Twitter was launched in 2006. The first Twitter novels appeared in 2008. The origins of the term “Twitterature” are hard to determine, but it was popularized by Aciman and Rensin’s book. Since then the phenomenon has been discussed in the arts and culture sections of several major newspapers. In addition to “twovel”, the terms “twiction” and “tweet fic” (Twitter fiction), “twiller” (Twitter thriller) and “phweeting” (fake tweeting) also exist.

Twitterature has been called a literary genre, but is more accurately an adaptation of various genres to social media. The writing is often experimental or playful; with some authors or initiators seeking to find out how the medium of Twitter affects storytelling or how a story spreads through the medium. A Swedish site called Nanoismer.se was launched in 2011 to “challenge people to write deeper than what Twitter is for”.