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10 Things You Didn’t Know About Twitter
The 140-character messaging service favoured by everyone from the Pope to US President Barack Obama has morphed into one of the most powerful social and cultural media forces of our time. Here a few little-known things about Twitter.
1) On March 21, 2006, co-founder Jack Dorsey sent the first tweet. The tweet read “just setting up my twttr.”
2) Twitter was a side project within Odeo, a struggling pod-casting company where Dorsey worked as a software engineer alongside Twitter co-creators Noah Glass and Biz Stone. The length of tweets are capped at 140 characters in order to include a user’s name and still fit within the 160-character SMS messaging format used by mobile phones.
3) In October 2006, Evan Williams, CEO of Odeo, forms a new company called Obvious Corp. It acquired all of Odeo’s assets, including Twitter.
4) In November 2008, Twitter rebuffed a $500 million acquisition offer by social networking powerhouse Facebook, according to media reports. Twitter had about six million registered users around this time.
5) In April 2009, Ashton Kutcher became the first celebrity to amass 1 million followers on Twitter. The social network’s total number of registered users reached 14 million the previous month.
6) Astronaut Mike Massimino made the first ever tweet from out space in May 2009, saying: “From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!”
7) In June 2009, the US State Department asked Twitter to delay a planned upgrade to its system that would have cut daytime service in Iran. The State Department stressed Twitter’s importance as a communications tool during protests following Iran’s disputed presidential election. That request drove home Twitter’s growing clout as a communications tool, with global political ramifications.
8) In May 2011, a Pakistani IT consultant named Sohaib Athar tweeted, “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).” He unknowingly broke the news of US Navy Seals raid on Osama bin Laden’s home in Pakistan before any mainstream media outlet; Bin Laden was killed during the operation.
9) In December 2011, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal acquired a $300 million stake in Twitter by purchasing shares from existing investors. The company is valued at roughly $8 billion at the time.
