---
title: "Which came first, Amazon or Twitter?"
description: "Amazon vs Twitter: Amazon came first, by 12 years — 1994 against 2006. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/amazon-vs-twitter/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Amazon or Twitter?

**Which came first, Amazon or Twitter?: Amazon**

1994 — 12 years before Twitter

Amazon came first, by 12 years. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

## Side by side

|  | Amazon | Twitter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1994 | 2006 |
| Date | 1994-07-05 | 2006-03-21 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state. | Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet. |

## Amazon

Amazon was incorporated on 5 July 1994, originally as Cadabra, and the website opened in July 1995 selling only books. The 1994 incorporation date is used here because it is the company's own founding date; if you mean the shop, 1995 is the answer. Either way it predates Google by three or four years and eBay by about a year.

## Twitter

The first tweet — "just setting up my twttr" — went out on 21 March 2006, and the service opened publicly that July. The 140-character limit came from SMS: a text message allows 160 characters and 20 were reserved for the username. When the limit doubled to 280 in 2017 the SMS constraint had been irrelevant for years.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Amazon or Twitter?

Amazon, by 12 years — 1994 against 2006.

### When did Amazon start?

1994. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

### When did Twitter start?

2006. Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]