From Chadwick Boseman to chicken nuggets: What the biggest ever tweets say about Twitter on its 15th birthday

It is the social media platform that started as a text messaging service for friends before becoming a a presidential bullhorn.

And on 15 July 2021, Twitter celebrates its fifteenth birthday.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent out the company’s first tweet on 21 March 2006, writing “just setting up my twitter”.

But it was not until 15 July of the same year that Mr Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams and Biz Stone publicly launched the site, calling Twitter, “a new mobile service that helps groups of friends bounce random thoughts around the world with SMS.”

The company’s reach has grown enormously since, and in April Twitter wrote that it had reached an average of 199m “monetizable daily active users”, and saw more than 500m tweets sent per day.

While Donald Trump may no longer be able to use the platform, and has threatened to sue it for kicking him off in the wake of the US Capitol riot in January, Twitter is credited, along with other social media giants such as Facebook, of helping the former Celebrity Apprentice star win the White House.

But despite his voluminous use of Twitter before his ban, the one-term president does not appear in any of the most liked or retweeted posts in the company’s history.

For all the criticism that exists of Twitter as a space where cruelty and abuse are often common place, the most popular posts are, perhaps surprisingly, more compassionate than expected.

The most-liked tweet ever was posted on 28 August 2020 from the account of actor Chadwick Boseman by his family to announce the Black Panther actor’s death.

“It is with immeasurable grief that we confirm the passing of Chadwick Boseman,” the tweet read.

“Chadwick was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016, and battled it these last 4 years as it progressed to stage IV.”

The tweet has now received more than 7.3m likes on the platform.

Following that in second place is a 12 August tweet by Barack Obama, in which he posted a Nelson Mandela quote alongside a picture of three children of different races looking at the 44th president from a window.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion…” Mr Obama tweeted, which has received 4.2m likes.

On 20 January Joe Biden took to Twitter ahead of his inauguration, and posted “It’s a new day in America”, which received 4.1m likes.

Mr Obama posted his sympathies after the January 2020 death of Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven other passengers, which received 3.8m likes.

“Kobe was a legend on the court and just getting started in what would have been just as meaningful a second act,” he tweeted.

“To lose Gianna is even more heartbreaking to us as parents. Michelle and I send love and prayers to Vanessa and the entire Bryant family on an unthinkable day.”

Actor Andy Milionakis secured the fifth most-liked tweet ever when he posted about the SpaceX demo flight launch, with two NASA astronauts onboard.

The May 2020 launch, a milestone for Elon Musk’s space company, came as the presidential campaign heated up and a wave of racial justice protests took place around the US.

“Congratulations to the Astronauts that left Earth today. Good choice,” he tweeted, which received 3.6m likes.

Monica Stephens is an assistant professor in geography at the University of Buffalo and analyses social media to understand trends in society, including politics.

“What I think is evident from those lists is the changing demographics and geography of Twitter over the last 15 years,” she told The Independent.

“The platform is substantially more global and has more users now than ever before, which is why the most liked tweets are all within the last four years and the majority from the last year.

“It’s really nice that the most-liked tweets are very human.”

The top retweeted posts of all time are topped by a pair from 2019 by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who promised to share $925,000 between 100 randomly selected people who shared it.

His tweets received 4.19m and 3.51m alike, and were followed in third place by Carter Wilkerson’s 2017 request for help to land himself a year of free chicken nuggets from fast food chain Wendy’s, which got retweeted 3.28m times.

This was followed in fourth place by the announcement of Chadwick Boseman’s death, which received 3.02m retweets.

And in fifth place is the group selfie photo posted by Ellen DeGeneres at the 2014 Oscars, which got 3.01m retweets.

“If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best photo ever,” the caption read.

Dr Steven Buckley is an associate lecturer at the University of the West of England and a media critic.

“One of the things that the most liked and retweeted tweets tells us is that the planform, whilst being known for its toxicity, does in fact value charity, good will and humour,” he told The Independent.

“Over the years, Twitter has excelled in two key areas. The ability to share breaking news and the capacity for protracted, unnuanced, loud and unhelpful shouting matches about current affairs.”

And he added that the platform has a number of challenges it still needs to face.

“Going forward, Twitter still has many challenges it needs to deal with, notably toxicity, harassment and scams. Whilst some of these can be addressed through algorithms and policy changes, fundamentally Twitter is a reflection of our society,” he said.

“If we don’t like what we see on the platform, don’t hate the platform, hate the people on it.”