出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』「2015/01/09 20:35:29」(JST)
この記事には複数の問題があります。改善やノートページでの議論にご協力ください。
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URL | twitter.com |
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スローガン | What's Happening? (いま、なにしてる?)[1] |
タイプ | コミュニティサイト |
登録 | 必要 |
使用言語 | 日本語、英語、フランス語、イタリア語、ドイツ語、スペイン語、ポルトガル語、朝鮮語、トルコ語、ロシア語、インドネシア語、オランダ語、中国語、ヒンディー語、フィリピン語、マレー語、スウェーデン語、デンマーク語、フィンランド語、ノルウェー語、ポーランド語(インターフェース) |
運営者 | Twitter, Inc. |
設立者 | ジャック・ドーシー エヴァン・ウィリアムズ |
設立日 | 2006年(平成18年)6月 |
アレクサ ランキング |
9位[2] |
現状 | 運営中 |
Twitter(ツイッター)は、140文字以内の「ツイート」と称される短文を投稿できる情報サービス[1]で、Twitter社によって提供されている。「ミニブログ」[3][4] 「マイクロブログ」[5]といったカテゴリーに分類される。
サービス名の「twitter」は英語で「さえずり・興奮」「無駄話」、または「なじる人・嘲る人」の意味である[6]。Twitterでの発言を指す「tweet」は「鳥のさえずり」の意味で、日本では「つぶやき」と意訳され定着している[注 1]。
ゆるいつながり[8]が発生し、広い意味でのソーシャル・ネットワーキング・サービス(SNS)の1つといわれることもあるが[3]、Twitter社自身は、「社会的な要素を備えたコミュニケーションネットワーク」であると規定し、SNSではないとしている[9][10]。
Twitterは2006年7月に元オブビアウス社(現Twitter社)が開始したサービスで、同社の登録商標(日本:第5188811号)である。
アメリカ合衆国カリフォルニア州サンフランシスコに本社がある。Twitterに発言を投稿するにはパソコンや携帯電話、スマートフォンで自身のアカウントにログインし、画面上部のボックスに140文字以内で内容を入力し「ツイート」ボタンを押すことで投稿が完了する。また携帯メールでの投稿も可能である。[1] この投稿はインターネットに接続できる環境であれば誰でも見ることができる。[11]
またTwitterにログインした際自分専用のページ「ホーム」のタイムラインには、自分の投稿とあらかじめ「フォロー」したユーザーの投稿が時系列順に表示され、各ユーザーが自分の近況や感じたことなどを投稿し、時に他のユーザーがそれに対して話しかけたりすることで、メールやIMに比べて「ゆるい」コミュニケーションが生まれる。
一方「キーワード検索」をすると「キーワードを含んだ投稿」のタイムラインが生成され、「キーワードを含んだ投稿」でつながったグループが自然発生する。同じキーワードを含んだ投稿をすれば、グループに参加することもできる。「トレンド」により、いま多く投稿されている「キーワード」を知ることができる。トレンドの範囲を国別に、または主要都市別に絞り込む機能もある。
投稿や閲覧は公式サイト上で行うほか、便利な機能を備えた各種のクライアント・クライアントウェブサービスや、iPhoneやAndroidといったスマートフォン用のアプリも多数公開されており、またUbuntu 10.04以降では標準でマイクロブログクライアントのGwibberが搭載され、デスクトップ環境に統合されるなど、さまざまな環境で使うことができる。
コミュニケーション・メディア(通信媒体)の分類方法として、情報の送信されるタイミングと受信側に届くタイミングのギャップの有無により「同期型(ギャップなし)」「非同期型(ギャップあり)」に分けるものがあるが[注 2]、Twitterの場合は原則として非同期的(ある利用者のツイートが別の利用者に読まれるまでにタイムラグがある)に使用されているものの、一時的に同期的に(つまりチャットのようにほぼリアルタイムで)通信が行われることがあり、同期型と非同期型が混在した媒体であるといえる。利用者が必要に応じて同期的な通信することを選択できるという意味で「選択同期」と表現されることもある。[12]
2013年に入り、利用者数の伸びが「鈍っている」ことが確認されている。[1]
