Twitter, Inc.
 |
|
Type |
Private |
| Founded |
March 21, 2006[1] |
|
Headquarters |
San Francisco,
United States[2] |
| Area served |
Worldwide |
|
Founder(s) |
Jack Dorsey,
Noah Glass,
Evan Williams,
Biz Stone |
| Key people |
Dick Costolo (CEO)
Jack Dorsey
(Executive
Chairman)
Evan Williams (Director)
Biz Stone (Creative director) |
|
Industry |
Internet |
|
Revenue |
US$140 million (2010 est.) |
|
Employees |
900+ (2012)[4] |
|
Website |
Twitter.com |
|
Alexa rank |
9 (December 2012)[5] |
| Type of site |
Social network service,
microblogging |
| Registration |
Required to post, follow, or be followed |
|
Users |
500 million
(active April 2012) |
|
Available in |
Multilingual |
| Launched |
July 15, 2006[7] |
| Current status |
Active |
|
|
Twitter is an online
social networking service and
microblogging service that enables its users to send and read
text-based messages of up to 140
characters, known as "tweets".
It was created in March 2006 by
Jack Dorsey and launched that July. The service rapidly gained
worldwide popularity, with over
500 million active users as of 2012, generating over 340 million
tweets daily and handling over 1.6
billion
search queries per day.[8][9]
Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited
websites on the Internet, and has been described as "the
SMS of the
Internet."[5][10]
Unregistered users can read tweets, while registered users can post
tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of
apps for mobile devices.[11]
Twitter Inc. is based in
San Francisco, with additional servers and offices in
New York City,
Boston,
and
San Antonio.
History
Creation and initial reaction
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.[12][13]
The original
project code name for the service was twttr, an idea that
Williams later ascribed to
Noah Glass,[14]
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".[1]
"...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." –
Jack Dorsey[16]
The first Twitter prototype was used as an internal service for Odeo
employees and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006.[7]
In October 2006,
Biz
Stone,
Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious
Corporation and acquired Odeo and all of its assets – including Odeo.com
and Twitter.com – from the investors and shareholders.[17]
Williams fired Glass who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup
until 2011.[18]
Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.[19]
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.[20]
"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."[21]
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.[22]
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!"[23]
The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the
International Space Station by
NASA
astronaut
T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010.[24]
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 as President of
Revenue from
News Corp.'s
Fox Audience Network.[25]
On September 14, 2010, Twitter launched a redesigned site[26]
including a new
logo.[citation
needed]
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.[27]
By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000 registered applications.[28]
As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equaling
about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter.[29]
As of March 2011, that was about 140 million tweets posted daily.[30]
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.[31]
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, 2010. 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, 2010,[32]
and then again at the close of Japan's victory over Denmark in the World
Cup when users published 3,283 tweets per second.[33]
The current record was set during the
2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Final between Japan and the United
States, when 7,196 tweets per second were published.[34]
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.[35]
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.[36]
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."[37]
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.[38][39]
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.[40][41]
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.[42]
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.[43]
In April 2012, Twitter announced that it was opening an office in
Detroit,
with the aim of working with automotive brands and advertising agencies.[44]
Twitter also expanded its office in
Dublin.[45]
On June 4, 2012, Twitter announced the purchase of Washington, D.C.
based web design agency Nclud. Upon the purchase, Nclud's co-founder and
director of brand experience, Martin Ringlein, was named Twitter's new
design manager.[46]
On June 5, a modified logo was unveiled through the company blog,
removing the text to showcase the slightly redesigned bird as the sole
symbol of Twitter.[47]
On October 5, 2012, Twitter has acquired a video clip company that
has yet to launch. It is called Vine.[48][49]
Leadership
As
chief executive officer, Dorsey saw the startup through two rounds
of capital funding by the
venture capitalists who backed the company.[50]
On October 16, 2008,[51]
Williams took over the role of CEO, and Dorsey became chairman of the
board.[52]
On October 4, 2010, Williams announced that he was stepping down as
CEO.
Dick Costolo, formerly Twitter's
chief operating officer, became CEO. According to a Twitter
blog, dated
October 4, 2010, Williams was to stay[dated
info] with the company and "be completely focused
on product strategy."[dated
info][53]
According to
The New York Times, "Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Costolo forged a close
relationship" when Williams was away.[54]
According to
PC Magazine, Williams was "no longer involved in the day-to-day
goings on at the company". He is focused on developing a new startup,
but he became a member of Twitter's board of directors, and promised to
"help in any way I can". Stone is still with Twitter but is working with
AOL as an "advisor on volunteer efforts and philanthropy".[55]
Dorsey rejoined Twitter in March 2011, as executive chairman focusing
on product development. His time is split with
Square (where he is CEO), whose offices are within walking distance
of Twitter's in San Francisco.[54]
In September 2011, board members and investors
Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet resigned from Twitter's Board of
Directors.[56]
In October 2012, Twitter announced it had hired Google executive Matt
Derella, to become their new Director of Business Agency Development.
