10 Terrific Twitter Facts And Figures

Since its launch in 2006 Twitter has gained popularity worldwide and is estimated to have 225 million users, generating 65 million tweets and handling over 800,000 search queries per day. It is sometimes described as the “SMS of the Internet” as its 140 character limit keeps the messages short and simple.

Its attraction as a social web media platform is its simplicity. And the real time aspect; great for breaking news stories.

10 Terrific Twitter Facts and Figures

1. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched in July of that year.
2. Twitter’s origins lie in a “day long brainstorming session” that was held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. While sitting in a park on a children’s slide and eating Mexican food, Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group.
3. The original project code name for the service was ‘twttr‘, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass.
4. The team finally settled on the name ‘twitter‘, which means ‘chirps from birds’ in essence ‘a short burst of inconsequential information’
5. In 2008 there were only 1.25 million tweets per day
6. Jan 2008 there were only 8 employees. In 2011 there are now over 400 employees
7. The current TPS record (Tweets per second) is 6,939 tweets per second set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day
8. 572,000 is the number of new accounts created in one day (March 12, 2011)
9. In March 2011 there are an estimated 225 million users
10. The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010

What other interesting Twitter facts and figures have you heard about?

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