2025-10-XX: Exploring the Different Generations of Twitter/X's Tweet UI
In the animation in Figure 1, we can see images of four archived versions, or mementos, of the first public tweet, posted on March 21, 2006 by Jack Dorsey (co-founder of Twitter). However, each memento has a different user interface (UI). This is because the UI of Twitter has changed over the years and these mementos were archived at different points in time. The widely popular microblogging platform Twitter (now rebranded as X) was first launched in March 2006, and since then there have been many changes in its UI, including how individual tweets are rendered on the desktop web, which we refer to as the tweet UI. The mementos in Figure 1 show noticeable changes to the tweet UI. Changes to the tweet UI, though subtle to the human eye, can have a significant impact on the performance of certain research tasks. A model trained largely on a dataset of images displayed in the latest tweet UI might struggle to identify elements in images of tweets displayed with an earlier UI. An example of such elements of a tweet UI are the engagement metric symbols. The star symbol in earlier tweet UIs was replaced by a heart symbol in later tweet UIs. As a result, a model trained on images of the latest tweet UI might fail to identify the star symbol in images of earlier tweet UIs. To address this, model training must include different generations of tweet UIs.
Since the live web will always give us the latest UI, we need to use web archives to replay former UIs. Most data sets of tweets (Chen et al. 2021, Naseem et al. 2021) available for research consist of tweet IDs or JSON-encoded API responses. Earlier, we could use the Twitter API to access tweets by hydrating tweet IDs. However, this process did not allow access to deleted tweets or tweets from deleted or suspended accounts. Moreover, the Twitter API is no longer freely available and many communities have migrated to other platforms. Therefore, now to study Twitter is to study archived Twitter. Most research (Scolari 2025, Dijck 2011) on Twitter’s evolution focuses on the factors that shaped its feature development over time. There is a list on Wikipedia of the key developments of Twitter since 2006 which emphasizes financial, legal, and corporate milestones. However, no studies discuss the evolution of the different elements of the tweet UI. Here, we discuss different generations of tweet UIs, which are important for anyone who must study Twitter and its contents via web archives.
We collected archived tweets from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to establish the timeline. We divide the timelines from 2006–2025 into four generations and analyze the changes to the tweet UIs. Jack Dorsey (@jack) posted the first tweet (or at least the first one still publicly available). His account has been well-archived, so this tweet nicely demonstrates the different generations of tweet UIs.
UI Generations of Tweets
Jack posted the first tweet in March 2006. We found the first memento of Jack’s first tweet captured in November 2008, more than two years after Twitter was launched. To get the earliest archived tweet, we executed a CDX API search for Jack’s status URLs. The curl command and the output is shown below:
|
curl -s "http://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=https://twitter.com/jack&from=2006&to=2007" | sort -k 2 | head -n 1 | awk '{print "https://web.archive.org/web/" $2 "/" $3}' https://web.archive.org/web/20070218034409/http://twitter.com:80/jack/statuses/5254943 |
The earliest archived tweet we could find for any of Jack’s status URLs is from February 2007, Since the first archived tweet is not the first tweet, we have started our timeline of generations of the tweet UI from February 2007.
We divided the tweet UI into four generations: Early Twitter, Engagement Era, Transitional Era, and X Platform. A summary of the major changes for each generation is listed below:
| Generation | Major Changes |
|---|---|
| Early Twitter (2007–2011) | Changed orientation of tweet content and metadata: timestamp, username, and profile picture. |
| Engagement Era (2012–2018) | Added buttons and metrics for engagement attributes such as like, reply, comment, retweet, quote tweet, and bookmark. Added verified checkmark and ‘@’ symbol to username. Increased character limit for tweet and display name. Added replies and news content previews to tweets. Overall major aesthetic changes to different elements of the tweet UI. |
| Transitional Era (2019–2022) | Redesigned website and switched to a client-side UI, deprecated the server-side UI which affected archiving services. Added various labels (e.g., fact-check, govt. affiliation) and community notes. |
| X Platform (2023–Present) | Changed domain from Twitter.com to X.com, which affected archiving services. Changed logo to X from the bird symbol. “Tweets” were renamed as “posts” and “retweets” as “reposts.” Introduced different color checkmarks and AI chatbot symbols. Introduced square-shaped profile picture for businesses and brands. |
Early Twitter (2007–2011)
During the Early Twitter generation (2007–2011), the tweet UI changed mainly in the orientation of the tweet content and metadata, including the timestamp, username, and profile picture.
