35 surprising facts you probably don't know about Twitter
24 March 2016
#milestones
The microblogging platform famed for its 140-character word limit has just celebrated its 10th anniversary. To mark a decade of hashtags, likes and retweets, we take a look at Twitter's evolution from fledgling startup to social media behemoth.
It all began as a side project
By late 2005 the podcasting start-up Odeo was going nowhere, so former Google employee and Odeo CEO Evan Williams divided his employees into teams, pushing them to come up with a killer new concept.
We indirectly have Apple to thank for Twitter
Odeo's podcasting service was effectively made obsolete by Apple, which added podcasts to iTunes in June 2005. With several million dollars of investment cash to spend, Odeo needed a hot new idea fast.
The idea was born in a kid's playground
Odeo co-founder Noah Glass teamed up with web designer Jack Dorsey and ex-Google employee Biz Stone, and the trio hit a neighborhood playground for an epic all-day brainstorming session.
Jack Dorsey had his billion-dollar eureka moment on a slide
Jack Dorsey came up with the idea for a simple SMS status update service while sitting at the top of the playground slide chowing down on takeout Mexican food.
Twitter might have been called stat.us
When he first thought of the idea, Jack Dorsey's christened the game-changing microblogging service stat.us.
Stat.us was soon changed to SMS-friendly twttr
Inspired by Flickr and five-character SMS short codes, Noah Glass came up with twttr in early 2006, an abbreviation of the verb twitter, chosen because it perfectly captures the short, snappy nature of the service.
The prototype was built in just two weeks
The team got the red light from Odeo CEO Evan Williams in February 2006, and the prototype service – developed by Jack Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber – was built within a fortnight.
The first tweet was fittingly short and sweet
Jack Dorsey had the honor of posting the first ever tweet at 9.50am PST on March 21 2006. which read, very simply, "just setting up my twttr". The full version was launched to the public on July 15.
Twttr became Twitter six months later
Odeo ditched the abbreviated textspeak-like twttr moniker and renamed the service Twitter in September 2006.
Twitter got a web-friendly tweak the following month
Users no longer needed to sign up with a telephone number, a key change as Twitter moved away from its SMS phone-based origins and towards the familiar web service we know today.
Twitter was acquired for a relatively paltry $5 million
In October 2006, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone bought out Odeo's investors for an estimated $5 million and created Twitter parent company Obvious Corporation with Dorsey as CEO, firing Noah Glass in the process.
There were only 16,000 Twitter accounts by the end of 2006
Still in its infancy, by the end of 2006 the microblogging platform had attracted just 16,000 users posting a total of 5,000 tweets per day, a fraction of today's numbers.
Twitter scored its big break in March 2007 at SXSWi
The star of that year's influential SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, Twitter had finally arrived – its usage jumped from 20,000 to 60,000 tweets per day thanks to all the hype.
'Tweet' was coined the same month
The word first appeared on a blog called NevOn on March 15 2007. "Not much chance to tweet on Twitter, especially since it seems that SMS posting from my mobile phone doesn't work."
Twitter, Inc. was created in April 2007
Twitter was spun off from Obvious Corporation into a standalone company called Twitter, Inc., an indication of its early runaway success.
The company was valued at $20 million in June 2007
Having secured its first round of funding, which was led by Union Square Ventures, Twitter was valued at $20 million.
Followers were first known as friends
During its early days, Twitter took its cues from social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook, only ditching 'friends' for 'followers' in July 2007.
#barcamp is the first ever Twitter hashtag
On August 23 2007, former Google employee and Twitter user Chris Messina aka FactoryJoe posted the first Twitter hashtag, as a way of grouping messages on the microblogging platform.
Twitter raised $23 million from investors in 2008
Although the figures haven't been officially disclosed, Twitter is estimated to have received $23 million dollars during its second round of funding in 2008.
Twitter acquired its first company in July 2008
With its coffers bursting, Twitter splashed $15 million on a search engine called Summize, which later became search.twitter.com. The company has acquired 31 startups to date.
Jack Dorsey was fired and rehired
Jack Dorsey was replaced by Evan Williams in October 2008. Dick Costolo took over from Williams in 2010. Dorsey eventually got his job back when he replaced Costolo last July.
Twitter surpassed the 1 billion tweet mark in November 2008
A huge milestone for the microblogging platform, tweet counter GigaTweet confirmed the billionth tweet in November 2008.
Ashton Kutcher is the first Twitter celeb to pass 1 million followers
Hailed as the moment Twitter finally went mainstream, Ashton Kutcher aka @aplusk passed 1 million followers on April 17 2009, following a much-publicized contest with CNN.
Twitter bagged the all-important Oprah endorsement that same month
Ashton Kutcher hooked up with CEO Evan Williams for an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show to explain the ins and outs of Twitter, attracting legions of new users, including Oprah herself.
Celeb-friendly verified accounts were introduced in June 2009
Apart from early celebrity adopters like Ashton Kutcher, VIP Twitterati were much thinner on the ground before Twitter introduced the fake-busting verified account in 2009.
Twitter made the dictionary the following month
Twitter was increasingly becoming part of our everyday vocabulary and in July 2009 Twitter landed a spot in the Collins English Dictionary.
Twitter was valued at a cool $1 billion in September 2009
Now a major global moneyspinner, Twitter was estimated to be worth a staggering $1 billion by September 2009.
2.5 million tweets per day were posted in 2009
By 2009, Twitter had become the number one forum for everything from breaking news to celebrity spats, with an average of 2.5 million tweets per day posted on the platform.
The first live tweet from space was sent in January 2010
NASA Astronaut Timothy Creamer aka @Astro_TJ posted the first real-time tweet from space, direct from the International Space Station, on January 22 2010.
Twitter introduced Promoted Tweets in April 2010
A new way to monetize the platform, Twitter launched Promoted Tweets in April 2010, followed by Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts later that year.
Active Twitter users numbered 100 million by September 2011
By September 2011, users topped 100 million and Twitter had become a catalyst for social and political change, playing a key role in the Arab Spring protests earlier that year.
Twitter went public in November 2013
The company was floated on the New York Stock Exchange on November 7 2013. The $26 per share IPO valued Twitter at $30 billion and stock surged to $69 per share by January 2014. The current share price however is a much-reduced $17.
Ellen Degeneres posted the most retweeted tweet in March 2014
The caption for Ellen Degeneres' famous A-lister-packed Oscars selfie – taken at the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony – is the most retweeted tweet ever, shared a mind-blowing 3.3 million times.
Caitlyn Jenner is the fastest Twitter account to reach 1 million followers
On June 1 2015, Caitlyn Jenner broke the record for the fastest growing Twitter account of all time, amassing 1 million followers in just four hours and three minutes.
Twitter now has 320 million users worldwide
The microblogging platform has 320 million users who send 303 million tweets per day, down from a peak of 661 million in August 2014. To date, the most followed user is Katy Perry with 84.9 million followers.
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