Saturday, March 26, 2011

Twitter Turns Five as Site Registers 200Million Users

twitter'Inviting coworkers'. Two words. Not spectacular. Yet, as the first ever Twitter message – made five years ago today – those two words sparked a revolution in internet communication. It took three years to pass the billion-tweet mark. Now it posts that many every week.

Since co-founder Jack Dorsey posted it on March 21, 2006, Twitter has registered nearly 200million users. Dorsey has spent the last few days tweeting a timeline of sorts, sharing what he was doing just before the big launch.

On Sunday, he wrote : '5 yrs ago today, the eve of launching twttr to the company. Moving from @Biz, @florian & me, to all of our peers using it. Nervous. #twttr'

He needn't have worried. The site, which invites people to say 'what's happening' in 140 characters or fewer, was initially dismissed as a platform of very little value.

Now, it is an internet giant and even its sternest critics would be hard-pressed to dismiss its significance. Since its launch, Twitter has played a role in a wide range of headline-making events, from the Egyptian revolution to Charlie Sheen's battle with CBS.

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