February 2007
The tweet UI in February 2007 (Figure 2) featured a minimalistic layout having limited visual elements and a plain solid-colored background. Along with the tweet content, the metadata included the timestamp, username, a square-shaped profile picture, and the client info (device used to post the tweet). The tweet content appeared in a white, square quote box. The character limit for tweets was 140 and display name was 20.
October 2007
The tweet UI on October 25, 2007 (Figure 3) had slight changes. The alignment of the timestamp changed from right to left.
Figure 3: A tweet archived on October 25, 2007, showing the alignment of the timestamp changed from right to left.
We found a version of the tweet UI from October 27, 2007 (Figure 4) that had a footer with copyright and links to other information (help, about us, contact etc.). However, the presence of this footer was sporadic throughout October 2007. The tweet UI in other mementos from October 2007 appeared the same as Figure 3. We observed that the block for the footer was missing in the source code of the webpage for the tweet UI of October 25, 2007.
Figure 4: A tweet archived on October 27, 2007, showing the footer having copyright and links to other information.
November 2008
The tweet UI in November 2008 (Figure 5) had a major change. A blue twitter logo was added and the orientation of the metadata and tweet content changed. Moreover, the username/handle was added.
Figure 5: A tweet archived in November 2008, showing a blue Twitter logo,the username/handle, and orientation of the metadata and tweet content changed.
December 2008
The tweet UI in December 2008 (Figure 6) had slight changes. The footer started to appear again with copyright info and links to other information. We observed the block for the footer was included again in the source code of the webpage. In the header, a login/join button was added. Other changes include the month being abbreviated in the timestamp.
Figure 6: A tweet archived in December 2008, showing the footer, login/join button on the header, and abbreviated month in the timestamp.
June 2009
A blue checkmark was introduced to indicate verified accounts in June 2009 to cope with account impersonation. However, the blue checkmark appeared only on a user’s account page (Figure 7) but not on an individual tweet (Figure 8).
Figure 7: An account page archived in June 2009, showing a blue checkmark added on a user’s account page to indicate a verified account.
Figure 8: A tweet archived in June 2009, showing the blue checkmark does not appear on an individual tweet.
September 2009
In late 2009, Google proposed to make AJAX-driven web applications crawlable by search engines to make content available for indexing. With this change, Twitter introduced a JavaScript heavy interface using hashbang (#!) URLs. However, hashbang-style URLs slowed down content rendering, and Twitter later in 2012 decided to withdraw this change to improve initial page load performance.
Late 2009–Late 2010
In late 2009, the retweet feature was made available to limited users to test its functionality for sharing tweets. Before 2009, users used the "RT @username" convention to share tweets. The retweet feature brought a major change on the social media platform. Though the intention for introducing the retweet button was to spread information more effectively, the feature received criticism regarding its impact on social media users. Some argued that users put minimal effort into thoughtfulness before sharing, which resulted in harmful ideas going viral. However, we did not find any evidence in the Wayback Machine for the retweet feature on @jack's tweets until October 2010.
October 2010–2011
The tweet UI of a user's account page from October 2010 until 2011 showed a square-looped arrow symbol for a retweet as well as a textual description for the retweet counts (Figure 9). However, an individual tweet only showed the textual description of the retweet counts and no retweet symbol (Figure 10).
Figure 9: A tweet archived in October 2010, showing a square-looped arrow symbol for the retweet feature.
Figure 10: A tweet archived in April 2011, showing textual description of the retweet counts and no retweet symbol.
