Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging site that allows its users to send and receive text-based messages, called “tweets,” that can be no more than 140 characters in length. Tweets are posted publicly on the user's profile page, which resembles a blog consisting only of short messages. Twitter is a type of social networking site because its users can choose to subscribe to (or follow) another author's tweets and any given tweet will reach only the parties that have subscribed unless it is a comment that is “retweeted” by a person the user follows. By late 2010, http://Twitter.com was one of the top 10 most visited sites on the Internet and had more than 165 million registered users worldwide. Like other forms of social media (Facebook or Myspace, for example), Twitter has experienced a tremendous amount of expansion and has exerted significant influence as both a social networking site and a type of real-time information network utilized by organizations, businesses, and mainstream media outlets. In its short history, Twitter not only has established a new type of social networking platform for individuals but also has proven to be a unique information tool with great potential to impact many facets of social life, including journalism, business, politics, and popular culture.

The Twitter Website is run by Twitter, Inc., a San Francisco-based company that launched the service in mid-2006. During a brainstorming session, its founders conceptualized the idea of a site that enabled individuals to send real-time messages via short message service (SMS, also known as text messages or texting) to groups of people. Given that the typical SMS message was capped at 160 characters, the creators decided to limit the length of a tweet to 140 characters, allowing room for the user-name and colon in front of the message. The original name for the service was “twitch,” reminiscent of a vibrating cell phone. The team later determined that “twitter” was a more appropriate word for branding purposes and best described what they considered the primary function of the site: to provide short, fleeting bursts of information.

While Twitter generated buzz among early adopters and trendsetters, the service saw its biggest surge in popularity during 2009, probably because of its increased accessibility and growing consumer use. First, the widespread adoption of text messaging and Facebook (with its status update feature) meant that many users were already adept at formats similar to the tweet. Twitter moved beyond computers by improving its mobile applications for smart phones, a technology of media convergence that was also gaining popularity around this time. The mobile applications no longer required users to own or have access to a computer and enabled reporting or updating information in real time. Second, Twitter's popularity and rise in membership spiked when popular-culture icons began using the service, effectively ushering Twitter out of the technology world and into mainstream culture. In April 2009, actor Ashton Kutcher declared a “race” to gather 1 million Twitter followers before cable news station CNN did; he succeeded within a matter of a few days. Nearly simultaneously, talk show host Oprah Winfrey posted her first tweet, resulting in a spike of visitors to http://Twitter.com and new account registrations. Twitter also received significant media attention in June 2009, following the unexpected death of singer Michael Jackson. Jackson's death was cited as a notable “trending topic” (frequently tweeted phrase, word, or name) in the days after his death. The onslaught of users crashed the site as they went to Twitter to express their grief or search for realtime, breaking news updates.

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