21 March 2006: Jack Dorsey sends the first tweet
Jack Dorsey posted just setting up my twttr, the first message on the service that became Twitter. It grew into a global platform for news, politics and outrage. Despite its influence, Twitter struggled to make consistent profits, and its stock often disappointed after its 2013 IPO. In 2022 Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion. Cultural importance and investment returns are two different things.
The lesson: A product everyone talks about is not necessarily a business that makes money.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Twitter at the start of 2015 → $1,506 today, vs $3,301 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2015, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 1.5 times the money, but $1,795 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Twitter teaches: Merger contracts matter; Twitter shareholders were paid a premium largely because the company's lawyers had written a deal that the buyer could not easily escape.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $36.00 | $1,506 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $24.00 | $2,258 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $32.00 | $1,694 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Twitter? Every starting year and the full story →
More Twitter history
- 15 July 2006: Twitter opens to the public
- 27 July 2018: Twitter follows Facebook off a cliff
- 6 November 2013: Twitter prices its IPO at $26
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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