---
title: "Which came first, TikTok or Twitter?"
description: "TikTok vs Twitter: Twitter came first, by 10 years — 2006 against 2016. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/tiktok-vs-twitter/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, TikTok or Twitter?

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

2006 — 10 years before TikTok

Twitter came first, by 10 years. Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet.

## Side by side

|  | TikTok | Twitter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2016 | 2006 |
| Date | — | 2006-03-21 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | ByteDance launched Douyin in China; TikTok followed abroad in 2017. | Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet. |

## TikTok

The app launched in China as Douyin in September 2016 and internationally as TikTok in 2017. What made it global was the 2018 acquisition and merger of Musical.ly, a lip-sync app that had launched in 2014 and already had a large Western user base — so part of TikTok is two years older than TikTok. Douyin and TikTok remain separate apps on separate infrastructure.

## 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, TikTok or Twitter?

Twitter, by 10 years — 2006 against 2016.

### When did TikTok start?

2016. ByteDance launched Douyin in China; TikTok followed abroad in 2017.

### When did Twitter start?

2006. Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet.

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## Sources

- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place (/about/)
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]