[57]
Logo
Twitter has become internationally identifiable by its signature bird
logo. The original logo was in use from its launch in March 2006 until
September 2010. A slightly modified version succeeded the first style
when the website underwent its first redesign.
On February 27, 2012, a tweet from an employee that works on the
company's platform and API discussed the evolution of the "Larry the
Bird" logo with Twitter's creative director and it was revealed that it
was named after
Larry Bird of the NBA's
Boston Celtics fame. This detail had previously been confirmed when
the Boston Celtics' director of interactive media asked Twitter
co-founder Biz Stone about it in August 2011.[58]
On June 5, 2012, Twitter unveiled its third logo redesign, replacing
Larry the Bird with an updated icon simply named as the "Twitter Bird."
As of this logo revision, the word "Twitter" and the lowercase letter
"t" are no longer used, with the bird becoming the sole symbol for the
company's branding.[59]
According to Douglas Bowman, designer of Twitter, the new logo resembles
a
Mountain Bluebird.[60]
-
The original logo, used from 15 July 2006 until 14 September
2010.
-
The second logo, used from 14 September 2010 until 5 June
2012.
-
The third and current logo, used since 5 June 2012.
Features
The Twitter account page for Wikipedia, demonstrating the
account-customized timeline view showing tweets in reverse
chronological order
Tweets are publicly visible by default, but senders can restrict
message delivery to just their followers. Users can tweet via the
Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as for
smartphones), or by
Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries.[61]
While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur
phone service provider fees.[citation
needed]
Users may subscribe to other users' tweets – this is known as
following and subscribers are known as followers[62]
or tweeps (Twitter + peeps).[63]
The users can also check the people who are un-subscribing them on
Twitter better known as unfollowing via various services.[64]
Twitter allows users the ability to update their profile by using
their mobile phone either by text messaging or by apps released for
certain smartphones and tablets.[65]
Twitter has been compared to a web-based
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client.[66]
In a 2009
Time
essay, technology author
Steven Johnson described the basic mechanics of Twitter as
"remarkably simple":
As a social network, Twitter revolves around the principle of
followers. When you choose to follow another Twitter user, that
user's tweets appear in reverse chronological order on your main
Twitter page. If you follow 20 people, you'll see a mix of
tweets scrolling down the page: breakfast-cereal updates,
interesting new links, music recommendations, even musings on
the future of education.
Content
Content of Tweets according to Pear Analytics
News (3.6%)
Spam (3.8%)
Self-promotion (5.9%)
Pointless babble (40.1%)
Conversational (37.6%)
Pass-along value (8.7%)
San Antonio-based market-research firm
Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the US and in
English) over a two-week period in August 2009 from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM
(CST) and separated them into six categories:[68]
-
Pointless babble – 40%
- Conversational – 38%
- Pass-along value – 9%
- Self-promotion – 6%
-
Spam – 4%
- News – 4%
Social networking researcher
danah boyd responded to the Pear Analytics survey by arguing that
what the Pear researchers labelled "pointless babble" is better
characterized as "social
grooming" and/or "peripheral awareness" (which she explains as
persons "want[ing] to know what the people around them are thinking and
doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn’t viable").[69]
Format
Users can group posts together by topic or type by use of
hashtags
– words or phrases prefixed with a "#" sign. Similarly, the
"@" sign followed by a
username is used for mentioning or replying to other users.[70]
To repost a message from another Twitter user, and share it with one's
own followers, the retweet function is symbolized by "RT" in the
message.[citation
needed]
In late 2009, the "Twitter Lists" feature was added, making it
possible for users to follow (as well as mention and reply to) ad-hoc
lists of authors instead of individual authors.[62][71]
Through SMS, users can communicate with Twitter through five
gateway numbers:
short codes for the United States, Canada, India, New Zealand, and
an
Isle of Man-based number for international use. There is also a
short code in the United Kingdom which is only accessible to those on
the
Vodafone,
O2[72]
and
Orange[73]
networks. In India, since Twitter only supports tweets from
Bharti Airtel,
an alternative platform called smsTweet
was set up by a user to work on all networks.
