Twitter, publicly launched on July 15, 2006, marks its 20th anniversary amid significant global and political events that the platform helped illuminate, according to a journalist’s reflection published by Al Jazeera.

The journalist recalls discovering the internet in 1995 and early efforts to share their voice online before Twitter provided a more dynamic ecosystem. Twitter’s first defining moment for them came during Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution, where the platform shaped discourse differently from traditional media.

They also broke news on Iran’s nuclear talks ahead of major news agencies, filing updates in Arabic and English rapidly. Later, during the war against ISIL (ISIS), Twitter remained a critical tool for timely information.

A pivotal moment came in January 2020 near Baghdad airport, when sources informed the journalist that Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, were in a convoy struck by a US airstrike. The journalist was among the first to report this.

In the summer of 2023, as Elon Musk, the new owner, decided to rename Twitter to X and retire the iconic blue bird logo, the journalist expressed a sense of loss and posted five words reflecting on the change.

This journey through revolutions and wars highlights Twitter’s role as a platform for breaking news and shaping global discourse over two decades.

Sources