Twitter celebrates 6th birthday
Posted March 21, 2012 1:57 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Twitter marked its six-year anniversary on Wednesday.
The social media site that allows users to serve up information in 140-character posts boasts 140 million active users. It has dramatically changed the way people share details of their lives and consume news, how politicians push their messages and how protests around the world are organized and details circulated.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey fired off his first tweet — “just setting up my twttr.” — on March 21, 2006 and handles and hashtags are now firmly entrenched in the online vernacular.
The site has played key roles in several major political events: U.S. President Barack Obama successfully harnessed the power of social media during his 2008 campaign to connect to young voters and a host of Canadian politicians on all levels now regularly tweet to connect with constituents.
Canada experienced a Twitter scandal recently when the very private details of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ divorce where made public on the @vikileaks30 account. A federal Liberal staffer used a computer at the House of Commons to post the lurid tweets. Adam Carroll resigned and interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae publicly apologized for the incident.
Toronto city council provides plenty of fodder for tweeters, politicians, journalists and citizens alike, who push out regular updates from inside city hall.
Twitter played a key role in the Arab Spring, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt where posts kept people overseas abreast of important developments on the ground.
“At last check, there are more than 140 million active users … and today we see 340 million Tweets a day. That’s more than 1 billion every 3 days,” a post on Twitter’s official blog states.
But it’s celebrities that dominate the Twitter world. Lady Gaga is the most popular user with 21.2 million followers. Justin Bieber and Katy Perry round out the top three, according to Twitaholic.com. Obama was the only political figure to crack the top 10 at No. 8 with more than 13 million followers.
Last spring, Charlie Sheen’s bizarre postings and downward spiral garnered him millions of followers. His Twitter account spawned pop culture catch-phrases including #Winning and #Tigerblood.
The site recently started testing promoted tweets for mobile devices. Promoted tweets already show up in users’ timelines on Twitter.com, if they follow an advertiser.
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