創成期にブログ・サービス「ブロガー」を開発し、その後グーグル社に売却したエヴァン・ウィリアムズや、ブロガーの開発チームの一員だったビズ・ストーン、ジャック・ドーシーらが中心となって開発した。ジャック・ドーシーによると、Twitterの基本構想は自身が2000年6月に思いついた[13]。LiveJournalよりもリアルタイム性が高く、どこにいても自分の状況を知人に知らせたり、逆に知人の状況を把握できたりするサービスの可能性に気づいたという。ドーシーはそのアイデアを5年間あたため続け、その後、オデオ社のプロジェクトとして立ち上げた。
2006年7月から始まったTwitterのサービスは、2007年3月に米国で開催されたイベント「サウス・バイ・サウスウェスト」(South by Southwest、SXSW)でブログ関連の賞を受賞した[14][15]ことで一躍注目を集めるようになった。
設立以来、共同創業者たちが主に自己資金で経営してきたが、2007年7月26日にユニオン・スクエア・ベンチャーズ(Union Square Ventures)やチャールズ・リバー・ベンチャーズ(Charles River Ventures)、複数の個人投資家から資金を調達したことを発表した[16]。
2008年1月7日、デジタルガレージグループがTwitterに出資するとともに、日本展開の支援を発表[17]、2008年4月23日にユーザインターフェースが日本語化された日本語版が利用可能になった[18]。さらに2009年10月15日には携帯電話向けサイトを開設[19]、同時にウィルコムの公式コンテンツとして登録された[20]。
2008年2月1日、Twitterは信頼性を理由に、NTTコミュニケーションズ100パーセント子会社であるNTT Americaのホスティングサービスを選んだと発表した[21][22][23]。
2009年3月23日、大手企業重役つぶやきサイトの「エグゼック・ツイーツ」(ExecTweets)が設立された。このサイトのスポンサーはマイクロソフトである。また、マイクロソフトは自社のXbox Liveから、Twitterやフェイスブックやラスト・エフエムなどへアクセスできるサービスを付加する計画を発表している。
2010年4月9日にはリサーチ・イン・モーションと協力してBlackBerry端末用公式クライアントアプリ「Twitter for BlackBerry」の無料配布を開始し[24]、同日はさらにiPhone用閲覧アプリ「Tweetie」を買収しTwitter公式アプリとして無料配布すると発表[25]、5月19日より「Twitter for iPhone」として公開された[26]。また4月30日にはGoogle社のAndroid開発チームと協力して開発された公式閲覧アプリ「Twitter for Android」の無料配布も開始されている[27]。
2010年8月31日をもってTwitter APIにおけるBasic認証(ベーシック—)の対応を終了し、完全にOAuth(オーオース)に移行した。当初6月30日で終了する予定だったが、2010 FIFAワールドカップの開催以後その影響でシステムが不安定な状態が続いていることから延期された[28]。
2012年6月、ロゴデザインを変更[29]。円形や黄金比を駆使したものとなった [30][31]。同年9月5日よりTwitter APIのバージョン1.1を提供開始。また開発者向けの表示ガイドライン[注 3]を大幅に変更した。一般ユーザーはクライアントがユーザー認証数の上限に達していると使えない、ブログやWebサイトの古い形式のTwitterウィジェットが利用できないなどの影響を受ける。[32]。その後、2013年6月11日にAPIバージョン1.0の提供が終了となり、これによりバージョン1.1に未対応のTwitterクライアントは利用が不可能となった[33]。
2013年5月23日、TwitterはSMSを使った2段階認証システムを導入。日本以外の地域では利用可能になっており、日本でも「できるだけ早く、より安全な方法がご利用になれるように努力しておりますので、もうしばらくお待ちください」[34]とコメントしている。
2013年8月28日、ソーシャルメディア分析ツールを提供するニューヨークのTrendrrを買収し、9月9日にスマートフォン向けホスト型広告配信を手掛けているベンチャーのモーパブ(MoPub)を買収している。
2013年11月7日、Twitter社(Twitter Inc、NYSE: TWTR)は、ニューヨーク証券取引所に株式を上場した。公開価格26ドルに対し、初値は公開価格比73%高の45ドル10セントをつけた。[35]
2013年11月18日、2006年のサービス開始以降に投稿された全ての公開ツイートが検索可能になると発表[36]
自分のプロフィールおよびアカウントに関する設定は公式サイトの設定ページから行う。携帯電話向けサイトは一部機能が制限されている。
Twitterの特徴として、ほぼ全ての機能に対応するAPIがある。これを利用した多くの関連サービスが公開されており、Twitter普及の一因となっている。
ツイートにURLを含めて140文字に抑えるのは難しいため、20文字程度の短いURLから本来のURLへと自動転送を行う、URL短縮サービスが各所で利用されている[58]。元々「TinyURL」「bit.ly」などの外部サービスが利用されてきた。一部のクライアントにはURL短縮サービスと連携し、クライアント上でURL短縮を行ったり、投稿時にURLを自動的に短縮したりする機能を備えるものがある。
2011年よりTwitter公式の短縮サービス「t.co」が全URLを対象に用いられるようになった[59]。クライアントやユーザー自身が設定しなくても自動的に短縮され、タイムライン上では自動的に伸長されて元のURLが表示される(一部のクライアント等を除く)。外部サービスを使用すると二重に短縮されることになる。
Twitter公式ページに直接アクセスせず、専用のアプリケーションを通じて閲覧や投稿を行うためのクライアントが各企業や個人によって多数公開されている。ユーザーのニーズに応じたスタイルで利用できるほか、携帯電話やスマートフォンなど持ち運び可能な端末から場所を問わず投稿する手段としても利用される。
ウェブページにボタンを埋め込み、そのページから直接Twitterの投稿画面を呼び出すソーシャルボタン。埋め込んだページのタイトル、URLやツイートボタン設置者のアカウント名などを自動で埋め込むことができるため、Twitterで気軽にそのページを紹介したり、関連アカウントのフォローを促したりすることができる[60]。Twitterが公式提供するボタンのほかに、一部のニュースサイトではソーシャルブックマークへの登録ボタンと一緒にツイートボタンが設置されている。
なお、ツイートボタンからの投稿はクライアントによる投稿と同種のものとして扱われ、ビア情報には「TweetButton」と表示される。
Twitterが公式提供するサービス。ウェブページに規則に基づいたリンクを埋め込むことで、そのページから直接ツイートへのリプライ、リツイート、お気に入りや、アカウントのフォローを行うことができる。ツイートボタンと同様、ウェブページを離れることなくTwitterの操作が行える。[61]
ブログ広告のようにTwitterでも口コミ広告のようなサービスがあり、つぶやくことによって5円-上限で990円の収入を得られるシステムがある。堀江貴文もそれを利用しておりTwitterでは特定のキーワードでつぶやくスポンサーからお金をもらえることがあると西村ひろゆきとの対談で明らかとなった。[62]
個々のURLを短くするなどTwitterに適応させた外部の画像投稿サービス(TwitPic、Lockerz、Yfrog、フォト蔵、ついっぷるフォトなど)が盛んに利用されている。クライアントによっては画像を自動表示できる。2011年よりTwitter公式の画像投稿サービスであるTwitter Photo(Photobucketがホスティング)が開始された。
動画の共有は既存のYouTubeが使われることが多い。他にTwitter連動で手軽にストリーミング動画生放送ができるTwitCastingなどもある。
以下はいずれも非公式の関連サービスである。
この節は検証可能な参考文献や出典が全く示されていないか、不十分です。出典を追加して記事の信頼性向上にご協力ください。(2010年1月) |
Twitterの利用が拡大するに従い、さまざまなアカウントの形態がでてきている。
Twitterアカウントのユーザーは人間に限らず、botと呼ばれる自動発言プログラムが投稿している場合もある。
その影響力の大きさに注目した企業や団体、個人などの「公式アカウント」が存在する。なりすましを防ぐためTwitter側で本物であることが確認できた著名ユーザーに認証バッジと呼ばれる特別なバッジ(水色の地に白色のチェックマーク)を付与し、「認証済みアカウント」とする。この認証バッジはユーザーのプロフィールページに表示される。しかしそのマークを自身のプロフィール画像に埋め込んで公式アカウントに見せかける悪質なユーザーも出てきている[63]。
「認証済みアカウント」機能以外に、ユーザーアカウントの真正性をオンラインで確認する手段として、Twitterは自身の公式ウェブサイトからTwitterのプロフィールページにリンクを張ることがもっとも簡単だとしている[63]。