A similar platform called GladlyCast[77]
exists for mobile phone users in Singapore, Malaysia and the
Philippines.[citation
needed]
The tweets were initially set to a 140-character limit for
compatibility with SMS messaging, introducing the shorthand notation and
slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140-character limit has
also increased the usage of
URL shortening services such as
bit.ly, goo.gl, and tr.im, and content-hosting services, such as
Twitpic, memozu.com and NotePub to accommodate
multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters. Twitter uses
its own t.co domain for automatic shortening of all URLs posted on its
website.
Trending topics
A word, phrase or topic that is tagged at a greater rate than other
tags is said to be a trending topic. Trending topics become
popular either through a concerted effort by users or because of an
event that prompts people to talk about one specific topic.[79]
These topics help Twitter and their users to understand what is
happening in the world.[80]
Trending topics are sometimes the result of concerted efforts by fans
of certain celebrities or cultural phenomena, particularly
Lady
Gaga (known as Monsters),
Justin Bieber (Beliebers) and fans of the
Twilight (Twihards) and
Harry Potter (Potterheads) novels. Twitter have altered the trend
algorithm in the past to prevent manipulation of this type.[81]
Twitter's March 30, 2010 blog post announced that the hottest Twitter
trending topics will scroll across the Twitter homepage.[82]
Users will also be able to find out how a specific topic became a
trending topic.[citation
needed]
There have been controversies surrounding Twitter trending topics:
Twitter has censored
hashtags that other users found offensive. Twitter censored the
#Thatsafrican[83]
and the #thingsdarkiessay[84]
hashtags after users complained that they found the hashtags offensive.[citation
needed]
Adding
and following content
There are numerous tools for adding content, monitoring content and
conversations including Twitvid (video sharing),[85]
TweetDeck,
Salesforce.com,
HootSuite, and Twitterfeed. Fewer than half of tweets are posted
using the web user interface with most users using third-party
applications (based on analysis of 500 million tweets by Sysomos).[86]
Verified accounts
In June 2008, Twitter launched a verification program, allowing
celebrities to get their accounts verified.[87]
Originally intended to help users verify which celebrity accounts were
created by the celebrities themselves (and therefore are not fake), they
have since been used to verify accounts of businesses and accounts for
public figures who may not actually tweet but still wish to maintain
control over the account that bears their name - for example, the
Dalai Lama.
Mobile
Twitter has mobile apps for
iPhone,
iPad,
Android,
Windows Phone,
BlackBerry, and
Nokia S40.[88]
There is also version of the website for
mobile devices as well as
SMS and
MMS service.[89]
Authentication
As of August 31, 2010, third-party Twitter applications are required
to use OAuth,
an authentication method that does not require users to enter their
password into the authenticating application. Previously, the OAuth
authentication method was optional, it is now compulsory and the
user-name/password authentication method has been made redundant and is
no longer functional. Twitter stated that the move to OAuth will mean
"increased security and a better experience".[90]
Usage
Rankings
Twitter is ranked as one of the ten-most-visited websites worldwide
by
Alexa's
web traffic analysis.[91]
Daily user estimates vary as the company does not publish statistics on
active accounts. A February 2009
Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social
network based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and
55 million monthly visits.[92]
In March 2009, a
Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing website in
the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had annual
growth of 1,382 percent, increasing from 475,000 unique visitors in
February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009. It was followed by
Zimbio
with a 240 percent increase, and
Facebook with a 228 percent increase.[93]
Twitter has a user retention rate of forty percent.[94]
Demographics
| Twitter.com Top5 Global Markets by Reach (%)[95][96] |
| Country |
|
|
Percent |
|
|
Indonesia |
Jun 2010 |
|
20.8% |
|
| Dec 2010 |
|
19.0% |
| Brazil |
Jun 2010 |
|
20.5% |
|
| Dec 2010 |
|
21.8% |
|
Venezuela |
Jun 2010 |
|
19.0% |
|
| Dec 2010 |
|
21.1% |
|
Netherlands |
Jun 2010 |
|
17.7% |
|
| Dec 2010 |
|
22.3% |
| Japan |
Jun 2010 |
|
16.8% |
|
| Dec 2010 |
|
20.0% |
| Note: Visitor age
15+, home and work locations. Excludes visitation from
public computers such as Internet cafes or access from
mobile phones or PDAs. |
Twitter is mainly used by older adults who might not have used other
social sites before Twitter, said
Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst studying social media. "Adults
are just catching up to what teens have been doing for years," he said.
