Friday 13 September 2013

Twitter IPO: Tech Firm In Stock Market Launch - Sky News

A Bite-Sized History Of Twitter

Updated: 4:46am UK, Friday 13 September 2013

Twitter came to life on March 21, 2006 when co-founder Jack Dorsey's account (@jack) automatically sent out the first tweet, which read: "just setting up my twttr."

Dorsey followed it up with the first "human-generated" tweet: "inviting coworkers."

Since then, more than 170 billion tweets have gone out worldwide, and Twitter has 500 million users, according to Dashburst.com, a website that monitors the social media industry. Officially, Twitter has only said it has "well over 200 million" users.

Here are some more Twitter facts: 

:: Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) has the most followers with 44,418,729, as of 11pm UK time on Thursday, followed by Katy Perry (@katyperry) with 42,603,233 and Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) with 40,094,580.

:: US President Barack Obama (@barackobama) is fourth with 36,493,643 followers; the announcement of his re-election victory in November 2012 was re-tweeted 802,624 times.

:: The average Twitter user has 208 followers and spends 170 minutes on the site every month.

:: There are more than 200 million active Twitter users, with 80% of all users access Twitter on mobile devices.

:: China is the country with the most Twitter users with 35.5 million, according to Dashburst.

:: About 20 million Twitter accounts are believed to be fake.

:: The hashtag (#) feature on Twitter which groups tweets by subject debuted in August 2007, proposed by a user.

:: In October 2009, Google and Microsoft began integrating tweets into their search products.

:: In January 2013, Twitter introduced Vine, which enabled users to make and tweet six-second looping videos. Some 12 million Vine videos are uploaded every day.

:: In July, 2013, Twitter was criticised for not taking stronger and swifter action against women who became the target of rape and death threats, and subsequently admitted to failing the victims.

:: Twitter is based in San Francisco, with additional employees in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington. Its total payroll exceeds 900.

:: Twitter was incorporated in April 2007; it was co-founded by Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey -- @biz, @ev and @jack.

:: The initial Twitter logo was created by Stone, a former graphic designer.

:: Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo is a former improvisational comedian.

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