Twitter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Servicephone service provider fees. (SMS) or external applications. While the service, itself, costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur
The 140 character limit on message length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging, and has brought to the web the kind of shorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140 character limit has also spurred the usage of URL shortening services such as tinyurl, bit.ly and tr.im, and content hosting services, such as Twitpic and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters.
Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet"[3] since the use of Twitter's application programming interface for sending and receiving short text messages by other applications often eclipses the direct use of Twitter.
Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide by Alexa's web traffic[4] Although estimates of the number of daily users vary because the company does not release the number of active accounts, a February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network[5] based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits.[5] In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a monthly growth of 1,382 percent, Zimbio of 240 percent, followed by Facebook with an increase of 228 percent.[6] However, only 40 percent of Twitter's users are retained.[7] analysis.
History
Twitter began in a "daylong brainstorming session" that was held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo in an attempt to break out of a creative slump. At that meeting Jack Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group, a concept partly inspired by the SMS group messaging service TXTMob.
The working name was just "Status" for a while. It actually didn’t have a name. We were trying to name it, and mobile was a big aspect of the product early on ... We liked the SMS aspect, and how you could update from anywhere and receive from anywhere. We wanted to capture that in the name — we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word "twitch," because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But "twitch" is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word "twitter," and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds." And that’s exactly what the product was.
The original product name or codename for the service was twttr, inspired by Flickr and the fact that American SMS short codes are five characters. The developers initially experimented with "10958″ as a short code, though later changed it to "40404″ for "ease of use and memorability." Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST): "just setting up my twttr".[10]
The first Twitter prototype was used as an internal service for Odeo employees, later launching publicly into a full-scale version in July 2006. In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo and all of its assets—including Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the investors and other shareholders.[11] Twitter later spun off into its own company in April 2007.[12]
The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. During the event usage went from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000.[13] "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked Newsweek's Steven Levy. "Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it. Soon everyone was buzzing and posting about this new thing that was sort of instant messaging and sort of blogging and maybe even a bit of sending a stream of telegrams."[14] Reaction at the festival was overwhelmingly positive. Laughing Squid blogger Scott Beale said Twitter "absolutely rul[ed]" SXSW. Social software researcher Danah Boyd said Twitter "own[ed]" the festival.[15] Twitter staff accepted their prize for the festival's Web Award with the remark "we'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"[16]
Finances
Twitter's San Francisco headquarters located on the 4th floor of 539 Bryant Street
In total, Twitter has raised over US$57 million from venture capitalists. The exact amounts of funding have not been publicly released. Twitter's first round of funding was for an undisclosed amount that is rumored to have been between $1 million and $5 million.[17] Its B round of funding in 2008 was for $22 million[18] and its C round of funding in 2009 was for $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital along with an undisclosed amount from other investors including Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and Insight Venture Partners.[17] Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos Expeditions.[19]
The Industry Standard has remarked that Twitter's long-term viability is limited by a lack of revenue.[20] Twitter board member Todd Chaffee forecast that the company could make money from e-commerce noting that many users may want to buy items directly from Twitter since they already use it to get product recommendations and since companies already use it to promote products.[21]
Some of Twitter's documents covering revenue and user growth were published on TechCrunchhacker. These contained internal projections that in 2009 they would have revenues of $400,000 in the third quarter (Q3) and $4 million in the fourth quarter (Q4) along with 25 million users at the end of the year. The projections for the end of 2013 were $1.54 billion in revenue, $111 million in net earnings, and 1 billion users. No information about how Twitter plans to achieve those numbers has been published. Biz Stone published a blog post suggesting legal action for revealing the details was a possibility.[22] after they were retrieved by a
Technology
Twitter has been described as akin to a Web-based Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client.[23] The Twitter Web interface uses the Ruby on Rails framework.[24] From the spring of 2007 until 2008 the actual messages were handled by a Ruby persistent queue server called Starling[25]Scala.[26] The service's API allows other web services and applications to integrate with Twitter.[27] Searches on the system make use of hashtags, words or phrases prefixed with a #. A search for "beer" would turn up all messages that included #beer.[28] Similarly, the @ sign followed by a username allows users to send messages directly to each other. A message with @example would be directed at the user "example" although it can still be read by anyone.[29] but since 2009 this has been gradually replaced with software written in
Through SMS, users can communicate with Twitter through five gateway numbers: short codesNew Zealand, and an Isle of Man-based number for international use. There is also a short code in the United Kingdom which is only accessible to those on the Vodafone and O2 networks.[30] for the United States, Canada, India,
Interface
Technology author Steven Johnson describes the basic mechanics of Twitter as "remarkably simple:"
As a social network, Twitter revolves around the principle of followers. When you choose to follow another Twitter user, that user's tweets appear in reverse chronological order on your main Twitter page. If you follow 20 people, you'll see a mix of tweets scrolling down the page: breakfast-cereal updates, interesting new links, music recommendations, even musings on the future of education.
