Twitter is Five... #happybirthday

Online Exclusive by Simon Freeman

Março 19, 2011

THE number of tweets sent in a single week topped a BILLION for the first time as the micro-blogging revolution prepared to celebrate its fifth birthday.

From humble origins - the first message was "inviting coworkers" sent by Jack Dorsey to colleagues at San Francisco web-firm Odeo on March 21, 2006 - the site has exploded into a global phenomenon.

Its 140-character messages have inspired revolutions, reported natural disasters, driven presidential campaigns and inspired dozens of celebrity slip-ups.

Users include everyone from the President of the United States and Bill Gates to Iranian and Egyptian dissidents.. and even Charlie Sheen.

March 21, 2006: Jack's first tweet inviting colleagues at Odeo to sign in

Not a bad list for a service started as a hobby and named after "a short inconsequential burst of information, chirps from birds."

Biz Stone, who worked with Jack at Odeo and was another founder member of the team, said: "As much fun as we were having, there was always in the back of our heads the idea of the potential of something important coming from it.

Twitter's vital statistics

3 years, 2 months and 1 day The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet

1 week The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets

50 million The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago

140 million The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month

177 million Tweets sent on March 11, 2011

572,000 New accounts set up on March 12, 2011

456 Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time)

6,939 Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year's Day

8 Number of people employed by Twitter in January 2008

400 Number of people employed by Twitter in 2011

"Even if we didn't say it out loud and talk about it. Because we were just getting started and we really had no place saying anything like that."

Initially dismissed by some as a platform for telling the world what users had for breakfast, Twitter has become respected as a lifeline during disasters such as the earthquake in Japan and an organising tool for champions of democracy.

Biz says the use of Twitter to overthrow regimes in the Middle East is an example of how it will become more important in the 21st century.

"One of the things I told our team early on was that if Twitter is to be a triumph, it is not necessarily to be a triumph of technology but a triumph of humanity," he said.

"If we are successful it is not going to be because of our algorithms and our machines, it is going to be what people end up doing with this tool that defines us and makes us a success or not."

At five years old, he reckons Twitter is still a "child" - which is why the founders have rejected numerous takeover offers.

"It is just the beginning of a life full of potential and adventure, and I really do think that is where we are right now," Biz said.

"We are just about to go to school and just getting started," he said. "The last five years has really just been us getting our footing."

Thingy... an early logo The technology has moved on very quickly since the site's humble beginnings and there are now dozens of software programs that allow users to access Twitter on their mobile phones, tablets, PCs and other devices. Two of the most popular are Tweetdeck and Twitterific.

Our showbiz editor Dan Wootton, with 50,000 followers, uses Tweetdeck. He says: "It is a great tool which I use all the time on my laptop. I love being able to group my tweets together in a really easy-to-display way."

Gadgits Editor Trevor Davies, with 853 followers, prefers Twitterific. "It's very user-friendly on the iPad and it's easy to find your retweets. But seeing Dan's figures, I'm going to have another look at Tweetdeck."

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