According to
comScore only eleven percent of Twitter's users are aged twelve to
seventeen.
comScore attributes this to Twitter's "early adopter period" when the
social network first gained popularity in business settings and news
outlets attracting primarily older users. However, comScore as of late,
has stated that Twitter has begun to "filter more into the mainstream",
and "along with it came a culture of celebrity as
Shaq,
Britney Spears and
Ashton Kutcher joined the ranks of the Twitterati."[98]
According to a study by
Sysomos
in June 2009, women make up a slightly larger Twitter demographic than
men — fifty-three percent over forty-seven percent. It also stated that
five percent of users accounted for seventy-five percent of all
activity, and that New York has the most Twitter users.[99]
According to Quancast, twenty-seven million people in the US used
Twitter as of September 3, 2009. Sixty-three percent of Twitter users
are under thirty-five years old; sixty percent of Twitter users are
Caucasian, but a higher than average (compared to other Internet
properties) are African American/black (sixteen percent) and Hispanic
(eleven percent); fifty-eight percent of Twitter users have a total
household income of at least US$60,000.[100]
The prevalence of African American Twitter usage and in many popular
hashtags has been the subject of research studies.[101][102]
On September 7, 2011, Twitter announced that it has 100 million
active users logging in at least once a month and 50 million active
users every day.[103]
In an article published on January 6, 2012, Twitter was confirmed to
be the biggest social media network in Japan, with Facebook following
closely in second. comScore confirmed this, stating that Japan is the
only country in the world where Twitter leads Facebook.[104]
Finances
Funding
Twitter raised over US$57 million from
venture capitalist growth funding, although exact numbers are not
publicly disclosed. Twitter's first A round of funding was for an
undisclosed amount that is rumored to have been between US$1 million and
US$5 million.[105]
Its second B round of funding in 2008 was for US$22 million[106]
and its third C round of funding in 2009 was for US$35 million from
Institutional Venture Partners and
Benchmark Capital along with an undisclosed amount from other
investors including Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and
Insight Venture Partners.[105]
Twitter is backed by
Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos
Expeditions.[107]
In May 2008,
The Industry Standard remarked that Twitter's long-term
viability is limited by a lack of revenue.[108]
Twitter board member Todd Chaffee forecast that the company could profit
from
e-commerce, noting that users may want to buy items directly from
Twitter since it already provides product recommendations and
promotions.[109]
The company raised US$200 million in new venture capital in December
2010, at a valuation of approximately US$3.7 billion.[110]
In March 2011, 35,000 Twitter shares sold for US$34.50 each on
Sharespost, an implied valuation of US$7.8 billion.[111]
In August, 2010 Twitter announced a "significant" investment lead by
Digital Sky Technologies that, at US$800 million, was reported to be
the largest
venture round in history.[112]
Twitter has been identified as a possible candidate for an
initial public offering by 2013.[113]
In December 2011, the
Saudi prince
Alwaleed bin Talal invested $300 million in Twitter. The company was
valued at $8.4 billion at the time.[114]
Revenue sources
In July 2009, some of Twitter's revenue and user growth documents
were published on
TechCrunch after being illegally obtained by
Hacker Croll. The documents projected 2009 revenues of US$400,000 in
the third quarter and US$4 million in the fourth quarter along with
25 million users by the end of the year. The projections for the end of
2013 were US$1.54 billion in revenue, US$111 million in net earnings,
and 1 billion users.
No information about how Twitter planned to achieve those numbers was
published. In response, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone published a blog
post suggesting the possibility of legal action against the hacker.[115]
On April 13, 2010, Twitter announced plans to offer paid
advertising for companies that would be able to purchase "promoted
tweets" to appear in selective search results on the Twitter website,
similar to
Google Adwords' advertising model. As of April 13, Twitter announced
it had already signed up a number of companies wishing to advertise
including
Sony Pictures,
Red
Bull,
Best
Buy, and
Starbucks.[116][117]
To continue their advertising campaign, Twitter announced on March
20, 2012, that it would be bringing its promoted tweets to mobile
devices. Twitter generated US$139.5 million in advertising sales during
2011 and expects this number to grow 86.3% to US$259.9 million in 2012.[118]
The company generated US$45 million in annual revenue in 2010, after
beginning sales midway through that year. The company operated at a loss
through most of 2010. Revenues were forecast for US$100 million to
US$110 million in 2011.[110]
Users' photos can generate royalty-free revenue for Twitter, with an
agreement with
WENN being announced in May 2011.[119]
In June 2011, Twitter announced that it would offer small businesses a
self serve advertising system.[120]
Technology
Implementation
Great reliance is placed on
open-source software.[121]
The Twitter Web interface uses the
Ruby on Rails framework,[122]
deployed on a performance enhanced
Ruby Enterprise Edition implementation of
Ruby.[123]
As of April 6, 2011, Twitter engineers confirmed they had switched
away from their Ruby on Rails search-stack, to a
Java server they call Blender.[124]
From spring 2007 to 2008 the messages were handled by a Ruby
persistent queue server called
Starling,[125]
but since 2009 implementation has been gradually replaced with software
written in
Scala.[126]
The service's
application programming interface (API) allows other
web services and applications to integrate with Twitter.[127][128]
Individual tweets are registered under unique IDs using software
called
snowflake and geolocation data is added using 'Rockdove'. The URL
shortner t.co then checks for a spam link and shortens the URL.