On April 30, 2009, Twitter tweaked its web interface, adding a search bar and a sidebar of Trending Topics—the most common phrases currently appearing in messages. "Every public update sent to Twitter from anywhere in the world 24/7 can be instantly indexed and made discoverable via our newly launched real-time search," explained Biz Stone. "With this newly launched feature, Twitter has become something unexpectedly important—a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now."[32]
Content of Tweets according to Pear Analytics. San Antonio-based market research firm Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the US and in English) over a 2-week period from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) and separated them into six categories:[33]
- News
- Spam
- Self-promotion
- Pointless babble
- Conversational
- Pass-along value
The firm found that "pointless babble" was the largest category of Twitter content, making up 811 tweets or 40.55 percent of the total number of messages sampled.
Conversational messages accounted for 751 messages or 37.55 percent, tweets with "pass-along value" i.e. retweets – accounted for 174 messages or 8.70 percent, self-promotion by companies made up 117 tweets or 5.85 percent, spam was 75 tweets or 3.75 percent and tweets with news from mainstream media publications accounted for 72 tweets or 3.60 percent.[33]
Social networking researcher Danah Boyd responded to the Pear Analytics survey by arguing that what the Pear researchers labelled "pointless babble" is better characterized as "peripheral awareness" or "social grooming".[34]
Demographics
Most of Twitter's usage share comes from older adults who might not have used other social sites before Twitter, said Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst studying social media. "Adults are just catching up to what teens have been doing for years," he said.
Just 11 percent of Twitter's users are aged 12 to 17, according to comScore.
comScore attributes this to Twitter's "early adopter period" when the social network first gained popularity in business settings and news outlets, which resulted in an older-skewing early adopter profile. However, comScore as of late, has noted that as Twitter has begun to "filter more into the mainstream, along with it came a culture of celebrity as Shaq, Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher joined the ranks of the Twitterati."[36] Nielsen Online estimates that retention rate for Twitter is 40%.[37]
Outages
When Twitter experiences an outage, users see the "fail whale" error message image created by Yiying Lu,[38] an illustration of red birds using nets to hoist a whale from the ocean along with the text [39] "Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again."[39]
Twitter experienced approximately 98 percent uptime in 2007, or about six full days of downtime.[40] Twitter's downtime was particularly noticeable during events popular with the technology industry such as the 2008 Macworld Conference & Expo keynote address.[41][42] During May 2008 Twitter's new engineering team made architectural changes to deal with the scale of growth. Stability issues resulted in down time or temporary feature removal.
In August 2008, Twitter withdrew free SMS services to users in the United Kingdom[43] and for approximately five months instant messaging support via a XMPP bot was listed as being "temporarily unavailable".[44] On October 10, 2008, Twitter's status blog announced that instant messaging (IM) service was no longer a temporary outage and needed to be revamped. Twitter aims to return its IM service at some point but says this requires some major work.[45]
On June 12, 2009, in what was called a potential "Twitpocalypse", the unique identifier32-bit signed integers.[46] While Twitter itself was not affected, some third-party clients found that they could no longer access recent tweets. Patches were quickly released, though some iPhone applications had to wait for approval from the App Store.[47] On September 22, the identifier exceeded the limit for 32-bit unsigned[48] associated with each tweet exceeded the limit for integers, again breaking some third-party clients.