A summary for the major UI changes for tweets during Early Twitter is demonstrated in the following slides:
Engagement Era (2012–2018)
The Engagement Era ranged from 2012 to 2018, when symbols were added for engagement metrics such as like, reply, retweet, and bookmark. The username had a blue verified checkmark (if the user was verified) and the prepended “@” symbol. Other changes included an increased character limit for display name and tweet; adding tweet replies and news content previews. Overall, there were major aesthetic changes in different elements of the tweet UI.
June 2012
The tweet UI in June 2012 had major changes (Figure 11). There was a large change in the orientation of the metadata. The username had the “@” symbol prepended. Different symbols were added for engagement metrics: reply, retweet, and favorite. Previously, replies were done by prepending a tweet with "@username" to reply to a specific user. An option for embedding the tweet in a webpage was added. The header had a “follow” button, and the design of the footer also changed.
Figure 11: A tweet archived in June 2012, showing different symbols for engagement metrics, option for embedding a tweet, prepended “@” symbol to username, and design of header, footer changed.
Another change in June 2012 is that the content preview became available for posted links in a tweet (Figure 12).
November 2012
The tweet UI in November 2012 had a few additions (Figure 13). The blue checkmark was added beside the display name, tweet replies were added, and exact counts were added for the engagement metrics: retweet and favorite. The client info (device used to post the tweet) was removed temporarily in August 2012.
Visible counters for engagement metrics also received criticism initially regarding its impact on social media users. The visible counters for engagement metrics stimulated a reinforcement behavioral posting pattern among social media users. Similar to a ‘rat lever’ experience, high counts serve like instant rewards, and users are more inclined to post content that would receive maximized engagement. Researchers noted that this led to users posting and sharing morally outrageous content more on Twitter.
Figure 13: A tweet archived in November 2012, showing blue checkmark, visible counters for engagement metrics, and tweet replies.
January 2013
The tweet UI in January 2013 had a minor addition to engagement metrics with the “...” (ellipsis) symbol to indicate “more” options (Figure 14).
Figure 14: A tweet archived in January 2013, showing the “...” (ellipsis) symbol added for “more” options.
August 2013
We observed two changes to the tweet UI in August 2013. On August 8, 2013 the tweet replies were absent (Figure 15). Then, the tweet UI on August 21, 2013 had news previews added (Figure 16).
Figure 15: A tweet archived on August 8, 2013, showing tweet replies absent.
Figure 16: A tweet archived on August 21, 2013, showing tweet replies absent and news previews added.
March 2014
The tweet UI in March 2014 had slight change with the sizing of the elements and orientation being a little different (Figure 17). The symbol on the “follow” button changed from the Twitter bird logo to an “add user” symbol.
Figure 17: A tweet archived in March 2014, showing sizing and orientation of elements changed, the “follow” button’s symbol changed, and tweet replies still absent.
June 2014
The color of engagement buttons changed to gray and footer changed to blue in the tweet UI in June 2014 (Figure 18).
Figure 18: A tweet archived in June 2014, showing the color changed for engagement buttons and the footer.
November 2014
The tweet UI in November 2014 had annotations removed from engagement metrics (Figure 19). The color of the footer changed from blue to gray. Tweet replies were still absent, but news previews remain.
Figure 19: An archived tweet in November 2014, showing annotations removed from engagement metrics, tweet replies were removed, and color of footer changed.
February 2015
Tweet replies reappeared in the tweet UI of February 2015 (Figure 20).
April 2015
The tweet UI in April 2015 had news previews removed but tweet replies remained (Figure 21). In April 2015, quote tweets (i.e., retweets with comments) were another addition to the UI. Previously, the “QT @username” convention was used for quote tweets. Similar to the adverse effect of the retweet button, the use of quote tweets was also criticized. People often used quote tweets to ridicule or humiliate someone by taking the control of how the quoted tweet is framed. Figure 22 shows a quote tweet (gray color outlined box) from Jack’s archived account page in 2015.
Figure 21: A tweet archived in April 2015, showing news content previews removed.
Figure 22: An account page archived in April 2015, showing a quote tweet (gray color outlined box).
