Today, March 21, marks Twitter’s 10th birthday.
The social media platform has grown from its original four founders – Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass – to become of the most used and informative services on the planet. Now a public company with over 320 million users, Twitter is worth over $11 billion USD and continues to launch new services to help users get their message out, while keeping its 140 character roots.
Twitter was created to share “short burst of inconsequential information.” The first tweet was done by CEO Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006, stating, “just setting up my twttr.” The first person to reach 1 million users was Ashton Kutcher in April 2009, which was a race between Larry King. Twitter has been used in entertainment, politics, sports and to raise awareness of various global and Canadian emergencies. The most Retweeted tweet was from Ellen DeGeneres Oscar selfie with 3.3 million Retweets, the most followed person on Twitter is Kary Perry with 84 million followers, and Canadian-born Justin Bieber is mentioned the most with 943 million mentions. Finally, there has been over 250 billion likes to-date.
Twitter recently shifted away from tweets displayed in a chronological order to an algorithmic timeline. This is an opt-in/opt-out approach has caused some tension with Twitterverse as users state they do not want the company to let them display what it believes are “the best tweets first.”
Possibly the most important issue that Twitter needs to address is the ongoing complaints of harassment. “Twitter’s always been about controls. People can follow whoever they want. And it’s our job to make sure they see the most important things and the things that matter to them,” Dorsey stated in an interview with Today last week. “There are tweets that promote violence, which is against our terms of service, so people have controls to block and people have controls to mute.”
While Twitter has had a solid 10 years, others social platforms are attempting to invade its territory, specifically Instagram and Snapchat on sharing news and visual formats.
Starting in ???????? on 3/21 and moving across the ????, we thank you for 10 incredible years.
Love, Twitter#LoveTwitterhttps://t.co/pH4WWdgK6q
— Twitter (@twitter) March 20, 2016
[source] Twitter [/source]
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