Say It In 140 Characters

A hundred and forty character is most associated with Twitter. Why a hundred and forty? We will talk about that later. First we have to go back to the time when Twitter is still at its modest years. Modest in terms of users and in terms of growth. It is a given right now that Twitter is becoming big, huge even, joining the ranks of Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and other high ranking websites and social networking media.

Twitter is a private website owned by Twitter Inc. offering social networking and microblogging services. Its users can send messages in one hundred forty characters or less. These are called Tweets. Twitter

was originally named Twttr, inspired by Flickr. Twitter's

logo is depicted by a bird and yes you are correct. Twittering is the sound made by birds which is an apt description of what the site is for, providing people with real time information and the exchanges can be likened to a flock of birds making that tweet sound. Eventually it was changed to Twitter and it seemed perfect. Twitter can be likened to SMS or texting through your mobile phone. The idea in creating Twitter was inspired by such.

The founders wanted to have exchanges of messages in real time with the ease of mobility like your phone. Texting has a word limit of one hundred and sixty characters. Twitter has its own hundred forty limit to leave the remaining 20 characters for your username.

Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Noah Glass and some other employees from Odeo five years ago. The first ever Twttr message was by Jack Dorsey “just setting up my twttr”. On June 2006, Twttr.com was launched in public.

The company experienced rapid growth. It has astounding figures that only Twitter and other social networking sites at its ranks can amass. Like Facebook, Twitter has changed the way we live and exchange information. As what Jack Dorsey has said, “One could change the world with one hundred and forty characters”.

Sources:

http://socialmediamashup.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/how-twitter-got-its-name-and-other-stories/

http://www.bitrebels.com/social/twitter-facts-and-figures-the-true-history-infographic/

http://www.nickburcher.com/2010/05/twitter-facts-and-figures-latest.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter