India, July 17 -- From an SMS-inspired platform to the world's real-time information infrastructure, Twitter - now X - evolved from a microblogging experiment into a digital town square over two decades.

Twitter, originally called twttr, launched on July 15, 2006. Months earlier, co-founder Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet: "just setting up my twttr." It took off at the 2007 SXSW conference, when real-time updates made it an instant hit.

Twitter soared after user Chris Messina proposed using the "hashtag" (#) in 2007 to group posts. The retweet soon followed, reshaping how information spread online.

It became a real-time news platform in 2009 when a passenger posted a photo of US Airways Flight 1549 after its Hudson River landing. Du...