Twitter celebrated its 10th birthday on Monday, and many are taking the occasion to reflect on its early days.
So who were Twitter's first employees?
To answer that, you have to go all the way back to a company named Odeo.
Odeo was co-founded in 2005 by Evan "Ev" Williams, and the startup was going sideways. About one year in, Odeo employees started building Twitter as a side project. The 140-character platform grew from there.
Most of Odeo/Twitter's earliest employees are no longer at the company. But we trawled through a list of the first 500 Twitter accounts ever created and found 14 early staffers who worked on the product. [Note: The first documented Twitter account begins at 12. Numbers one through 11 were likely test accounts].
One of the early Twitter employees, Crystal Taylor, is still at the company. Most of the others — including all of its founders except for Jack Dorsey — have moved on.
It's worth noting that just because these people all had early access to Twitter, it doesn't mean they all made a fortune when it went public. It's unclear who was given shares when Ev Williams bought Odeo back from investors and restructured Twitter as a new company in 2006.
Regardless, here's what some of the early employees are up to now.
Florian Weber, @csshsh
Twitter account number: N/A
Twitter bio: "Freelance Software Engineer – Formerly: First engineer of Twitter, CTO & Founder of Amen" He didn't get any stock in Twitter.
Current number of followers: 2,802
Date worked for Twitter/Odeo: March 2005 to February 2007
Most Recent Twitter/Odeo title: Lead Ruby on Rails developer
What he's doing now: Freelance Software Engineer
Handle: @csshsh
Blaine Cook, @Blaine
Twitter account number: 246
Twitter bio: "Sociotechnologist. Social solutions for technological problems. CTO / Co-founder at @Poetica. Founding Engineer at @Twitter."
Current number of followers: 14,606
Date worked for Twitter/Odeo: February 2005 to April 2008
Most Recent Twitter/Odeo title: Lead Developer, Twitter CTO
What he's doing now: Founder, Poetica
Handle: @blaine
Ray McClure, @rayreadyray
Twitter account number: 31
Twitter bio: "Hyped on the internet and related activities. Creating immersive desktop, mobile, VR and installation experiences at Dreamboat. VR, WebGL, WebVR, Web Audio"
Current number of followers: 10,768
Date worked for Twitter/Odeo: December 2004 to April 2007
Most Recent Twitter/Odeo title: Actionscript Developer
What he's doing now: Creating immersive desktop, mobile, VR and installation experiences at Dreamboat.
Handle: @rayreadyray