Twitter turns five

By Nick Bilton New York Times | Updated: 11 June 2012 13:58 IST

Highlights

Just 1,825 days ago, Jack Dorsey sent a five-word message using a new service he had just finished building with a team of programmers: “just setting up my twttr.” If you saw this message back then, you might have thought Mr. Dorsey was starting a pet

Just 1,825 days ago, Jack Dorsey sent a five-word message using a new service he had just finished building with a team of programmers: "just setting up my twttr." If you saw this message back then, you might have thought Mr. Dorsey was starting a pet shop that specialized in exotic birds. In fact, he was sending the first-ever Twitter message.

On Monday, Twitter celebrated its fifth birthday, proudly noting that it had come a long way since that first tweet. Biz Stone, one of Twitter's co-founders, said in a blog post that more than 140 million messages are sent across the network each day; that's up to 1 billion every eight days. Mr. Stone also said Twitter was adding nearly 500,000 new users each day.

To celebrate its birthday, Twitter has set up a new Web site called Discover Twitter, which tries to showcase how people have grown to use the service, including a number of well-known celebrities and government leaders.

Over the last five years, Twitter has changed the way many communicate online, offering a concise way to interact with large crowds of people. It has become an invaluable tool for spreading breaking news and played a major role in the recent uprisings in the Middle East.

The service has also had an effect on the English language. Twitter-related words have been entered into a number of major dictionaries over the last few years. Twitter also gave rise to the "@" symbol online, which is used when replying to someone on the service. (Twitter said the first @ reply was sent in late 2006 by Neil Crosby, a Web programmer.)

Of course, Twitter has run into its fair share of bumps on its trek up the social networking hill. In its early days, the service was so unreliable it was almost unusable. Several Web sites were set up that poked fun at the site's lack of dependability. The Web site also faced pressure from corporations and the United States government when it suffered a number of security attacks.

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Twitter turns five

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