It’s the official go-to place if you ever need to know about the latest announcement by your favourite celebrity. The place where people openly broadcast their views. The place that has hosted the biggest celebrity feuds ever witnessed. If you haven’t guessed it yet, the place we’re talking about is Twitter. Like Facebook, Twitter is also a mainstream social media website that has managed to stay relevant among people. With a total of over 336 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs), it definitely makes it to the top 5 of the most popular social media sites out there. How has it managed to do so? Let’s dive into it.
Contents
History
- Twitter was founded by founder and current CEO, Jack Dorsey in March 2006.
- Dorsey, a New York University dropout, had an idea of a group communicating via an SMS service.
- The project was originally named twttr. It was inspired by five-character lengths of American SMS shortcodes.
- The real reason for that name was the fact that the domain “twitter.com” was already taken. However, after six months of its launch, Dorsey purchased that domain and changed the name to Twitter.
- Twitter was originally only available for Odeo employees. Odeo was a podcasting company where Dorsey used to work.
- The full version was available to the public in July 2006. The first message Dorsey published was, “just setting up my twttr”.
- The company faced rapid growth in 2007 with over 40,000 tweets posted in each quarter.
- The current record for the company is 143,199 tweets per second over a duration of 30 seconds. This happened during the television screening of the movie Castle in the Sky in August 2013.
Jack Dorsey
- Jack Dorsey was born in Missouri in November 1976.
- Dorsey attended the University of Missouri-Rolla for over 2 years before transferring to New York University.
- He did not complete his studies in NYU and dropped out one semester short of graduating.
- Dorsey’s love for computing was there from the start. By the age of fourteen, he was already interested in and learning about dispatch routing.
- In 2000, Dorsey moved to California and started a company that dispatched services from the internet.
- The same year, he got an idea for a real-time, web-based communication service inspired by AOL Instant Messenger.
- Although he was the main force behind the founding of Twitter, Dorsey wasn’t the CEO and started as the chairman of the board.
- He became the permanent CEO in October 2015 after the previous CEO, Dick Costolo resigned.
Social Media
- It has over 15.9 million likes on its Facebook page.
- It has 55.8 million followers on Twitter and a following of 140. Notable followings include Fast Company and Vine Creators.
- On its Instagram, it has 556,000 followers and but doesn’t follow back any account.
How it Works
- Although it is similar to Facebook, there are some things that work differently on Twitter.
- Your account is public by default, much like Instagram, and anyone can follow you. You can change that by making your account private but that’s hardly the case on Twitter.
- When you make a “tweet”, you can add hashtags to increase its viewability. A hashtag is a word following a “#” sign. That particular work can be related to the tweet or anyone/anything to which your tweet is directed.
- Different hashtags can trend from time to time, depending on what’s happening in the world.
- The more trending hashtag you use, the more the chances of your tweet being viewed by the public.
- Similar to Facebook, there’s an option to share someone else’s tweet in your profile. It is known as the “retweet” option.
- You can comment on a tweet by replying to it. Unlike Facebook, the replies are strictly in chronological order.
- Celebrities or large corporations are more likely to post or make announcements on Twitter than any other social media. That makes it a useful platform to know what’s going on.
Revenue Model
1) Tailored Promotions
- This is the main source of revenue for Twitter. It contributes around 86% of its total earnings.
- It’s a feature that allows users to promote their tweets, accounts, and trends much like Facebook.
- However, unlike Facebook, you can only enter the country you want to target and the time zone. The rest is done through an algorithm that automatically chooses the appropriate audience.
- To promote your tweet, click on the activity icon below the tweet. Below Reach a bigger audience, click on Get Started.
2) Data Licensing
- There are 4 companies that Twitter calls “official data resellers”. They have access to all the tweets.
- Using the data from the tweets, each company has made an algorithm useful for data mining.
- These companies also analyze and measure consumer response to all kinds of stuff and ranging from brands to movies.
Careers
- For such a large company, Twitter has really few employees. 4,600 (September 2019).
- There are, however still opening where you can apply.
- For University students, there are openings in various departments for internships and part-time jobs. Those include Customer Support, Design & Research, Machine Learning, Legal and Finance. You can apply here.
- Other than that, there are also full-time job openings in the same departments.
Recent News
- Twitter is rolling out an update that lets you view tweets in reverse chronological order. Previously, Twitter prompted the “top tweet” first on users’ feeds which, according to most of them, was inconvenient. This feature rolled out on 18th December 2018.
- Twitter has recently reported a cyber attack on their system that seems to be state-sponsored. The possible culprits, as Twitter mentioned, are Saudi Arabia and China. Their blog post stated, “…large number of inquiries coming from individual IP addresses located in China and Saudi Arabia”.
- Former New York mayor and President Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Guiliani, is accusing Twitter of letting people misuse his tweet. What happened was that Guiliani accidentally forgot to put a space after a period in his tweet. A web-designer in Atlanta, Jason Velazquez, noticed this, bought the domain for $5, and hilariously placed an anti-Trump message on the site.
- A survey hosted by Statista has revealed the list of the most distrusted tech companies. The survey had a 1000 respondents and was held from 9th-15th December 2018. Twitter was found to be the 2nd most distrusted company, tying with Amazon after 8% people deemed it untrustworthy. Facebook got the first place with 40% people finding it untrustworthy.