July 2015
In July 2015, Twitter decided to remove custom backgrounds from homepage and user profiles. They replaced the background with all-white background (Figure 23). However, the UI background of individual tweets still showed the custom background (Figure 24). The header for a tweet UI also included a banner that included the bird symbol (Twitter logo), search, and sign in/login options.
Figure 23: An account page archived in July 2015, showing all-white background.
Figure 24: A tweet archived in July 2015, showing custom background.
August 2015
In August 2015, individual tweets were displayed in an HTML lightbox over the user’s profile screen (Figure 25). Moreover, tweet replies were connected by vertical lines to the original tweet, and this grouping became known as a “thread.”
Figure 25: A tweet archived in August 2015, showing a tweet displayed in an HTML lightbox over the user’s profile screen and tweet replies grouped by vertical lines.
November 2015
The tweet UI from November 2015 has “favorite” (star symbol) replaced by “like” (heart symbol) (Figure 26).
Figure 26: A tweet archived in November 2015, showing “favorite” (star symbol) replaced by “like” (heart symbol).
June 2016
The tweet UI from June 2016 had engagement metric added next to the action buttons, though the more accurate count still exists just under the tweet (Figure 27).
Figure 27: A tweet archived in June 2016, showing engagement metrics added next to the action buttons.
August 2017
The tweet UI from August 2017 had a few aesthetic changes, like the change to a circular profile picture. The engagement buttons and the “follow” button were visually enhanced (Figure 28). Additionally, the “ellipsis” button for the “more” options were removed. The downward arrow dropdown menu beside the “follow” button included options for embedding and copying the link of the tweet. A new label “replying to” was also added specifying which specific user an author is replying to.
Figure 28: A tweet archived in August 2017, showing circular profile picture, visually enhanced engagement buttons, a downward arrow dropdown menu beside “follow” button, and “replying to” added to tweet replies.
September 2017
In September 2017, a major change was that the tweet character count increased from 140 to 280. Figure 29 shows an archived tweet in September 2017 having an increased number of tweet characters.
Figure 29: A tweet archived in September 2017, showing an increased number of tweet characters.
November 2017
In November 2017, the display name character limit changed from 20 to 50. Figure 30 shows an archived tweet in January 2018 utilizing the longer display name. The display name shows a total of 22 characters including the space and because of the character limit, this person’s name would not have been displayable prior to the change.
Figure 30: A tweet archived in January 2018, with a long display name.
February 2018
The bookmark feature was introduced in Twitter in February 2018. However, the change was not reflected in the Wayback Machine until around June 2022. In June 2022, new UI changes started to appear in the web archives. We observed in an archived tweet from June 24, 2022 that an upward arrow button was added that included bookmark and other sharing options (Figure 31).
Figure 31: A tweet archived in June 2022, showing an upward arrow added for bookmark and other sharing options.
A summary for the major UI changes for tweets during Engagement Era is demonstrated in the following slides:
Transitional Era (2019–2022)
The Transitional Era ranged from 2019 to 2022. The major changes in this generation were different modes (background colors) for tweets, a visual convergence of the desktop and mobile UIs, and a switch to a client-side rendered UI while the server-rendered UI was deprecated. These changes affected archiving services. Other changes included adding labels (e.g., fact-check, government affiliation) and community notes to counter the spread of misleading content.
March 2019
Initially, Twitter had a white background for a tweet, which was known as light-mode. In 2016, a blue-grayish background, known as night-mode, was introduced as a power-saving feature. Later in March 2019, another pitch-black background, known as dark-mode was introduced. Since then, Twitter now has 3 background colors for tweets: light-mode (white), dim-mode (blue-grayish), and dark-mode (pitch-black). Figure 32 shows a dim-mode and Figure 33 shows a dark mode tweet example from 2025.
Figure 32: Tweet example of light-mode from 2025.
Figure 33: Tweet example of dim-mode from 2025.
Figure 34: Tweet example of dark-mode from 2025.
