Twitter is known for being one of the most sought-after social networking websites all over the world where the members communicate with one another through ‘tweets,’ or messages that are 140 characters long. The site even provides news across various categories such as politics, entertainment, sports and much more.
- Industry: The Internet, Social Network, and News
- Founded: March 21, 2006
- Founder(s): Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Noah Glass, Biz Stone
- Headquarters: San Fransisco, California, USA
- Subsidiaries: Vine, Periscope
- Website: twitter.com
History of Twitter
Twitter was founded by Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone. It was a result of a day of racking the brains of the Podcasting Company workers. Jack Dorsey who was an undergraduate then and while studying at the New York University introduced the brilliant idea of a person making use of the SMS service for interacting with a tiny group. The original ‘code name’ of the Twitter service was ‘twttr’ which was inspired by the 5-character long SMS American shortcodes and Flickr. Moreover, the Twitter domain was in use already and six months post the launching of ‘twttr,’ the Company members bought the Twitter domain and named the service ‘Twitter.’ Jack Dorsey even explained the meaning of Twitter. He explained the name suggested a burst of shot insignificant information like the chirping of birds.
‘Twitter’was set up on the 21st of March 2006 and launched on the 15th of July 2006. Twitter Inc. is a San Francisco based Company with over 25 offices all over the globe. The developers of this service had initially considered the shortcode ‘10958’ but changed it later to’40404’ for the ease of remembering and use. Work on this project began on the 21st of March 2006 when Jack Dorsey published his first Twitter message at exactly 12:50 p.m. (PST, which said ‘ just setting my ‘twttr’ account.’ The service gained popularity on an international level rapidly. It had over 100 million users posting 340 million tweets in a day.
Long Description
Twitter has been described as the ‘SMS of Internet’ as it was counted as among the 10 most visited and popular websites in the world in the year 2013. The website has partnered with Buzzfeed and Bloomberg for providing video streaming services to its users.
The ‘tweets’ or the messages in Twitter are visible publicly by default but the users can restrict the delivery of messages to their followers only. The users can send their tweets through the website of Twitter or any external compatible applications, such as smartphones or by the ‘Short Message Service’ that is available only in a few countries. The users can even subscribe to the tweets of other users and this is known as ‘following’ and the subscribers are known as followers, or tweeps.
Twitter permits its users to update profiles through their mobile phones either through apps or by ‘text messaging.’ Users can forward their personal tweets to their own private feed through a process called ‘retweeting.’ Twitter revolves around the followers and when you follow another user that person’s tweets appear on your Twitter page in a reverse ‘chronological order.’
On the basis of a research published in the month of April 2014 about 44% of the users never tweeted. On the 21st of October 2009, the 1st ‘tweet’ was sent to earth from the space. Jeff Williams and Nicola Stott participated in the live ‘tweetup’. They were present in the ‘International Space Station’ with 35 members.