline. shipped
✅ Alt text for images March 29, 2016 Up to 480 characters of description for accessibility. Important for screen reader users. chrrp: an “ALT” button on every image in the compose box, up to 1000 characters, saved to the image and shown as an “ALT” badge on the tweet. shipped
✅ Media no longer counts toward character limit May 24, 2016 Photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and quoted tweets stop counting against the 140-character limit. On chrrp: links don’t count either — every URL, chrrpic image and YouTube link is excluded from the character count. A raw cap of 1000 characters keeps that exemption from being unbounded. shipped
✅ Night mode (dark theme) July 2016 A dark colour scheme, on mobile first. chrrp follows whatever your system is set to, and you can override it by hand. shipped
— Vine discontinued October 2016 After 3 years, Vine stops accepting new posts. A generation mourns.
36% (11)
✅ Muted keywords & hashtags November 15, 2016 Mute words, phrases and hashtags out of your timeline and notifications. chrrp mutes hashtags the same way it mutes people — both live under /settings/mutes. shipped

2017 — 280 Characters, Threads, Explore Tab

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
— Explore tab (replaces Moments) January 2017 Bundles Moments, trends, live video, and search into one place.
29% (7)
— @usernames excluded from character limit in replies March 30, 2017 Replying to someone no longer wastes characters on the @mention. (twttr still includes @mention in character count — keeping it real.)
85% (20)
— Circular profile pictures June 15, 2017 Twitter switches from square to circular profile pictures. A design trend that swept all social media.
10% (10)
✅ 280-character limit November 7, 2017 The character limit doubles from 140 to 280. Tested since September. On chrrp it is a per-account setting: 140 stays the default, 280 is opt-in in your profile settings — #Team140 and #Team280 share the same timeline. shipped
✅ Threads (tweetstorms) December 2017 Post connected series of tweets. On chrrp a self-thread stays on one page: reply to yourself and the whole tweetstorm is shown in one go, instead of one click per part. shipped

2018 — Bookmarks, Account Cleanup

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
✅ Bookmarks February 28, 2018 Privately save tweets without liking or retweeting. The feature people had been using Favorites for all along. chrrp has them under /bookmarks — private, no counts, nobody else ever sees them. shipped
— Locked/suspended accounts removed from follower counts July 13, 2018 Visible drops in follower numbers for popular accounts. Some celebrities lost millions of followers overnight.
88% (8)

2019 — New Web Interface, Hide Replies

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
— New desktop web interface (PWA) March–July 2019 Vertical left-side navigation. The “Twitter Web App” progressive web app replaces the legacy 2014 design.
44% (9)
— Hide replies November 2019 Users can hide replies to their tweets. Hidden replies are still viewable behind an extra click.
78% (9)

2020 — Fleets, Reply Controls, Voice Tweets

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
— Voice Tweets (audio) June 2020 Record up to 140 seconds of audio in a tweet. iOS only. Rarely used.
0% (10)
— Reply controls (limit who can reply) August 11, 2020 Choose who can reply: everyone, followers only, or mentioned users only.
75% (8)
— Fleets (stories) November 17, 2020 Ephemeral posts that disappear after 24 hours. Instagram Stories for Twitter. Retired August 2021 due to low adoption.
27% (11)

2021 — Spaces, Twitter Blue, Communities, Super Follows

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
— Twitter Spaces (audio rooms) May 3, 2021 Live audio chat rooms, inspired by Clubhouse. Users with 600+ followers can host.
0% (9)
✅ Twitter Blue (subscription) June 3, 2021 Paid subscription with Undo Tweet, Bookmark Folders, Reader Mode. Launched in Canada and Australia first. chrrp macht das Gegenteil: ein rein freiwilliges Förder-Abo (1–50 €/Monat über Stripe). Es sperrt nichts hinter einer Paywall — jeder Betrag schaltet nur das Gründungsmitglied-Badge frei, der Betrag bleibt privat, jederzeit im Kundenportal kündbar. Alles bleibt für alle kostenlos. shipped
— Fleets retired August 3, 2021 After only 8 months. The fastest feature deprecation in Twitter history.
75% (8)
— Super Follows (creator subscriptions) September 1, 2021 Creators can offer exclusive content to paying followers.
0% (10)
— Communities (themed groups) September 8, 2021 Facebook Groups for Twitter. Tweet to specific community audiences.
56% (9)

2022 — Edit Tweet, Musk Acquisition, Twitter Circle

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
— Twitter Circle May 2022 Share tweets with a selected group of up to 150 people instead of all followers.
0% (13)
— Edit Tweet September 1, 2022 The most requested feature in Twitter history. 30-minute window, up to 5 edits, with edit history visible. Blue subscribers only.
87% (15)
— Elon Musk acquires Twitter October 27, 2022 $44 billion. Twitter goes private. The beginning of the end — or the end of the beginning, depending on who you ask.
0% (17)
— Twitter Blue with verification ($7.99/mo) November–December 2022 Blue checkmark now available to anyone willing to pay. Paused and relaunched after mass impersonation chaos.
0% (11)
— Public view counts on tweets December 23, 2022 Impression counter visible on every tweet. Controversial — many users found it anxiety-inducing.
0% (9)

