Twitter’s Dorsey auctions first ever tweet attracting $600,000 bid

Social media giant’s co-founder and CEO sells 15-year-old post, which reads: ‘just setting up my twttr’

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (Reuters)

Twitter boss Jack Dorsey is selling the first-ever tweet posted on the platform, and bidding has already reached $600,000 ($434,000).

The famous March 2006 tweet by Mr Dorsey, which reads “just setting up my twttr”, has been listed as a unique digital signature on a website for selling tweets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Bidding for the post reached $88,888 within minutes of the Twitter co-founder tweeting a link to the listing on tweets marketplace Valuables by Cent on Friday night.

Old offers for the tweet suggest it was put for sale in December, but the listing gained more attention after Mr Dorsey’s tweet on Friday.

NFTs are digital files that serve as digital signatures to certify who owns photos, videos and other online media.

Mr Dorsey’s 15-year-old tweet is one of the most famous tweets on the platform and could attract bidders to pay a high price for the digital memorabilia.

The highest bid for the tweet stood at $600,000 at 2pm GMT on Saturday.

Valuables, which launched three months ago, compares the buying of tweets to buying an autographed baseball card.

“There is only one unique signed version of the tweet, and if the creator agrees to sell, you can own it forever.”

A tweet’s buyer will get an autographed digital certificate, signed using cryptography, that will include metadata of the original tweet, according to the Valuables website. The tweet will continue to be available on Twitter.

Tweets sold on Valuables see 95 per cent of the money going to the original tweet creator and 5 per cent for Valuables.

The sale of Dorsey’s first tweet follows an announcement last month that Twitter will allow users to charge for access to exclusive content as part of a plan called Super Follows.

The feature will allow people to lock their posts behind a paywall, meaning that only paying followers, Super Followers, can see them.