May 2020
Figure 35: Tweet example from March 2021, showing a fact-check label.
Figure 36: Tweet example from April 2021, showing a label for violating Twitter rules.
June 2020
In June 2020, Twitter deprecated the server-side UI (legacy version) and switched to a new client-side UI. But, the change in the server-side UI happened later around June 2022. Kritika investigated when the server-side UI change started to appear based on some well-archived accounts. For Jack’s first tweet, we observed that the change in archive for the new UI appeared on June 24, 2022 (Figure 36). However, the side panels such as navigation menus or trending sections were missing in the archived version. While server-side pages were easily archived (because of no API calls), client-side rendering led to incomplete or erroneous replays, because crawlers either did not issue API calls, or the calls were delayed. Client info started to appear again in the new UI.
Figure 37: A tweet archived in June 2022, showing the new UI change, but side panels missing.
August 2020
Twitter started adding labels to government and state-affiliated accounts in August 2020 as shown in Figure 37. However, the change in tweet UI was not reflected in the archive until late June 2022. Figure 38 shows a tweet archived in June 2022 where the label exists. Twitter dropped these labels in April 2023. The count of quote tweets were also added to the new UI along with retweets and like counts during this time.
Figure 38: A tweet example in 2021, showing the government affiliated label.
Figure 39: A tweet archived in June 2022, showing the government affiliated label.
November 2022
In November 2022, the client info was removed again. Figure 39 shows a tweet archived in December 2022 where the client info has been removed.
Figure 40: A tweet archived in December 2022, showing the client info removed.
December 2022
Community notes were introduced in December 2022 for fact-checking purposes. Figure 40 shows a tweet example from March 2023 with a community note. Although changes to the new UI started appearing in the Wayback Machine around late June 2022, the archived version of this tweet from March 2023 showed the new UI but did not contain the community note (Figure 41). Other mementos from 2024 and 2025 resulted in replay issues. Another addition to the new UI during this time was view counts of a tweet.
Figure 41: Tweet example from March 2023.
Figure 42: A tweet archived in March 2023, showing the community note missing.
A summary for the major UI changes for tweets during Transitional Era is demonstrated in the following slides:
X Platform (2023–Present)
The X Platform ranges from 2023 to the present (2025). The major change for this generation was the re-branding to “X,” which affected archiving services. Other changes included changing the logo from the bird symbol to “X,” introducing different color checkmarks, and the Grok AI chatbot symbol.
April 2023
In April 2023, a new button for the bookmarks (ribbon symbol) was included, which was previously included with the share button (upward arrow). Figure 42 shows a tweet archived in April 2023.
Figure 43: A tweet archived in April 2023, showing a ribbon symbol added for bookmarks.
July 2023
In July 2023, Twitter was rebranded to X. Tweet UIs from this timeline had side panels and tweet replies missing in the archived version. Figure 43 shows a tweet archived in July 2023.
Figure 44: A tweet archived in July 2023, showing side panels and tweet replies missing.
December 2023
In September 2023, “tweets” were renamed as “posts” and “retweets” as “reposts.” In December 2023, the new tweet UI along with side panels started to appear having the “X” logo but with no replies (Figure 44). The “...” (ellipsis) symbol was included again for “more” options. However, some engagement metrics were missing.
Figure 45: A tweet archived in December 2023, showing side panels having the “X” logo, but tweet replies and some engagement metrics missing.
May 2024
On May 17, 2024, the domain name was changed from Twitter.com to X.com. For URLs using the Twitter.com domain, the Wayback Machine failed to replay the tweet content for the 2024 mementos of Jack’s first tweet (Figure 45). For the X.com domain, the archived mementos are redirected to a page showing “The page is unavailable for archiving” (Figure 46).
Figure 46: A tweet archived in May 2024 using the Twitter.com domain, showing the tweet content is missing.
Figure 47: A tweet archived in May 2025 using the X.com domain, showing a redirected page “The page is unavailable for archiving.”
July 2024
The tweet UI of the mementos for Jack’s first tweet for the X.com domain from July to December 2024 showed the tweet content but with no replies (Figure 47). Engagement metrics started to appear again.
