Registered users can read and post tweets, but unregistered
users can only read them. Users access Twitter through the website interface, SMS, or
mobile device app Twitter Inc. is based
in San Francisco and has offices in New York City, Boston, Austin and Detroit.
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams,
Biz Stone and Noah Glass and by July 2006 the site was
launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with 500 million registered users in 2012, who
posted 340 million tweets per day. The service also handled 1.6 billion search queries per day. In 2013 Twitter was one of the ten most-visited
websites, and has been described as "the SMS of the
Internet."
| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Traded as | NYSE: TWTR |
| Founded | March 21, 2006 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United State |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Founder(s) | Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams, Edward Cramer, Biz Stone |
| Key people | Jack Dorsey (Chairman) Dick Costolo (CEO) |
| Industry | Internet |
| Revenue |  US$664 million (2013) |
| Employees | 3,000 (2014) |
| Subsidiaries | Vine |
| Website | twitter.com |
| Written in | JavaScript, Ruby, Scala,Java |
| Alexa rank |  11 (April 2014) |
| Type of site | Social network service, microblogging |
| Registration | Required to post, follow, or be followed |
| Users | 200 million (active February 2013) |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Launched | July 15, 2006 |
| Current status | Active |
Creation and initial reaction
A blueprint sketch, c. 2006, by Jack Dorsey, envisioning an SMS-based social network.
Twitter's
origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board
members of the podcasting company Odeo.
Dorsey, then an undergraduate student at New York University,
introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a
small group. The original project code name for the service was twttr,
an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes. The
developers initially considered "10958" as a short code, but later
changed it to "40404" for "ease of use and memorability."
Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first
Twitter message at 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time
(PST): "just setting up my twttr". Dorsey has explained the origin of
the "Twitter" title:
...we came across the word 'twitter', and it was just
perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and
'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was.
The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and
contractor Florian Weber, was used as an internal service for Odeo employees
and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006.
In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams,
Dorsey, and other members of Odeo, formed Obvious Corporation and acquired
Odeo, together with its assets—including Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the
investors and shareholders. Williams fired Glass, who was
silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011.
Twitter spun off into its own
company in April 2007. Williams provided insight into the
ambiguity that defined this early period in a 2013 interview:
With Twitter, it wasn't clear what it was. They called it a
social network, they called it microblogging, but it was hard to define,
because it didn't replace anything. There was this path of discovery with
something like that, where over time you figure out what it is. Twitter
actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we
described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the
insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information
network than it is a social network.
The tipping point
for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by
Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets
per day to 60,000. "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma
screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter
messages," remarked Newsweek's Steven Levy.
"Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant
twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in
attendance touted it."
Reaction at the conference was highly positive. Blogger
Scott Beale said that Twitter "absolutely rul[ed]" SXSWi.
Social software researcher danah boyd said Twitter
"own[ed]" the conference. Twitter staff received the
festival's Web Award prize with the remark "we'd like to thank you in
140 characters or less. And we just did!"
The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted
from the International
Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010. By late November 2010, an average of a dozen updates per
day were posted on the astronauts' communal account, @NASA_Astronauts. NASA has
also hosted over 25 "tweetups",
events that provide guests with VIP access to NASA facilities and speakers with
the goal of leveraging participants' social networks to further the outreach
goals of NASA.
In August 2010, the company appointed Adam Bain from News Corp.'s Fox Audience Network
as president of revenue.
Growth
The company experienced rapid growth. It had 400,000 tweets
posted per quarter in 2007. This grew to 100 million tweets posted per quarter
in 2008. In February 2010, Twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day. By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000 registered
applications. As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each
day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter. As of March 2011, that was about 140 million tweets posted
daily. As noted on Compete.com, Twitter moved up to the
third-highest-ranking social networking
site in January 2009 from its previous
rank of twenty-second.
Jack Dorsey, a
co-founder and the chairman of Twitter, in 2009
Twitter's usage spikes during prominent events. For example,
a record was set during the 2010 FIFA World Cup
when fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second in the thirty-second period after Japan
scored against Cameroon
on June 14. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets per second were
posted after the Los Angeles Lakers'
victory in the 2010 NBA Finals on
June 17, and then again at the close of Japan's victory over Denmark
in the World Cup when users published 3,283 tweets per second. The record was set again during the 2011 FIFA
Women's World Cup Final between Japan and the United States, when
7,196 tweets per second were published. When American singer Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, Twitter
servers crashed after users were updating their status to include the words
"Michael Jackson" at a rate of 100,000 tweets per hour. The current record as of January 1, 2013, was set by all
citizens of the Japan Standard Time Zone as the new year began, reaching a
record of 33,388 tweets per second (and hence beating the previous record of
25,088, also set by Japan after a television screening of the movie "Castle In The Sky").
Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11,
2010. Atebits had developed the Apple Design Award-winning
Twitter client Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone. The application, now called "Twitter" and
distributed free of charge, is the official Twitter client for the iPhone, iPad
and Mac.
From September through October 2010, the company began
rolling out "New Twitter", an entirely revamped edition of
twitter.com. Changes included the ability to see pictures and videos without
leaving Twitter itself by clicking on individual tweets which contain links to
images and clips from a variety of supported websites including YouTube and Flickr, and a complete overhaul of the interface, which
shifted links such as '@mentions' and 'Retweets' above the Twitter stream,
while 'Messages' and 'Log Out' became accessible via a black bar at the very
top of twitter.com. As of November 1, 2010, the company confirmed that the
"New Twitter experience" had been rolled out to all users.
On April 5, 2011, Twitter tested a new homepage and phased
out the "Old Twitter." However, a glitch came about after the page
was launched, so the previous "retro" homepage was still in use until
the issues were resolved; the new homepage was reintroduced on April 20.
On December 8, 2011, Twitter overhauled its website once
more to feature the "Fly" design, which the service says is easier
for new users to follow and promotes advertising. In addition to the Home
tab, the Connect and Discover tabs were introduced along with a
redesigned profile and timeline of Tweets. The site's layout has been compared
to that of Facebook.
On February 21, 2012, it was announced that Twitter and Yandex agreed to a partnership. Yandex, a Russian search
engine, finds value within the partnership due to Twitter’s real time news
feeds. Twitter’s director of business development explained that it is
important to have Twitter content where Twitter users go.
On March 21, 2012, Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday
while also announcing that it has 140 million users and sees 340 million tweets
per day. The number of users is up 40% from their September 2011 number, which
was said to have been at 100 million at the time.
In April 2012, Twitter announced that it was opening an office
in Detroit, with the aim of working with automotive
brands and advertising agencies. Twitter also expanded its office in Dublin.
On June 5, 2012, a modified logo was unveiled through the
company blog, removing the text to showcase the slightly redesigned bird as the
sole symbol of Twitter.
On October 5, 2012, Twitter acquired a video clip company
called Vine that launched in January 2013. Twitter released Vine as a
standalone app that allows users to create and share six-second looping video
clips on January 24, 2013. Vine videos shared on Twitter are visible directly
in users' Twitter feeds. Due to an influx of inappropriate content, it is now
rated 17+ in Apple's app store.
On December 18, 2012, Twitter announced it had surpassed 200
million monthly active users. Twitter hit 100 million monthly active users in
September 2011.
On April 18, 2013, Twitter launched a music app called
Twitter Music for the iPhone.
On August 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Trendrr, followed by
the acquisition of MoPub on September 9, 2013.
As of September 2013, the company's data showed that 200
million users send over 400 million tweets daily, with nearly 60% of tweets
sent from mobile devices.
On June 4, 2014, Twitter announced that it will acquire Namo Media, a technology firm specializing in
"native advertising" for mobile devices.
On June 19, 2014, Twitter announced that it has reached an
undisclosed deal to buy SnappyTV, a service that helps edit and share video
from television broadcasts.
In July, 2014, Twitter announced that it intends to buy a
young company called CardSpring
for an undisclosed sum. CardSpring enables retailers to offer online shoppers
coupons that they can automatically sync to their credit cards in order to
receive discounts when they shop in physical stores.
Initial public offering (IPO)
Twitter's San Francisco, California headquarters, as seen
from a corner on Market Street
On September 12, 2013, Twitter announced that it had filed
papers with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of a planned stock market listing.
It revealed its prospectus in
an 800-page filing. Twitter planned to raise US$1 billion as the basis for its
stock market debut. The IPO filing states that "200,000,000+ monthly
active users" access Twitter and "500,000,000+ tweets per day"
are posted.
In an October 15, 2013 amendment to their SEC
S-1 filing, Twitter declared that they would list
on the New York Stock
Exchange (NYSE), quashing speculation that their stock would trade
on the NASDAQ exchange. This decision was widely viewed
to be a reaction to the botched initial
public offering of Facebook. On November 6, 2013, 70 million
shares were priced at US$26 and issued by lead underwriter Goldman Sachs.
On November 7, 2013, the first day of trading on the NYSE,
Twitter shares opened at $26.00 and closed at US$44.90, giving the company a
valuation of around US$31 billion. This was $18.90 above the initial offering
price and Twitter ended with a market capitalization of $24.46 billion. The
paperwork from November 7 shows that among the founders, Williams received a
sum of US$2.56 billion and Dorsey received US$1.05 billion, while Costolo's
payment was US$345 million.
As of 13 December 2013, Twitter had "a market
capitalization of $32.76 billion".
On February 5, 2014, Twitter published its first results as
a public company, showing a net loss of $511 million in the fourth quarter of
2013.
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