Ivy Bean: World’s Oldest Twitter User Dies

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Ivy Bean, thought to be the oldest Twitter user, died at 104. Fittingly, her death was announced on Twitter.

Bean started tweeting last year from her retirement home in the U.K. town of Bradford and had amassed some 56,000 followers at the time of her death. In the last weeks, her Twitter account took on a more somber tone, as staff at the retirement home posted frequent updates about her failing health, finally ending with a post this morning: “ivy passed away peacefully at 12.08 this morning.”

Bean tweeted frequently about her favorite meal (fish and chips, snuck to her in the hospital in her last days) and even made a few celebrity friends. Ex-PM Gordon Brown invited her to meet in London, and she earned a visit from singer Peter Andre.

As the Guardian points out, the phrase “Ivy Bean” hit Twitter’s trending topics list this morning, a fitting sendoff for a woman unafraid to embrace new technology and a slew of new people to her last.