Figure 48: A tweet archived in July 2024, showing tweet content and engagement metrics, but with no replies.
April 2025
For the Twitter.com domain, the Wayback Machine still failed to replay tweet content for the 2025 mementos of Jack’s first tweet. However, we found a memento of Jack’s first tweet in April 17, 2025 (Figure 48) for X.com that replayed the tweet content completely, but showed reduced information. The tweet UI displayed the count of tweet replies, but not the replies. This is because the user agent of the archive was not authenticated. However, previous mementos from 2025 for this tweet failed to replay the tweet content. Figure 49 shows a live version of the tweet from June 3, 2025.
Figure 49: A tweet archived in April 2025, showing reduced information because the user agent of the archive was not authenticated.
Figure 50: Live tweet example from June 2025.
Other recent changes
Different color checkmarks: The blue verified checkmark was initially meant for authentic and notable users. In April 2023, Twitter started a legacy verification program where users are allowed to have a verified checkmark only if they are part of the subscription program. Two other colors are introduced: gold and gray. The gray checkmark is used for government organizations (Figure 50) and the gold checkmark is used for business organizations (Figure 51).
Affiliation badge/company symbol: There now appears a symbol beside a verified checkmark that indicates that a user is linked to a verified organization. Figure 49 shows a black square-shaped symbol next to the verified checkmark which is linked to company Square.
Square-shaped profile picture: Brands and business organizations now have square-shaped profile pictures (Figures 50, 51).
AI chatbot symbol: The Grok AI chatbot symbol now appears on the top right-corner of a tweet (Figures 50, 51).
Figure 51: Live tweet example from June 2025.
Figure 52: Live tweet example from June 2025.
A summary for the major UI changes for tweets during the X Platform transition is demonstrated in the following slides:
It may be noted that archived tweets may not always recreate the exact tweet. Figure 52 shows such an example where the Wayback Machine recreated the tweet from the archived JSON and not from the actual HTML from the server. This issue is crucial because if a tweet gets deleted from the live web and the archived copy does not replay all the elements of the tweet UI, then classifiers could likely be fooled. For example, the engagement buttons are part of the tweet UI and classifiers looking for that evidence could be fooled for incomplete archived replays that do not contain engagement buttons.
Figure 53: A tweet archived in September 2025, showing the Wayback Machine recreated the tweet from the archived JSON.
Michael L. Nelson discussed about this issue in the following tweet thread:
@archiveis has the text (see "view source" pic), but the window covers it & @archiveis strips all .js from pages, so it can't be dismissed.@waybackmachine recreates the tweet from the archived .json; it's not the actual .html from the server on 2025-09-12 but it's "good enough" pic.twitter.com/X7UimefYCM
— Michael L. Nelson (@phonedude_mln) October 1, 2025
Summary
This survey will further help researchers to understand the importance of considering the dynamic behavior of the social media environment as a crucial factor for social media research. Since the only way to study past Twitter is to study archived Twitter, this discussion will also help researchers understand the different UIs that they will encounter in the web archives and adjust their HTML scraping techniques accordingly. In summary, the Early Twitter generation introduced a basic structural framework for desktop HTML. The technical changes of the Transitional Era and X Platform generations brought a dramatic shift for archiving services. Of the four generations, the Engagement Era had the most notable changes in the tweet UI. A lot of engagement features were added during this time which had a significant impact on social media users.
