Today in 2006, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent off the very first tweet, an unimpressive message that read “just setting up my twttr.” It was not until much later when it hit USENET newsgroup subscribers and the web that it really took notice.
Since then, over 30 billion tweets have been made and Twitter has become synonymous with social networking just like Facebook and LinkedIn. Resembling USENET newsgroup posts, Twitter had been designed to share brief messages with people (under 140 characters) in a social environment online – and it worked.
‘As much fun as we were having, there was always in the back of our heads the idea of the potential of something important coming from it,’ Biz Stone, one of Twitter’s founding members.
In the private market, Twitter has been valued at $8-10 billion although an IPO is not in the cards for 2011.
Just like USENET, Twitters far reaching influence spans cultures, languages, and even extends to outer space as astronaut Paolo broadcasts his portion of the message from his shuttle.
Twitter has over 125 million users, and 500,000 new join each day. Overall, CEO Dick Costolo says there are now 1 billion tweets sent every 8 days. Twitter said it set a record of almost seven thousand tweets per second immediately following the quake in Japan last week.
