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ORIGINS: TWITTER MARKS 10 YEARS OF TWEETS

DAVID ADAMS takes a quick look back at where it started for Twitter…

The social network Twitter came of age this month, celebrating 10 years since the first tweet was sent.

It was on 21st March, 2006, that the service – then still known as twttr was launched when co-founder Jack Dorsey sent the first tweet, “just setting up my twttr”.

Sight Magazine’s Twitter page.

The platform – which was the creation of Dorsey, then an undergraduate at New York University and now (second time around) CEO, along with Evan Wiliams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass – went public on 15th July that same year.

The use of the hashtag was proposed the following year by early adopter Chris Messina as a way of bringing together conversations around particular topics.

It now publishes about 500 million tweets every single day, has some 320 million monthy users and employs almost 4,000 people around the world.

Among the big moments covered have been the landing of a plane on New York City’s Hudson River (the first photographs were shared on Twitter), NASA’s announcement of the discovery of ice on Mars in 2008, the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013, the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2010 (first confirmed on Twitter), and the creation of the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag in reference to the kidnapping of more 250 schoolgirls in Nigeria in 2014 as well as recent terrorist attacks such as those Paris last November (#JeSuisParis).

Meanwhile, among those with the largest number of followers on Twitter are Katy Perry (85 million), Justin Bieber (78 million), Taylor Swift (almost 74 million) and US President Barack Obama (72 million).

While one of the service’s defining features has long been the limitation on messages to no more than 140 characters, there are suggestions this restriction may soon be removed (although amid speculation earlier this month, Dorsey said it would stay).

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