Rise of Twitter

The 11 billion dollar idea

In just nine years, the masterminds behind the internet sensation that is Twitter have managed to turn their concept into a product that is tipped for an $11bn stock market floatation^[1]. Boasting an active user-base of around 200 million^[2] and even securing an entry in the Collins dictionary^[3], its clear that Twitter has become a part of the mainstream consciousness; but how did it get there?

Twitters origins lie in a “daylong brainstorming session” held in March 2006 by a small group of board members from the podcasting company Odeo, who envisioned a service similar to SMS messaging yet modernised for the internet age.^[4] The outcome followed suit; a collection of microblogs where people post their passing thoughts as 'tweets' and 'follow' other users. Imagine Facebook, but with updates limited to 140 characters and less invasion of privacy.

By the end of 2007, Twitter was processing 400,000 'tweets' per quarter, rising substantially to  100 million per quarter by the end of 2008. By February 2010, Twitter users were publishing an astonishing 50 million tweets per day.^[5] Many attribute this growth to the participation of famous figures to the Twitter circle – analysts claim Oprah Winfrey alone generated a 43% spike in visitors to the site.^[6] Before long famous figures from all sections of society were tweeting away, some of them causing major headaches for their PR teams; Chris Brown, Amanda Bynes and Helen Flanagan have found themselves in hot water after Twitter blunders, just to name a few.^[7]

The impact of the site has been profound - any successful media organisation now has a dedicated Twitter correspondent as do the heads of state in 123 countries.^[8]The reach of the Arab Spring protests is largely credited to Twitter^[9], which is described by Global Language Monitor as a “strategic weapon...which has the apparent ability to re-align the social order in real time, with little or no advanced warning.”^[10] In 2009 The Guardian revealed that the government was planning to teach children on new media tools including Twitter, a move which was condemned by the then shadow education minister Michael Gove - whose criticisms were rather ironically distributed to party members on Twitter itself via the Conservative Party's page.

Twitter usage reached new heights in 2010 when the first unassisted post was Tweeted from the International Space Station by astronaut T.J. Creamer and by November, up to 12 messages a day were being posted from @NASA_Astronauts account^[11]. These days everybody and their dog has a Twitter account; the Deli Llama tweets daily^[12] and the Bank of England recently held a question and answer session regarding the economy using Twitter as its medium.^[13] The real question is, can Twitter pass the test of time?

As revolutionary as it may seem, the track record for social networks in general is not a great one. Many other social platforms have experienced similar levels growth in the past before witnessing a mass abandoning from its users in favour of the latest social fad. MySpace, a veteran in the social networking scene, lost its place as web-users favourite way to waste time with the arrival of Bebo, an Irish social network, which users then dropped shortly after in favour of Facebook. MySpace and Bebo failed to update their interface and features until everybody had already left for Facebook, and by then it was too late. If Twitter wants to stay relevant, it will have to learn from the mistakes of the past top dogs or risk falling victim to the same capital flight of its userbase. Until then, happy tweeting!

^{[1]http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/science-technology/twitter-set-11bn-flotation-year-2270972
[2]http://mashable.com/2012/12/18/twitter-200-million-active-users/
[3]http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/twitter
[4]http://www.140characters.com/2009/01/30/how-twitter-was-born/
[5]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/7297541/Twitter-users-send-50-million-tweets-per-day.html
[6]http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9131935/Oprah_s_Midas_touch_gives_Twitter_a_43_boost
[7]http://www.closeronline.co.uk/2013/08/the-most-embarrassing-celebrity-twitter-mistakes-from-helen-flanagan-to-amanda-bynes
[8]http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/01/hail-to-the-tweet/
[9]http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2011/01/could-tunisia-be-the-next-twitter-revolution/177302/
[10]http://www.languagemonitor.com/2011/02/
[11]http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/jan/HQ_M10-011_Hawaii221169.html
[12]https://twitter.com/DalaiLama
[13]http://www.cityam.com/blog/1382090541/bank-england-launches-twitter-qa}