The site launched in 2006 and broke into the mainstream in 2008-2009, when user accounts and media attention increased exponentially. For the first two years of its existence, Twitter was used almost exclusively by San Francisco tech workers. By 2009, the bloggers, technologists, and company founders who were its most frequent users had been replaced by musicians, actors, television shows, and news organizations. When I began conducting interviews in 2007, it was possible to have two hundred followers and rank among the top users: the technology had a clubby, insider feel. Popular video blogger Veronica Belmont summed it up: Twitter was very much in the Valley and very much in San Francisco in its early days.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 207