You must be new to the online world. Twitter is not new. It just brought what existed before to the Internet itself easily: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cb_simulator

The CompuServe marketers hated that service. They saw no reason for CompuServe to have it or to promote it. Meanwhile, back then, the online world was based on per-hour connect time charges and there were people who had bills of over a thousand dollars a month just from using that part of CompuServe.