Close

22 May 2012

Ten Twitter Facts: Twitlets to dazzle Social Media Devotees

Ten Twitter Facts

Ten Twitter Facts and The First Tweet Ever

With everyone from Prime Minister David Cameron, The X-Factor’s Tulisa and us at SEO Web Marketing confessing their love of Twitter {@GoogleExpertUK}. The site is now a legitimate social networking tool for folk of all ages (famous or otherwise…) to share insights with family, friends and followers. So we have have put together our favourite Ten Twitter Facts.

As a term, ‘tweeting’ is now almost as widely accepted as ‘emailing’ or ‘texting’. Not bad when you consider that as little as six years ago, it didn’t exist at all.

Unlike the origins of Facebook, which have been picked over in minute detail in books like The Accidental Billionaires and films like The Social Network. The founding of Twitter is far less well known, and its creator, Jack Dorsey, is a relative enigma compared to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg. Below you may even find ten Twitter facts you might even want ‘to tweet‘ about.

So, if you feel like impressing (or should that be depressing?) guests at your next dinner party, why not regale them with some unlikely facts surrounding the founding of a site which now boasts some 300 million users worldwide?

Here are SEO Web Marketing’s top Ten Twitter facts – or Twitlets, if you prefer…

  • The first ever tweet was posted by Dorsey himself, who on March 21 2006 wrote: “just setting up my twttr.”
  • The prototype of the system was developed and used by employees of American podcasting company Odeo, where Dorsey worked, largely for internal communications. The full version went public in July of the same year.
  • Twitter ‘exploded’ – soaring from 20,000 to 60,000 users during the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, when bloggers started raving about its time-saving virtues.
  • Following the conference, at which it won the special Web Award, Twitter responded by saying: “We’d like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!”
  • Usage increased exponentially, from 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007 to 100 million per quarter in 2008. Yes, that’s 100 MILLION.
  • The site’s avian mascot-cum-logo has a name… and that name is Larry. He is named after Larry Bird, a former American NBA basketball player.
  • Unsurprisingly, Twitter use spikes during notable sporting or political events. A record 7,196 tweets per second were published during the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final between Japan and the USA.
  • Why so short? Twitter’s 140-character limit was established to make it compatible with early SMS text messages.
  • Ever suspected that most of what’s published on Twitter is disposable garbage? You might be right. An independent study by Texas-based market research firm Pear Analytics classified 40 per cent of messaging as “pointless babble”. Spam accounts for a further 4 per cent.
  • Yes, you can be sued, sacked or even jailed for what you write on Twitter. It’s not considered a private forum, and neither is it above the law.