団体や個人になりすましたアカウントによるなりすまし発言[注 6]が問題となっている。
スマートフォンの急激な利用者増加に伴い、安易に位置情報付きツイートを投稿してしまうユーザが増加している。現在までに位置情報投稿による大きな事件は報告されていないが、利用者に対し注意喚起を求めるソフトウェアが公開されており、大きな社会問題となりつつある[64]。また、位置情報を付けていなくても、「(場所名)なう」「帰宅なう」などのツイートを投稿している場合、投稿件数が多いと、日常の生活習慣や行動スタイルなどが明るみになり、空き巣などの犯罪に巻き込まれる恐れがある。
2009年7月15日、Twitter社が「Google Apps」上で管理していた社内文書が、複数のブログ運営者とメディアに送られるという事件が発生した[65][66]。この件ではTwitterのユーザ情報などは漏洩しなかったが、後に漏洩の原因がグーグル・アップスのパスワードが「password
」だったため、容易に推測され、盗まれたのだと判った[67]。
迷惑メール同様、無差別かつ大量に個々のアカウントDMに広告が送信されることがある。「スパム報告する(Report for spam)」機能で通報することで少なからず迷惑ツイートは減っているものの対応が後手に回っていることは事実である。 また自己紹介の写真の更新が可能であることから、フォロー者による、嫌な相手を傷つけるための写真の更新がされることが多い。加えて、「つぶやく」側も同様、嫌な相手を傷つけるためだけの写真の紹介も多い。その場合の紹介文は事実と無関係なことが多い。
前述のとおり、「ハッシュタグ」により、特定のトピックに関する投稿の一覧を検索して見ることができるが、中にはその機能を悪用し、特定のトピックと無関係のツイートにハッシュタグを乱用する悪質なユーザーもいる。なお、Twitter社による「Twitterルール[68]」では、上記の行為は「スパム行為」とみなされているのでスパム報告が可能。
出所の不確かな情報を流したり、なりすましのユーザーが故意に嘘を流したり、エイプリルフールなどのネタのツイートを真に受けたユーザーがツイート・リツイートしたりすることによって、チェーンメールと同様に誤った情報が拡散するケースがある。
日本においては、2013年7月にLINE公式アカウントを装ったアカウントにより「LINEがサービスを終了する」という内容をツイートしてこれが広まり、公式アカウントが否定するに至った事例[69]などがある。また同年7月の韓国では、ロッテ七星飲料の一部代理店が「他社の焼酎に軽油が混入していた」との記事をリツイートするなどして広めたとの告発を受け、警察の家宅捜索を受けている[70]。2013年7月には、「パーナ」と呼ばれる利用者らの間で大量のデマゴーグが拡散され、それを鵜呑みにしたユーザが各地で問題行動を起こす「パーナさん事件」と呼ばれる騒動が発生した[71]。
Twitter上において飲酒運転や無免許運転、未成年飲酒・喫煙、窃盗、盗撮、有償ソフトウェアの違法ダウンロードといった犯罪行為、また犯罪と呼ぶには至らない悪乗り[66][72]を自ら暴露するツイートが後を絶たず、さらにこうしたツイートをした人物が本名あるいは学校などの個人情報をそのまま載せていたり、もしくは別の場所に載せているか簡単に特定が可能な情報を載せていたりする場合がある。こうしたツイートを見つけた2ちゃんねらーなどのネット自警団とも呼ばれる[73]存在が、同一人物と見られるmixiやFacebookなどのページを探し、個人情報を特定した上で就業先の企業や学校、警察に通報および抗議を行うと言う事例が後を絶たない。また有名人を名指しした殺害予告や無差別殺人、「○○でサリンを撒く」などとツイートして他人に影響を与える犯罪予告のツイートも増えており、警察が出動し逮捕者も出ている[74]。そのため、日本のネット上ではTwitterがバカ発見器やバカッターと揶揄されることもある[72][75][76]。
なお、学生の1割が俗に「バイトテロ」とも呼ばれるアルバイト従業員による悪ふざけのような投稿を容認していることが『日経MJ』の調査で明らかになり、ツイートが全世界につながっているという重大性を認識できていないことが背景にあるとみられている[76]。
ユーザーがとある商品を口コミを装って広告代金がもらえるステルスマーケティングに類似した広告制度がある。つぶやき一つで中には数千円、毎日3回つぶやけば年収ベースで1000万円にもなる。つぶやく内容は広告会社と詳しく打ち合わせて決められている。とあるフォロワー数が23000人いるユーザーはつぶやき1回で5578円もらえるというがユーザーの信頼を失いたくないのでその程度の金額ではやらない、とても怖い感じがしたと述べている[77]。
