Twitter

 Overview
Twitter is a website created by Jack Dorsey in 2006. It functions as a social network and microblogging service through which users can share information in updates of 140 characters or fewer called tweets. Each update is displayed publicly on the user's profile page. Users may follow (subscribe to) other users' tweets so that they may appear in the timeline on their home page.

Users can tweet about what's happening via the Twitter website, Twitter widgets, Twitter @Apps for Smartphones, and Short Messaging Service (sms). Users can also choose to have certain updates sent to their cell phones. This allows them to receive real-time updates about where their brother is getting coffee, or Kanye West's new song. In addition to sharing personal status updates among friends,Twitter has become a useful platform for following news stories, blogs, celebrities, bands, and businesses. The other side of this relationship is that twitter is a useful tool for personal or professional promotion and is arguably becoming a "mainstream media platform."

Twitter offers several other features which serve to enhance tweets and connectivity. Users may mention or reply to other users in their tweets by entering @username. The #hashtag function allows users to make their tweets more easily searchable. They also offer a retweet button, which allows users to share another's tweet and give credit to it's original author.

Some say that "Twitter is the best way to discover what's new in your world." It may also be the best way to learn about the histories of ordinary people as all tweets are archived by the Library of Congress.

**History**
Twitter was first thought up by Jack Dorsey in 2006 ([|@Jack] ) while eating mexican food on top a slide in South Park, San Fransisco. [|@Jack], [|@Biz], [|@Noah],[|@Crystal], [|@Jeremy], [|@Adam], [|@TonyStubblebine], [|@Ev] [|@Dom],[|@Rabble], [|@RayReadyRay], [|@Florian], [|@TimRoberts], and [|@Blaine] ﻿worked at a company called [|Odeo, Inc]. Their current project wasn't looking promising so these employees split up into groups for a day long brainstorming session to reinvent their company. Jack's original idea was for an sms dispatch service to tell small groups what you were doing. In 2006 smartphones were relatively rare and sending a group text was an event, so the idea of a simple service to broadcast to a group via sms was appealing. @Jack, @Biz, @Florian designed the first version of the website that launched on March 21st, 2006. The site was originally called twttr (inspired by Flickr) and 5 digit sms short codes. The original short code was 10958 but was later changed to 40404. Check out some screenshots of beta versions of twttr. Twttr.com launched to the public in late spring of 2006. Just a few months later they changed to Twitter.com and initiated the 140 character limit. This was created to work neatly with the standard 160 character limit for sms messages. Tweets longer than 160 characters being received via sms message would be split into two messages. Having to open two texts was a hassle and opposed the service's valued simplicity and speed (and back then you were probably still paying a painful 10 cents per text). Engineers decided on 140 characters because it would leave enough room for the username followed by a colon before a tweet in a text. (I try to leave enough room for someone to type, "sooo awesome! RT:@sophisdecay" before my tweets, so my twitter limit's around 111) You can read some other theories about appropriate tweet length here and here. In 2007 Twitter gained exposure at SxSW, the MTV VMA's, and Apple's WWDC that attributed to the current website's popularity and success. During the SxSW conference the number of tweets skyrocketed from the average 20,000 per day to 60,000. Twitter launched a redesign in March 2010 to better integrate media into a user's homepage. As of January 1st, 2011 Twitter reported having 200 million registered users who tweet 110 million times each day.

Check out a list of current Twitter services and applications.

= Sources: = @http://www.140characters.com/2009/01/30/how-twitter-was-born/  http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2011/01/19/twitter-hits-nearly-200m-users-110m-tweets-per-day-focuses-on-global-expansion/ @http://gawker.com/ce @http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_twitter_must_expand_beyond_140_characters.php @http://twitter.com/

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