On August 6, 2009, Twitter and Facebook suffered from a denial-of-service attack, causing the Twitter website to be offline for several hours.[49] It was later confirmed that the attacks were directed at one pro-Georgian user around the anniversary of the 2008 South Ossetia War, rather than the sites themselves.[50]
Privacy and security
Twitter collects personally identifiable information about its users and shares it with third parties. The service considers that information an asset, and reserves the right to sell it if the company changes hands.[51] While Twitter displays no advertising, advertisers can target users based on their history of tweets and sometimes may quote tweets in ads.[52]
A security vulnerability was reported on April 7, 2007, by Nitesh Dhanjani and Rujith. Since Twitter used the phone number of the sender of an SMS message as authentication, malicious users could update someone else's status page by using SMS spoofing.[53] The vulnerability could only be used if the spoofer knew the phone number registered to their victim's account. Within a few weeks of this discovery Twitter introduced an optional personal identification number (PIN) that its users could specify to authenticate SMS-originating messages.[54]
On January 5, 2009, 33 high-profile Twitter accounts were compromised after a Twitter administrator's password was guessed by a dictionary attack.[55] Falsified tweets—including sexually explicit and drug-related messages—were then sent from the accounts.[56]
Twitter launched the beta version of its Verified Accounts service on June 11, 2009, allowing famous or notable people to make it clear which Twitter accounts belongs to them. The home pages of these verified accounts display a badge to indicate this special status.[57]
Reception
Criticism
The Wall Street Journal wrote that social-networking services such as Twitter "elicit mixed feelings in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters. Fans say they are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel "too" connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they're having for dinner."[58] "Using Twitter for literate communication is about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite ‘The Iliad’ ", said tech writer Bruce Sterling.[59] "For many people, the idea of describing your blow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd," hypothesized writer Clive Thompson. "Why would you subject your friends to your daily minutiae? And conversely, how much of their trivia can you absorb? The growth of ambient intimacy can seem like modern narcissism taken to a new, supermetabolic extreme — the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world."[60] On the other hand Steve Dotto opines that part of Twitter's appeal is the challenge of trying to publish such messages in tight constraints.[61] "The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful," says Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School.[62]
Nielsen Online reports that Twitter has a user retention rate of 40 percent. Many people drop the service after a month so the site may potentially reach only about 10% of all Internet users.[63] In 2009, Twitter won the "Breakout of the Year" Webby Award.[64][65]
During a February 2009 discussion on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, Daniel SchorrAndy Carvin gave Schorr two examples of breaking news stories that played out on Twitter and said users wanted first-hand accounts and sometimes debunked stories.[66] noted that Twitter accounts of events lacked rigorous fact-checking and other editorial improvements. In response,
In an episode of The Daily Show on February 26, 2009, guest Brian Williams derided tweets as only referring to the condition of the author in any given instant. Williams implied that he would never use Twitter because nothing he did was interesting enough to publish in Twitter format.[67]
During another episode of The Daily Show on March 2, 2009, host Jon Stewart negatively portrayed members of Congress who chose to "twitter" during President Obama's address to Congress (on February 24, 2009) rather than pay attention to the content of the speech. The show's Samantha Bee satirized media coverage of the service saying "there's no surprise young people love it—according to reports of young people by middle aged people".[68]
In March 2009, the comic strip Doonesbury began to satirize Twitter. Many characters highlighted the triviality of tweets although one defended the need to keep up with the constant-update trend.[69] SuperNews! similarly satirized Twitter as an addiction to "constant self-affirmation" and said tweets were nothing more than "shouts into the darkness hoping someone is listening".[70]
Notable usage
Use in campaigning
Twitter was used by candidates in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign throughout the race. Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama used it for publicity.[71] The Nader–GonzalezGoogle Maps.[72][73] campaign updated its ballot access teams in real-time with Twitter and Twitter use increased by 43 percent on the day of the United States' 2008 election.
