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10 Best First Tweets (Wendy Davis, What?!)

by Andrea Garcia-Vargas

On Thursday, Twitter celebrates eight years of existence. In honor of its eighth birthday, Twitter has unveiled a website called First Tweets, which is exactly what it sounds like: a website showing Twitter users their first Tweet ever. You can go to the website, type in your Twitter handle, and lo and behold, the first words you ever sent out to the Twittersphere!

The website also allows users to type in any existing Twitter handle and see its first Tweet — no signing in necessary. Before we applaud Twitter's gift to us, we're going to point out that this blast from the past might be a little embarrassing for some of us. We can only imagine how distressingly naive we many of us were when we joined Twitter.

"Hello, Twitter, hello world."

"Yes, I'm on Twitter!"

"Hi everyone! Can someone tell me how this works?"

That said, nothing embarrassing popped up when I typed my handle @AndreaGarVar into the website. My first Tweet? Not even a tweet, but a retweet of a New Yorker article talking about Bin Laden. Nothing egregious or weird.

However, looking through first-tweets.com, we definitely found plenty of funny, cute, and jarring first Tweets from notable public figures or organizations. Here are 10 of them.

1. Lady Gaga

We have no idea what she's trying to say.

2. Lorde

This is why we love her.

3. Laverne Cox

On a more somber note...

4. Ellen Page

Given her recent coming out speech, this Tweets is open to interpretation.

5. Occupy Wall Street

"The revolution will not be televised, it will be Tweeted," as the saying goes. This Tweet was back in August 2011, one entire month before "Occupy Wall Street" became a household name. This Tweet is where it all began.

6. Anonymous

If there was ever an epic first Tweet, this is it.

7. Ted Cruz

We're still asking ourselves that question.

8. Wendy Davis

This one's pretty bizarre.

9. Barack Obama

One year before we knew Obama was going to be President — or was going to be the Democratic Party's nominee, period — his first Tweet was about ending Iraq. We're glad to see he fulfilled that promise, at least.

10. Jack Dorsey

But really, the founder of Twitter takes the cake for best first Tweet ever.