We have listed below some major features that impacted changes to the tweet UIs over the years:
Verified checkmark
Retweet feature
Engagement metrics
Thread, quote tweets, and likes
Character limit increase for tweets and display name
Labels (e.g., fact-check, govt. affiliation) added to tweets
Community notes and client info removed
Twitter rebranded to X
URL address changed from Twitter.com to X.com
Other recent changes to the tweet UI
The features are highlighted using example of tweets in the following slides:
| Timeline | Changes |
|---|---|
| February 2007 (first found UI after Twitter’s launch in March 2006) | Minimalist layout consisted of tweet content and metadata: timestamp, username, square-shaped profile picture, and client info. The tweet appeared in a white square quote box. The character limit for tweets was 140 and display name was 20. |
| August 2007 | Timestamp alignment changed from right to left. |
| October 2007 | Some UIs had a footer with copyright and links to other information (i.e., contact, help, about us etc.) |
| November 2008 | A blue Twitter logo added, orientation of metadata changed, display name added. |
| December 2008 | Footer appeared again, header having login/join button added, month became abbreviated in the timestamp. |
| June 2009 | Blue checkmark added, but not on individual tweets. |
| September 2010 | Introduced hashbang-style (#!) URLs, but it was withdrawn later in 2012. |
| October 2010 | Retweet feature added, but individual tweets had only textual description of retweet counts. |
| June 2012 | Major change in the orientation of metadata, header, and footer. Symbols added for engagement metrics, “@” prepended before username, content preview became available, embedding tweet option was added. |
| November 2012 | Blue checkmark added beside display name, tweet replies added, count for engagement metrics added, client info removed temporarily. |
| January 2013 | “...” (ellipsis) symbol added for “more” options. |
| August 2013 | Tweet replies removed and news content previews added. |
| March 2014 | Sizing of elements and orientation slightly changed. “Follow” button’s logo changed from bird to “add user.” |
| June 2014 | The color of the engagement button changed to gray and the footer changed to blue. |
| November 2014 | Annotations of engagement metrics removed, footer changed from blue to gray. |
| February 2015 | Both tweet replies and news content previews appeared. |
| April 2015 | News content previews were removed, but tweet replies existed. Quote tweet feature added. |
| July 2015 | Custom background removed from account page, but still appeared for individual tweets. Header changed to a banner having search, sign in/login options with a bird logo. |
| August 2015 | Individual tweets were displayed in an HTML lightbox over the user’s profile screen. Tweet replies were grouped by vertical lines (thread). |
| November 2015 | “Favorite” (start symbol) replaced by “like” (heart symbol). |
| June 2016 | Engagement metric numbers added next to the action buttons. |
| August 2017 | Aesthetic changes in buttons, profile picture became circular, “more” options replaced by a downward arrow drop-down menu, “replying to” added to tweet replies. |
| September 2017 | Tweet character count increased from 140 to 280. |
| November 2017 | The display name character changed from 20 to 50. |
| February 2018 | Bookmark feature introduced as an upward arrow, but changes in the archive reflected in June 2022. |
| March 2019 | Dark-mode (pitch-black) background introduced along with dim-mode (blue-graying) and light-mode (white). |
| May 2020 | Fact-check and Twitter violating rules labels added, but archive failed replaying the labels. |
| June 2020 | Switched to a new client-side UI which reflected in the archive later in June 2022. However, the archived version had side panels missing. Client info started to appear again. |
| August 2020 | Labels for state and government-affiliated organizations were added, but dropped in April 2023. Count of quote tweets added. All changes reflected in the archive in June 2022. |
| November 2022 | Client info removed. |
| December 2022 | Community notes were added, but the archive failed replaying the notes. View counts for a tweet were added. |
| April 2023 | Ribbon-shaped button separately added for bookmark. |
| July 2023 | Rebranded to X. Tweet UIs had side panels and replies missing. |
| December 2023 | “Tweets” were renamed as “posts” and “retweets” as “reposts.” The new UI with side panels started to appear having the X logo, but with no replies. |
| May 2024 | Twitter.com domain changed to X.com. URLs having Twitter domain failed to replay the tweet content in the archive. URLs having X domain redirected to a page “unavailable for archiving” in the archive. |
| July 2024 | The archived version for X domain displayed the new UI with the tweet, side panels, X logo, but with no replies. |
| April 2025 | The archived version for Twitter domain still failed to replay the tweet content. The archived version for X domain and live version UI matched. |
| Other recent changes | Different color checkmarks and AI chatbot symbols introduced. Square-shaped profile picture introduced for business and brands. |
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