Used to survey opinion
During the CBC News television coverage of the Canadian federal election on October 14, 2008, the CBC cited tweets regarding Elizabeth May and Stéphane Dion along with a graph of items mentioned on Twitter as evidence that people were calling for Dion to step down in response to the election results.[74]
Use in public relations
In Britain, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills released a Twitter strategy written for the use of other departments. The strategy advised the departments on why Twitter was used by the Government and how they could tweet and promote their doing so effectively.[75] The ICAEW suggested that the document could also be useful to the private sector or as a general introduction to Twitter.[76]
In October 2008, a draft U.S. Army intelligence report identified Twitter as a "potential terrorist tool". The report said it "is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives."[77][78]
David Saranga of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that on December 30, 2008, that Israel would be the first government to hold a worldwide press conference via Twitter to take questions from the public about the war against Hamas in Gaza.[79]
Use in reporting dissent
On April 10, 2008, James Buck, a graduate journalism student at University of California, Berkeley, and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested in Egypt for photographing an anti-government[clarification needed] protest. On his way to the police station Buck used his mobile phone to send the message “Arrested” to his 48 "followers" on Twitter. Those followers contacted U.C. Berkeley, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and a number of press organizations on his behalf. Buck was able to send updates about his condition to his "followers" while being detained. He was released the next day from the Mahalla jail after the college hired a lawyer for him.[80]
On April 7, 2009, thousands of young anti-communist[according to whom?] protesters stormed the presidency and the parliament building in Chişinău, the capital of Moldova, accusing the government of electoral fraud. Information about these events was disseminated through Twitter using hashtag #pman. This hashtag came from the name of the central square in Chişinău: Piaţa Marii Adunări Naţionale.[81] Twitter was also used to mobilize for the protests.[82]
Use in protest and politics
In June 2009, following allegations of fraud in the Iranian presidential election, protesters used Twitter as a rallying tool and as a method of communication with the outside world after the government blocked several other modes of communication.[83][84][85][86] On June 15 Twitter rescheduled a planned 90-minute maintenance outage after a number of Twitter users and the US State Department asked Twitter executives to delay the shutdown because of concerns about the service's role as a primary communication medium by the protesters in Iran.[87][88] CNN's coverage of the conflict was criticized in tweets with the hashtag #CNNfail.[89] Twitter was also used to organize DDoS attacks against Iranian government websites.[90]
In August 2009, when American opponents of President Barack Obama's health insurance reform proposals attacked the British National Health Service, thousands of NHS users took part in a Twitter campaign expressing their support for the NHS with use of the #welovetheNHS hashtag. The hashtag was initiated by Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan, who said he wanted to use a twitter campaign "as a counterweight against the lies of the American right".[91] The campaign also received the support of several politicians including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.[92][93][94]
New York City activist Elliot Madison used twitter to report an order to disperse message from the Pittsburgh police during the 2009 G-20 Pittsburgh protests. Police raided Madison's hotel room, and one week later Madison's New York home was raided by FBI agents, who conducted a sixteen-hour search. Police claim Madison and a co-defendant used computers and a radio scanner to track police movements and then passed on that information to protesters using cell phones and the social networking site Twitter. Madison is being charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility, and possession of instruments of crime. The FBI took miscellany such as refrigerator magnets, and a Curious George stuffed animal, despite that the warrant issued actually asked for evidence that indicated that potentially there were violations of federal rioting laws. In light of the United States Department of State's recent public support of twitter use in the politics of Iran, Moldova, and Honduras it is asked whether the State Department supports speech in the United States.[95][96][97]
When The Guardian newspaper was served in October 2009 with an unprecedented "super-injunction" banning it from reporting on a parliamentary matter, it published a cryptic article reporting what little it could. The paper claimed that this case appears "to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights".[98][99] Alan Rusbridger, the paper's editor, credited Twitter users with taking the initiative to uncover the muck that the press was not allowed to print, namely that the injunction was taken out by the London solicitors Carter-Ruck on behalf of commodities trader Trafigura, who did not want public discussion of the 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal and the resulting Minton Report (available on Wikileaks [100]) The reporting injunction was lifted the same day, as Carter Ruck withdrew it before The Guardian could challenge it in the High Court.[101] Rusbridger credited the rapid back-down of Carter-Ruck to Twitter[102], as did a BBC article[103]; the Wikipedia Reference Desk also quickly figured out what the cryptic article referred to[104].
