The Patriots reached a Twitter milestone after Sunday's game against the Bills. The official Patriots Twitter account earned its 4 millionth follower, making it the first NFL team to reach an audience of that size on the platform.
That's a whole lot of people reading each character, retweeting game stats and favoriting behind-the-scenes videos. From the beginning of the Patriots Twitter presence to now, things have changed. A lot.
It all began on April 21, 2009, a fateful day for a thrilling and witty first tweet.
Welp, maybe not. Things could only go up from there, and they did. Eventually.
In the age of the Internet, it may as well have been years since Twitter did away with the 140 character limit. Before accounts had the freedom of 280 characters (and way before threading was a thing), they had to get creative to jam everything into a single tweet.
Long before the days of tagging people in photos, precious characters were wasted on tagging handles in tweets, and each retweet began with RT.
Twitter has come a long way, and Patriots fans who have followed from the start have been there for some of the greatest moments in franchise history, iconic guest appearances and triumphant moments. There was our first 280 character tweet.
And some with no characters at all.
Some need little explanation.
There has been fun banter with unexpected accounts.
And nods to hit TV shows.
But no matter where the Patriots have taken followers over the years, it is all for the fans. To those who have been there since the beginning, thank you! To those who have yet to follow, what are you waiting for? Here's to our next Drive for 5 ... million.
