We just discovered this pretty neat Twitter tool that lets you find the first tweet of any user. It’s easy to use: just put in a username, then voila – get taken back in time to a day when Twitter wasn’t blocked in China. It got me thinking: who here were among the earliest Twitter adopters?
(That’s a fairly uninspired question, admittedly, but if you find any good first tweets, let us know.)
Expat mags:
just getting started in life, twitter and more
— City Weekend (@cityweekend) August 2, 2007
Welcome back, traffic, smog and honking! http://tinyurl.com/6ld243/2008 — thebeijinger (@thebeijinger) September 17, 2008
I’m looking at http://www.timeout.com/beijing — NickP (@TimeOutBeijing) January 14, 2009
We’re online! — The World of Chinese (@WorldofChinese) September 15, 2010
@brawl on the wall over at #glee gym# watching the 1st day training for wht collar boxing in Beijing! pic.twitter.com/qxeDKIXM — That’s Beijing (@Thats_Beijing) August 17, 2012
Some first tweets of those with five-digit followers:
How much does this cost to use from beijing? — Bill Bishop (@niubi) April 22, 2007
following http://twitter.com/zuola
— Danwei (@danwei) June 1, 2007
Deciding to get in the habit of Twittering, against all better judgment. — Kaiser Kuo (@KaiserKuo) January 22, 2008
http://danwei.org — Jeremy Goldkorn 金玉米 (@goldkorn) October 23, 2008
Parents of schoolchildren who died in the Sichuan earthquake a year ago still demand justice from Chinese officials. http://bit.ly/lhB08
— Edward Wong (@comradewong) May 11, 2009
Others:
Kro’s Nest on Gongti: closed a few days ahead of original plan. Kro says will reopen on Aug 24 and that his new place will open July 24. — beijingboyce (@beijingboyce) July 18, 2008
Campaigner wages war on cancerous river–on water Pollution in China http://bit.ly/Z7Szs
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) June 22, 2009
China’s predicted growth has risen from 7.2 percent to 8.4 percent, according to the World Bank http://bit.ly/4Fjhd2
— China Daily USA (@ChinaDailyUSA) November 6, 2009
I posted 2 photos on Facebook in the album "2008 Beijing Olympics" http://t.co/IK7sw2x
— 大山 Dashan (@akaDashan) August 31, 2011
Hello. I’m Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times. Glad to be a Twitter user. @globaltimesnews — Hu Xijin | 胡锡进 (@HuXijinGT) January 29, 2012
And because you were wondering:
我和 @佐拉 在聊天。在学习@的用法。
— 艾未未 Ai Weiwei (@aiww) May 31, 2009
Ai Weiwei learned pretty fast.
For more fun with Twitter, check out our list of China Twitter users you probably already follow.
