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That's not how I remember it. Ever since the beginning circa 2008, it was the one site that was being pushed hard by the mainstream media, celebrities, and marketers. None of it was organic. All the tech nerds were on sites like Digg, old Reddit, or Slashdot.

Early Twitter was used loads by tech nerds as a notifications API.

There definitely was a community of experimentation back in early days.

How you remembered it is anecdotal, it's not relevant for the discussion unless you add something of value.

Way back when is not when it broke mainstream. It's when the service started getting attention.

It was literally pitched as a "micro blog site" for techies to communicate news, and the "app" was 160 character SMS messages.

Nerds used it as a free (as in beer) way of sending alert SMS on server errors. (At least I did).

In 2008, twitter had already started to become mainstream, quickly shifting focus away from nerd interests.

What is the meaning of FWIF ?

Google says "For what it's worth", won't that be FWIW ?

Typo. I meant FWIW

“Just place all that corporate malware on the X, X marks the spot”

Just have to remember that it's X, not Y, that marks the spot.