悪意のあるURLに接続すると、アクセストークンといったTwitterアカウントを自由に操作できる権限を他人にも奪われる[注 7]場合がある。そのURLは『Did you see this pic of you? lol』といった英文に添えてDMで送られてくる場合が殆どで、乗っ取られたアカウントのフォロワーに同様のDMを送り蔓延する、チェーンメールと同じような仕組みになっている。また最近は、日本語に添えてURLが送られてきたりなど手段が巧妙化してきている。 そのためTwitterはOAuth認証の方法を改善する対策を行なっているが、対応が後手に回っていることも事実である。
芸能人に成り済ましてTwitterを開設しファンなどがだまされるケースが増えている。一応ファンを楽しませようとするのもあれば、芸能人の品位を落とすかのような悪質なものもある。対策として事務所が公式サイトにて偽者と注意を促したり、本人がTwitterを開設するなどしている。
Twitterでは簡単にやり取りが行えてしまうため芸能人に対する誹謗中傷が問題化している。ひどい場合には本人のアカウントが炎上してしまうケースもある。またTwitterに書いた内容は基本的に全世界に公開していることになるのだが、誹謗中傷を書かれた人が、書いた人に反論をするとエゴサーチと呼ばれ叩かれてしまうケースもある。
Twitterは写真を乗せることも簡単なため街で見かけた芸能人、有名人を無断で盗撮し写真を乗せるというケースが後を絶たない。被害にあった芸能人はマナーを守ってほしいと苦言をすることが多くなっている[78]。
インターネット懸賞への当選確率の向上などを目的として、多数のアカウントを不正に取得するなどした事例が存在する[79]。
この節に雑多な内容が羅列されています。事項を箇条書きで列挙しただけの節は、本文として組み入れるか整理・除去する必要があります。(2010年8月) |
password
」だった - ウィルス対策ニュース・ドットネットウィキメディア・コモンズには、Twitterに関連するカテゴリがあります。 |
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Twitter's homepage in February 2014
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Type | Public |
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Traded as | NYSE: TWTR |
Founded | March 21, 2006 (2006-03-21)[1] |
Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States[2] |
Area served | Worldwide |
Founder(s) | Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, Evan Williams |
Key people | Jack Dorsey (Chairman) Dick Costolo (CEO) |
Industry | Internet |
Revenue | US$664 million (2013)[3] |
Employees | 3,300 (2014)[4] |
Subsidiaries | Vine |
Website | twitter |
Written in | Java,[5][6] Ruby,[5] Scala,[5] JavaScript[5] |
Alexa rank | 8 (December 2014[update])[7] |
Type of site | Social network service |
Registration | Required to post, follow, or be followed |
Users | 284 million active (December 2014)[8] |
Available in | Multilingual |
Launched | July 15, 2006 (2006-07-15)[9] |
Current status | Active |
Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called "tweets".