2023 — Rebranding to X, Long-form Posts, Legacy Verification Removed

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
— Third-party clients banned January 19, 2023 Twitterrific and Tweetbot killed overnight. An era ends.
0% (9)
— Long-form posts (Notes/Articles) February 2023 Up to 25,000 characters. Premium subscribers only. Twitter becomes a blogging platform.
10% (10)
— Algorithm open-sourced March 31, 2023 Twitter’s recommendation algorithm published on GitHub. Revealed that Elon’s tweets got a manual boost.
88% (8)
— Legacy verified checkmarks removed April 20, 2023 All pre-existing blue checks stripped. Verification now requires a Blue/Premium subscription.
0% (8)
— Twitter rebrands to “X” July 23, 2023 The bird logo is replaced with an X. The domain x.com begins redirecting. “Tweets” officially become “posts.” twttr keeps the bird. 🐦
0% (11)
— Audio & video calling October 25, 2023 Call other users directly within the platform. X tries to become a “super app.”
0% (10)

2024 — Grok AI, Premium Tiers, Private Likes

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
— Grok AI integration Early 2024 xAI’s chatbot integrated into X for Premium+ subscribers. AI answers appear alongside search results.
0% (15)
— X Premium tiers (Basic, Premium, Premium+) 2024 Three subscription tiers with varying feature access and ad reduction. twttr remains free for everyone.
8% (13)
— Likes become private by default October 2024 Other users can no longer see what you’ve liked. A significant privacy change. twttr shows favorites publicly on profiles.
40% (10)

2025 — xAI Acquisition

twttr Feature Date Details Community Vote
— xAI acquires X Corp. March 2025 $33 billion. The social platform merges with Musk’s AI company. The “everything app” dream continues.
12% (17)

chrrp originals — things Twitter never had

The timeline above tracks what Twitter built and whether we followed. These are ours: no Twitter row to tick, nothing to vote on, all of it shipped.

twttr Feature Details
✅ The network without AI Every other platform is filling up with machines — generated text nobody wrote, faces that never lived. chrrp goes the other way: it is a human-only network. Every real account carries a green “✓ Mensch” badge next to its name, the timeline is strictly chronological with no ranking algorithm, and posting is capped at a human pace (10/min, 30/hour, 300/day) so bots choke on limits real people never notice. We can’t keep AI out completely — but we’re the only ones seriously trying, and showing how. Read the manifesto.
✅ Bürgschaft (web of trust) chrrp is invite-only, so every account has exactly one person who let them in. We treat that as a human vouch: your inviter stakes their standing on you being real. Your profile shows who vouched for you and how many humans you vouched for. If an account is flagged as a bot, its Bürgschaft “bursts” and shows on the inviter’s profile — a trust network no bot farm can fake and no open-registration rival can copy.
✅ “Live getippt” badge Tweets typed into the box here and now — not pasted in as a block — carry a “✍ live getippt” badge. It describes the action, not the author: a browser agent can type too, so it is a soft signal, not proof of a human. We renamed it from “handgetippt” on purpose — no false promises.
✅ “Wirkt wie KI” melden We don’t auto-detect AI — reliable detection doesn’t exist, and running AI to catch AI would betray the whole idea. Instead any human can flag a suspected-AI account with one tap. Enough distinct reporters surface the account to an admin, who decides. Humans stay the detector; a confirmed bot loses its badge and bursts its Bürgschaft.
✅ Proof of presence (live) A small green “live” dot appears next to people who actually have chrrp open right now. The page heartbeats while visible; no heartbeat, no dot. It is the opposite of a scheduled bot: proof a human is present in this moment.
✅ Menschlicher Puls One light human gesture a day — a single tap answering a rotating question about how you feel. No captcha, just a human moment. The timeline shows how many people were “heute lebendig”, a heartbeat for the whole network.
✅ Frage des Tages (Ritual) Everyone gets the same question each day and answers it in a sentence — and the answers are read together at /ritual. Your answer also appears as a normal tweet in your timeline (marked “via RITUAL”). Unlike the private Puls, this is public and communal: a synchronous human moment for the whole network.
✅ Willkommens-Ritual Freshly joined accounts wear a “🌱 Neu hier” badge for their first days so the community can welcome them, and their profile shows who invited them. When someone joins through your invite, you get a notification — “@x ist über deine Einladung dabei, sag Hallo” — closing the loop with the Bürgschaft.
✅ Founding member numbers Every account carries a number in signup order, starting at 1. Numbers are never reused — leave and yours stays retired.
✅ #Team140 / #Team280 badge Your character limit is public. A small coloured tag next to your username says which side you write on, and both share one timeline.
✅ Live timeline New tweets arrive without a reload, over Server-Sent Events, with long polling as a fallback. No “show 24 new tweets” button to click.
✅ Invite codes Every account gets codes to hand out and can see which ones were used. Growth through someone you know, not through a recommendation engine.
✅ Open books What the platform costs is published to the euro, and logged-in users vote on what gets funded next — /transparency.
✅ Community feature voting The table above is not just a list: every unimplemented row has a vote button. What gets built next is decided there.
✅ Supporter badge Chip in for the running costs and a badge appears next to your name. It unlocks nothing — there is no paid tier, and no ads to remove. /unterstuetzen.
✅ Co-operative (Genossenschaft) under consideration We are seriously thinking about turning chrrp into a registered co-operative, owned by the people who use it instead of by an investor who eventually needs an exit — but only if the economics add up first. It is a direction we are exploring, not a promise. /genossenschaft.
✅ Sponsored hashtags A sponsor can put a 140-character banner on exactly one hashtag. That is the whole advertising model, and it is labelled as such.
✅ Deletion with a 30-day grace period Delete your account and it goes dark at once but survives 30 days; log back in and it returns. After that it is purged for real and the deletion is logged.
✅ The fail whale It lives at /failwhale. On purpose.

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