The History of Twitter and top celebirty tweeters

Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts up to 140 characters displayed on the user's profile page. Tweets are publicly visible by default; however, senders can restrict the message delivery to just their followers. Users may subscribe to other users' tweets - this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers.

‍History

‍Since its creation in March 2006, and its launch in July 2006, by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained popularity worldwide and is estimated to have 190 million users, generating 65 million tweets a day and handling over 800,000 search queries per day. It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the internet".

‍Jack Dorsey (born November 19,1976) is an American software architect and business person best known as the creator of Twitter. MIT's technology review named him as an outstanding innovator under the age of 35.

‍Twitter's turnover in the US was $150 million dollars (projected in 2010)

‍Growth/Current Twitter

‍The company has experienced rapid growth. It had 400,000 tweets posted per quarter of a year in 2007. This grew to 100 million tweets posted per quarter of a year in 2008. In February 2010, Twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day. By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000 registered applications. As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter.

‍Future

‍Potential impact Twitter could be greater than Facebook

‍Global Influence of Twitter on Communities, Companies, Politics

Twitter is by far the most important social networking trend for 2009, and has the potential to be larger than Facebook in terms of numbers of users multiplied by numbers of messages read or sent. Whatever you thought you knew about Twitter 12 weeks ago may already be a long time out of date.

President Obama has 7,184,170 followers (28.3.11), and Twitter was key in his election victory. With a single mouse click, his campaign manager was able to send an SMS message into hundreds of thousands of mobile phones and e-mail accounts.

During the Mumbai terror attacks, Twitter members were broadcasting second by second updates by phone, which were used by the BBC, other news media, and by security services (and also unfortunately by the terrorists themselves) to try to understand what was happening in the chaos.

‍Twitter already third largest social network

‍Twitter is now the third largest social networking site after Facebook and MySpace, with 7 million Twitter accounts opened by April 2009, increasing by around half a million a month. Twitter is evolving very fast and is already having a huge impact on how companies and politicians are planning future campaigns. Twitter is transforming the daily lives of those who use the service and will have a huge global impact on how many tens of millions of people relate to each other.

TOP 10 FOLLOWED CELEBS ON TWITTER. 2009

1. Stephen Fry: 98616 followers (2,390,000 on 28.3.11)
Read his Twitter feed at: Type of celebrity: Comedian, Actor, TV presenter, Wit
Typical Tweet: “600 people went to the theatre, not to to see Oliver but to compete in a paper & chocolate wrapper rustling competition. Others came to cough”
2. Lance Armstrong: 53813
Cyclist, record breaking Tour De France Winner
“Got the Knaggs' family/kids over here at the house. 6 kids ripping around. It's madness! Luke and 5 girls. Ha! Have a good weekend everyone!”
3. Britney Spears: 53290
“I love Japan! I think all the tiny cars are so cute! –Britney”
4. Rick Sanchez: 48825
American TV news anchor
“i twitter because i need as a journalist to get what viewers think and say. w/out them i'm just another talking head.they complete me, lol!”
5. Shaquille O'Neill: 46296
Basketball player, Actor
“Anotha sleepless nite, n twitter land, aaaaaggggghhhhhhh, whyyyyyyyyyyyy”
6. John Cleese: 44142
Actor, Comedian
“Thank you everyone for the messages. Remember I am practically dead, barely functional. Your patience is appreciated. Will blog again soon”
7. Jonathan Ross: 43432
Tv Presenter, Comedian
“You can lead a celeb to twitter but you can't always make them tweet.”
8. Al Gore: 38351
American politician, Former US Vice President, Environmentalist
“I'm advocating a US goal of 100% carbon-free electricity in 10 years. If you are interested in the plan, check today's NYT op-Ed on it”
9. MC Hammer: 34042
Rapper
“I appreciate all the love (tweets) of congratulations you sent to me about the Super Bowl commercial (Cash4Gold) ...it means a lot..thanks”
10. John Hodgman: 32097
Comedian
“Desk is clear for the first time since beginning of book tour. Apparently it is made of wood”

2011 - 28.3.11
Rio Ferdinand 700,000
Charlie Sheen 3,261,627


Theorists Linked to Twitter:

• "SMS of the internet" linked to Dan Gillmor as it's by the people, for the people.
• The Araba uprisings linked to twitter coincide with Althusser who believed in the Repressive state apparatus. This keeps the status quo because they (those in power) can beat you into submission with their repression ‘machine.’ So when bloggers in the Arab world wrote about protesting and such they were forcefully taken from their own homes and beaten and tortured because of their 'free world' beliefs.
• The popular culture of Twitter and the fact celebrities have twitter means that what they say influences the average joe's as the celebrities can be controlled in what they write. Naom Chomskey who is an outspoken critic of government policy, has argued that in fully censored societies the media manipulate the population, whom he has called the “bewildered herd.” By suppressing information, selectively choosing topics and distorting political discussion.
• The fact that Blogging has turned into micro-blogging (i.e. twitter) means that ideological state apparatus denote institutions such as education, the churches, family, media, trade unions, and law, which were formally outside state control but which served to transmit the values of the state and to maintain order in a society. Now are controlled and so Twitter is not for normal individuals to post their views but it helps to control society as we are forced to believe in the normal ideologies that our specific society have set but made to think we have made them ourselves.
• The global influence of Twitter is suggested to be underlying capitalism. Gramsci suggested Capitalism maintained control not just through violence and politicics, but also ideologically, through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the bourgeoisie became the 'common sense' values of all. Thus a consensus culture developed in which people in the working-class identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.