Use in emergencies
Research reported in New Scientist in May 2008[105] found that blogs, maps, photo sites and instant messaging systems like Twitter did a better job of getting information out during emergencies than either the traditional news media or government emergency services. The study also found that those using Twitter during the fires in California in October 2007 kept their followers (who were often friends and neighbors) informed of their whereabouts and of the location of various fires minute by minute. Organizations that support relief efforts are also using Twitter. The American Red Cross started using Twitter[106] to exchange minute-to-minute information about local disasters including statistics and directions.[107]
During the 2008 Mumbai attacks eyewitnesses sent an estimated 80 tweets every 5 seconds. Twitter users on the ground helped compile a list of the dead and injured. In addition, users sent out vital information such as emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals needing blood donations.[108] CNN called this "the day that social media appeared to come of age" since many different groups made significant use of Twitter to gather news and coordinate responses.[108]
In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 experienced multiple bird strikes and had to be ditched in the Hudson River. Janis Krums, a passenger on one of the ferries that rushed to help, took a picture of the downed plane as passengers were still evacuating and sent it to Twitpic[109][110] before any other media arrived at the scene.
The Australian Country Fire Authority used Twitter to send out regular alerts and updates regarding the February 2009 Victorian bushfires.[111] During this time the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, also used his Twitter account to send out information on the fires, how to donate money and blood, and where to seek emergency help.[112]
Also in April, public health departments used Twitter to provide updates on H1N1 cases.[113]
Use in criminal proceedings
The first criminal prosecution arising from Twitter posts began in April 2009. Agents of the FBITea Party protest in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.[114] arrested Daniel Knight Hayden. Hayden was accused of sending tweets threatening violence in connection with his plan to attend a
In July 2009, Horizon Realty Group, a Chicago real estate management company, sued a former tenant, Amanda Bonnen, for libel based on a Twitter message sent to friends. Horizon contends that Bonnen defamed Horizon by posting a tweet to her friends that said, "You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's ok." Horizon asked for at least $50,000 for the alleged libel.[115] The lawsuit prompted widespread comment from journalists, bloggers, and legal experts.[116]
Use in space exploration
In February 2009, NASA won a Shorty Award for its near real-time status updates in 2008 of the unmanned Mars Phoenix Lander mission.[117]
In May 2009, astronaut Mike Massimino used Twitter to send updates of the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission, the first time Twitter was used in space.[118][119]
On October 21, 2009, Nicole Stott and her Expedition 21 crewmate aboard the International Space Station, Jeff Williams, are scheduled to participate in the first tweetup from the station with members of the public gathered at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. This will involve the first live Twitter connection for the astronauts[120]. Previously, astronauts onboard the Space Shuttle or ISS have sent the messages they desire to send as tweets down to Mission Control which then posted the message via the Internet to Twitter.[121]
NASA also provides an aggregate feed of all official NASA astronauts' tweets via NASA Astronauts on Twitter.
Similar services
Main article: Micro-blogging A number of services like Twitter exist, including some which send text messages to multiple people at once. Some services use a similar concept as Twitter but add country-specific services or combine the micro-blogging facilities with other services, such as file sharing. Other services provide similar functionality, but within closed networks for corporations, nonprofits, universities, and other organizations.[122]
See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
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