The tweets are stored in a
MySQL
database using
Gizzard and acknowledged to users as having been sent. They are then
sent to search engines via the
Firehose API. The process itself is managed by
FlockDB
and takes an average of 350 ms.[121]
Interface
On April 30, 2009, Twitter adjusted its web interface, adding a
search bar and a sidebar of "trending
topics" — the most common phrases appearing in messages.
Biz
Stone explains that all messages are instantly
indexed and that "with this newly launched feature, Twitter has
become something unexpectedly important – a discovery engine for finding
out what is happening right now."[129]
In March 2012, Twitter became available in
Arabic,
Farsi,
Hebrew and
Urdu, the first right-to-left language versions of the site. About
13,000 volunteers helped with translating the menu options.[130]
In August 2012, beta support for
Basque,
Czech and
Greek was added, making the site available in 33 different
languages.[131]
Outages
When Twitter experiences an outage, users see the "fail whale"
error message image created by Yiying Lu,[132]
illustrating eight orange birds using a net to hoist a whale from the
ocean captioned "Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again."[133]
Twitter had approximately ninety-eight percent
uptime
in 2007 (or about six full days of downtime).[134]
The downtime was particularly noticeable during events popular with the
technology industry such as the 2008
Macworld Conference & Expo
keynote
address.[135][136]
- May 2008 – Twitter's new engineering team made architectural
changes to deal with the scale of growth. Stability issues resulted
in down time or temporary feature removal.
- August 2008 – Twitter withdrew free SMS services from users in
the United Kingdom[137]
and for approximately five months instant messaging support via a
XMPP
bot was listed as being "temporarily unavailable".[138]
- October 10, 2008 – Twitter's status blog announced that
instant messaging (IM) service was no longer a temporary outage
and needed to be revamped. It was announced that Twitter aims to
return its IM service pending necessary major work.[139]
- June 12, 2009 – In what was called a potential "Twitpocalypse",
the
unique numerical identifier associated with each tweet exceeded
the limit of
32-bit
signed
integers (2,147,483,647 total messages).[140]
While Twitter itself was not affected, some third-party clients
could no longer access recent tweets.
Patches were quickly released, though some
iPhone
applications had to wait for approval from the
App Store.[141]
- June 25, 2009 – Twitter ran slowly for some time after over
50,000 tweets on
Michael Jackson’s death were recorded in an hour.[142]
- August 6, 2009 – Twitter and Facebook suffered from a
denial-of-service attack, causing the Twitter website to go
offline for several hours.[143]
It was later confirmed that the attacks were directed at one
pro-Georgian user around the anniversary of the
2008 South Ossetia War, rather than the sites themselves.[144]
- September 22, 2009 – The identifier exceeded the limit for
32-bit unsigned integers (4,294,967,296 total messages) again
breaking some third-party clients.[145]
- December 17, 2009 – A hacking attack replaced the website's
welcoming screen with an image of a green flag and the caption "This
site has been hacked by
Iranian Cyber Army" for nearly an hour. No connection between
the hackers and Iran has been established.[146]
- June–July 2010 – Twitter had a very high service rejection rate
(10–20%) during the
2010 FIFA World Cup period, also, the response latency increased
substantially.[147]
- November 2010 – A number of accounts encountered a fault that
resulted in them seeing the "fail whale" when they tried to login to
their accounts. The accounts themselves were not locked out as
account holders could still see their "mentions" page, and post from
there, but the timeline and a number of other features were
unavailable during this outage.
- June 21, 2012 – The site was down for around one hour and forty
minutes, with the cause being described by Twitter as a "cascading
bug".[148]
- July 26, 2012 – Twitter users in the UK could not post messages
for part of the day in advance of the
2012 Summer Olympics.[149]
Privacy and
security
Twitter messages are public but users can also send private messages.[150]
Twitter collects
personally identifiable information about its users and shares it
with third parties. The service reserves the right to sell this
information as an asset if the company changes hands.[151]
While Twitter displays no advertising, advertisers can
target users based on their history of tweets and may quote tweets
in ads[152]
directed specifically to the user.
