---
title: "Which came first, Twitter or Windows?"
description: "Twitter vs Windows: Windows came first, by 21 years — 1985 against 2006. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/twitter-vs-windows/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Twitter or Windows?

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

1985 — 21 years before Twitter

Windows came first, by 21 years. Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0.

## Side by side

|  | Twitter | Windows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2006 | 1985 |
| Date | 2006-03-21 | 1985-11-20 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet. | Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0. |

## 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.

## Windows

Windows 1.0 shipped in November 1985, twenty-two months after the Macintosh, and it was not an operating system — it was a graphical shell running on top of MS-DOS, and remained so until Windows NT in 1993 and the consumer transition with Windows XP in 2001. Version 1.0 could not even overlap windows: they tiled, because Apple's legal position on overlapping windows was unresolved.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Twitter or Windows?

Windows, by 21 years — 1985 against 2006.

### When did Twitter start?

2006. Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet.

### When did Windows start?

1985. Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0.

## Related pages

- [Microsoft or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/microsoft-vs-windows/)
- [Apple or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-windows/)
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- [email or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-windows/)
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- [the Macintosh or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-windows/)
- [the Macintosh or Twitter?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-twitter/)
- [Windows or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/windows-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [Windows or YouTube?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/windows-vs-youtube/)
- [Python or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/python-vs-windows/)
- [Python or Twitter?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/python-vs-twitter/)

## Sources

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