A security vulnerability was reported on April 7, 2007, by Nitesh
Dhanjani and Rujith. Since Twitter used the
phone number of the sender of an
SMS message as authentication, malicious users could update someone
else's status page by using
SMS spoofing.[153]
The vulnerability could be used if the spoofer knew the phone number
registered to their victim's account. Within a few weeks of this
discovery Twitter introduced an optional
personal identification number (PIN) that its users could use to
authenticate their SMS-originating messages.[154]
On January 5, 2009, 33 high-profile Twitter accounts were compromised
after a Twitter administrator's password was guessed by a
dictionary attack.[155]
Falsified tweets — including sexually explicit and drug-related messages
— were sent from these accounts.[156]
Twitter launched the
beta version of their "Verified Accounts" service on June 11, 2009,
allowing famous or notable people to announce their Twitter account
name. The home pages of these accounts display a badge indicating their
status.[157]
In May 2010, a bug was discovered by
İnci Sözlük, involving users that allowed Twitter users to force
others to follow them without the other users' consent or knowledge. For
example, comedian
Conan O'Brien's account, which had been set to follow only one
person, was changed to receive nearly 200 malicious subscriptions.[158]
In response to Twitter's security breaches, the
Federal Trade Commission brought charges against the service which
were settled on June 24, 2010. This was the first time the FTC had taken
action against a social network for security lapses. The settlement
requires Twitter to take a number of steps to secure users' private
information, including maintenance of a "comprehensive information
security program" to be independently audited biannually.[159]
On December 14, 2010, the
United States Department of Justice issued a
subpoena directing Twitter to provide information for accounts
registered to or associated with
WikiLeaks.[160]
Twitter decided to notify its users and said in a statement, "...it's
our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental
requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from
doing so".[150]
A "MouseOver" exploit occurred on September 21, 2010, when an
XSS Worm became active on Twitter. When an account
user held the
mouse
cursor over blacked out parts of a tweet, the worm within the script
would automatically open links and re-post itself on the reader's
account.[161]
The exploit was then re-used to post
pop-up ads and links to pornographic sites. The origin is unclear
but Pearce H. Delphin (known on Twitter as @zzap) and a Scandinavian
developer, Magnus Holm, both claim to have modified the exploit of a
user, possibly Masato Kinugawa, who was using it to create coloured
Tweets.[162]
Kinugawa, a Japanese developer, reported the XSS vulnerability to
Twitter on August 14. Later, when he found it was exploitable again, he
created the account 'RainbowTwtr' and used it to post coloured messages.[162]
Delphin says he exposed the security flaw by tweeting a JavaScript
function for "onMouseOver",[162]
and Holm later created and posted the
XSS Worm that automatically re-tweeted itself.[161]
Security firm Sophos reported that the virus was spread by people doing
it for "fun and games", but noted it could be exploited by
cybercriminals.[161]
Twitter issued a statement on their status blog at 13:50 UTC that "The
exploit is fully patched".[161][163]
Twitter representative Carolyn Penner said no charges would be pressed.[164]
In May 2011, a
claimant known as "CTB" (subsequently identified as
Ryan Giggs) in the case of
CTB v Twitter Inc., Persons Unknown took legal action at the
High Court of Justice in London against Twitter.,[165]
requesting that Twitter release details of account holders. This
followed
gossip posted on Twitter about Giggs' private life, causing conflict
relating to
privacy injunctions.[166][167]
Tony Wang, the head of Twitter in Europe, said that people who do "bad
things" on the site would need to defend themselves under the laws of
their own jurisdiction in the event of controversy, and that the site
would hand over information about users to the authorities when it was
legally required to do so.[168]
He also suggested that Twitter would accede to a UK court order to
divulge names of users responsible for "illegal activity" on the site.[169]
On May 29, 2011, it was reported that
South Tyneside council in England had successfully taken legal
action against Twitter in a court in California, which forced Twitter to
reveal the details of five user accounts. The council was trying to
discover the identity of a
blogger
called "Mr Monkey"[170]
who allegedly posted
libellous statements about three local councillors.
On January 23, 2012, it was reported that Twitter will be acquiring
Dasient,
a startup that offers malware protection for businesses. Twitter hopes
that Dasient will help remove hateful advertisers on the website.[172]
On January 26, 2012, Twitter began offering a feature which would
allow tweets to be removed selectively by country. Twitter cited France
and Germany as examples, where pro-Nazi
content is illegal. Previously, deleted tweets were removed in all
countries.[173][174]
The first use of the policy was to block the account of German
neo-Nazi group
Besseres Hannover on October 18, 2012.[175]
The policy was used again the following day to remove
anti-Semitic French tweets with the hashtag #unbonjuif ("a good
jew").[176]
On February 20, 2012, a
third-party
public-key encryption
app (written in
Python and partially funded by a grant from the
Shuttleworth Foundation[177])
for private messaging in Twitter, CrypTweet, was released.[178]
On May 17, 2012, Twitter announced it would implement the "Do
Not Track" privacy option, a
cookie-blocking feature found in
Mozilla's
Firefox
browser. The "Do Not Track" feature works only on sites that have agreed
to the service.[179]
In August 2012 it was reported that there is a market in fake Twitter
followers that are used to increase politicians and celebrities apparent
popularity.[180]
Open source
Twitter released several
open source projects developed while overcoming technical challenges
of their service.[181]
Notable projects are the
Gizzard Scala framework for creating distributed datastores and the
distributed graph database
FlockDB.
Innovators patent agreement
On April 17, 2012, Twitter announced it would implement an
“Innovators Patent Agreement” which would obligate Twitter to only use
its patents for defensive purposes. The agreement will go into effect
later 2012.[182]
URL shortener
t.co is a
URL shortening service created by Twitter.
It is only available for links posted to Twitter and not available for
general use.
All links posted to Twitter use a t.co wrapper.
Twitter hopes that the service will be able to protect users from
malicious sites,
and will use it to track clicks on links within tweets.[184]
Having previously used the services of third parties
TinyURL
and
bit.ly,[185]
Twitter began experimenting with its own URL shortening service for
private messages in March 2010 using the twt.tl domain,
before it purchased the t.co domain. The service was tested on the main
site using the accounts @TwitterAPI, @rsarver and @raffi.
On September 2, 2010, an email from Twitter to users said they would be
expanding the roll-out of the service to users. On June 7, 2011, Twitter
announced that it was rolling out the feature.[186]
Integrated photo-sharing service
On June 1, 2011, Twitter announced its own integrated photo-sharing
service that enables users to upload a photo and attach it to a Tweet
right from Twitter.com.[187]
Users now also have the ability to add pictures to Twitter's search by
adding hashtags to the tweet.[188]
Twitter also plans to provide photo galleries designed to gather and
syndicate all photos that a user has uploaded on Twitter and third-party
services such as TwitPic.[188]
Use and social
impact
Main article:
Twitter usageTwitter has been used for a variety of purposes in many industries
and scenarios. For example, it has been used to organize protests,
sometimes referred to as "Twitter Revolutions", which include the
2011 Egyptian revolution,
2010–2011 Tunisian protests,
2009–2010 Iranian election protests, and
2009 Moldova civil unrest.[190]
The governments of Iran and Egypt blocked the service in retaliation.[191][192]
The Hill on February 28, 2011 described Twitter and other social
media as a "strategic weapon ... which have the apparent ability to
re-align the social order in real time, with little or no advanced
warning."[193]
During the
Arab Spring in early 2011, the number of hashtags mentioning the
uprisings in
Tunisia
and Egypt
increased.[194]
A study by the
Dubai School of Government found that only 0.26% of the Egyptian
population, 0.1% of the Tunisian population and 0.04% of the Syrian
population are active on Twitter.[195]
The service is also used as a form of
civil disobedience: in 2010, users expressed outrage over the
Twitter Joke Trial by making obvious jokes about terrorism;
and in the
British privacy injunction debate in the same country a year later,
where several celebrities who had taken out anonymised injunctions, most
notably the
Manchester United player
Ryan Giggs, were identified by thousands of users in protest to
traditional journalism being censored.[197]
Another, more
real time and practical use for Twitter exists as an effective de
facto
emergency communication system for
breaking news. It was neither intended nor designed for high
performance communication, but the idea that it could be used for
emergency communication certainly was not lost on the originators, who
knew that the service could have wide-reaching effects early on when the
San Francisco, California company used it to communicate during
earthquakes.[198]
Twitter has been adopted as a communication and learning tool in
educational settings mostly in colleges and universities.
[199][200]
It has been used as a
backchannel to promote student interactions, especially in
large-lecture courses.
[201]
Research has found that using Twitter in college courses helps students
communicate with each other and faculty, promotes informal learning,
allows shy students a forum for increased participation, increases
student engagement, and improves overall course grades.
[202][203][204]
Twitter is also increasingly used for making TV more interactive and
social.[205]
This effect is sometimes referred to as the "virtual watercooler" or
social television — the practice has been called "chatterboxing".[206]
Twitter has been successfully used to encourage people to watch live TV
events, such as the
Oscars, the
Super Bowl[207]
and the
MTV Video Music Awards; however this strategy has proven less
effective with regularly scheduled TV shows.[208]
Such direct cross-promotions have been banned from French television due
to regulations against secret advertising.[209]
In May 2008,
The Wall Street Journal wrote that
social networking services such as Twitter "elicit mixed feelings in
the technology-savvy people who have been their
early adopters. Fans say they are a good way to keep in touch with
busy friends. But some users are starting to feel 'too' connected, as
they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher
cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop
announcing what they're having for dinner."[210]
Tech writer
Bruce Sterling opined in 2007 that using Twitter for "literate
communication" is "about as likely as firing up a
CB radio and hearing some guy recite the
Iliad".[211]
In September 2008, the journalist
Clive Thompson mused in a
The New York Times Magazine editorial that the service had
expanded narcissism into "a new, supermetabolic extreme—the ultimate
expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their
every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world."[212]
Conversely,
Vancouver Sun columnist
Steve Dotto opined that part of Twitter's appeal is the challenge of
trying to publish such messages in tight constraints,[213]
and
Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at
Harvard Law School, said that "the qualities that make Twitter seem
inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful".[214]
Novelist
Rick Moody wrote a short story for Electric Literature called "Some
Contemporary Characters," composed entirely of tweets.[215]
In 2009,
Nielsen Online reported that Twitter has a user retention rate of
forty percent. Many people stop using the service after a month,
therefore the site may potentially reach only about ten percent of all
Internet users.[216]
In 2009, Twitter won the "Breakout of the Year"
Webby Award.[217][218]
During a February 2009 discussion on
National Public
Radio's
Weekend Edition, the journalist
Daniel Schorr stated that Twitter accounts of events lacked rigorous
fact-checking and other editorial improvements. In response,
Andy Carvin gave Schorr two examples of
breaking news stories that played out on Twitter and said users
wanted first-hand accounts and sometimes debunked stories.[219]
On November 29, 2009 Twitter was named the Word of the Year by the
Global Language Monitor, declaring it "a new form of social
interaction".[220]
Time magazine acknowledged its growing level of influence in its
2010
Time 100; to determine the influence of people, it used a formula
based on famous social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook. The list
ranges from
Barack Obama and
Oprah Winfrey to
Lady
Gaga and
Ashton Kutcher.[221][222]
During the
2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, in which he appeared at the
London Olympic Stadium in person,[223]
Sir
Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, tweeted "This is
for everyone",
which was instantly spelled out in
LCD lights attached to the chairs of the 80,000 people in the
audience.[223]
According to an analysis of accounts, the heads of state of 125
countries and 139 other leading politicians have Twitter accounts that
have between them sent more than 350,000 tweets and have almost 52
million followers. However, only 30 of these do their own tweeting, more
than 80 do not subscribe to other politicians and many do not follow any
accounts.[225]
After claims in the media that the hashtags
#wikileaks and
#occupywallstreet were being censored because they did not show up
on the site's list of trending topics, Twitter responded by stating that
it does not censor hashtags unless they contain obscenities.[226][227][228]
US President
Barack Obama's tweet "Four more years", announcing his victory in
the
2012 US presidential election, was retweeted more than 760,000 times
in its first 20 hours.[229]
Statistics
Most popular
accounts
As of October 2012, the ten accounts with the most followers belonged
to the following individuals and organisations:[230]
-
Lady Gaga (30 million followers worldwide)
-
Justin Bieber (28.6 million)
-
Katy Perry (28.2 million)
-
Rihanna (26.1 million)
-
Britney Spears (20.8 million)
-
Barack Obama (20.5 million) - highest ranked account
representing a politician
-
Taylor Swift (19.2 million)
-
Shakira (18.3 million) - highest ranked account based outside
the United States
-
YouTube (17.5 million) - highest account not representing an
individual
-
Kim Kardashian (16.2 million)
Other selected accounts:
- 13.
Cristiano Ronaldo (13.5 million) - highest account representing
an athlete
- 58.
FC Barcelona (7 million) - highest account representing a sports
team
Reception
|
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article is outdated.
Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly
available information. (September 2012)
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In 2006, when Twitter launched under the name "Twttr",
Michael Arrington of
TechCrunch commented that although he liked the service, he also
noted that he felt uncomfortable with the fact that every user's Twitter
page is available to the public.[7]
Change of focus
Twitter emphasized its news and information-network strategy in
November 2009 by changing the question asked to users for status updates
from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?"[231][232]
Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of"
list, saying, "Limiting yourself to 140 characters—the maximum for
messages on this diabolically addictive social-networking tool—is easy."[233]
On November 22, 2010,
Biz
Stone, a cofounder of the company, expressed for the first time the
idea of a Twitter news network,[234]
a concept of a wire-like news service he has been working on for years.[235]