Registered users can read and post tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through the website interface, SMS, or mobile device app.[10] Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco and has more than 25 offices around the world.[11]
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass and by July 2006 the site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with more than 100 million users who in 2012 posted 340 million tweets per day.[12] The service also handled 1.6 billion search queries per day.[13][14][15] In 2013 Twitter was one of the ten most-visited websites, and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet."[7][16] As of December 2014, Twitter has more than 500 million users, out of which more than 284 million are active users.[8]
Twitter's origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Dorsey, then an undergraduate student at New York University, introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group.[17][18] The original project code name for the service was twttr, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass,[19] inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes. The developers initially considered "10958" as a short code, but later changed it to "40404" for "ease of use and memorability."[20] 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".[1] Dorsey has explained the origin of the "Twitter" title:
...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.[21]
The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as an internal service for Odeo employees[22] and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006.[9]
In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo, formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo, together with its assets—including Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the investors and shareholders.[23] Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011.[24] Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.[25] Williams provided insight into the ambiguity that defined this early period in a 2013 interview:
With Twitter, it wasn't clear what it was. They called it a social network, they called it microblogging, but it was hard to define, because it didn't replace anything. There was this path of discovery with something like that, where over time you figure out what it is. Twitter actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social network.[26]
The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000.[27] "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."[28]
Reaction at the conference was highly positive. Blogger Scott Beale said that Twitter "absolutely rul[ed]" SXSWi. Social software researcher danah boyd said Twitter "own[ed]" the conference.[29] Twitter staff received the festival's Web Award prize with the remark "we'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!" [30]
The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010.[31] By late November 2010, an average of a dozen updates per day were posted on the astronauts' communal account, @NASA_Astronauts. NASA has also hosted over 25 "tweetups", events that provide guests with VIP access to NASA facilities and speakers with the goal of leveraging participants' social networks to further the outreach goals of NASA.
In August 2010, the company appointed Adam Bain from News Corp.'s Fox Audience Network as president of revenue.[32]
The company experienced rapid growth. It had 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007. This grew to 100 million tweets posted per quarter in 2008. In February 2010, Twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day.[33] By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000 registered applications.[34] As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter.[35] As of March 2011, that was about 140 million tweets posted daily.[36] As noted on Compete.com, Twitter moved up to the third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twenty-second.[37]
Twitter's usage spikes during prominent events. For example, a record was set during the 2010 FIFA World Cup when fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second in the thirty-second period after Japan scored against Cameroon on June 14. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets per second were posted after the Los Angeles Lakers' victory in the 2010 NBA Finals on June 17,[38] and then again at the close of Japan's victory over Denmark in the World Cup when users published 3,283 tweets per second.[39] The record was set again during the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Final between Japan and the United States, when 7,196 tweets per second were published.[40] When American singer Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, Twitter servers crashed after users were updating their status to include the words "Michael Jackson" at a rate of 100,000 tweets per hour.[41] The current record as of August 3, 2013 was set in Japan, with 143,199 tweets per second (beating the previous record of 33,388, also set by Japan after a television screening of the movie "Castle In The Sky").[42]
Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11, 2010. Atebits had developed the Apple Design Award-winning Twitter client Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone. The application, now called "Twitter" and distributed free of charge, is the official Twitter client for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.[43]
From September through October 2010, the company began rolling out "New Twitter", an entirely revamped edition of twitter.com. Changes included the ability to see pictures and videos without leaving Twitter itself by clicking on individual tweets which contain links to images and clips from a variety of supported websites including YouTube and Flickr, and a complete overhaul of the interface, which shifted links such as '@mentions' and 'Retweets' above the Twitter stream, while 'Messages' and 'Log Out' became accessible via a black bar at the very top of twitter.com. As of November 1, 2010, the company confirmed that the "New Twitter experience" had been rolled out to all users.
On April 5, 2011, Twitter tested a new homepage and phased out the "Old Twitter." [44] However, a glitch came about after the page was launched, so the previous "retro" homepage was still in use until the issues were resolved; the new homepage was reintroduced on April 20.[45][46]
On December 8, 2011, Twitter overhauled its website once more to feature the "Fly" design, which the service says is easier for new users to follow and promotes advertising. In addition to the Home tab, the Connect and Discover tabs were introduced along with a redesigned profile and timeline of Tweets. The site's layout has been compared to that of Facebook.[47][48]
On February 21, 2012, it was announced that Twitter and Yandex agreed to a partnership. Yandex, a Russian search engine, finds value within the partnership due to Twitter's real time news feeds. Twitter's director of business development explained that it is important to have Twitter content where Twitter users go.[49]
On March 21, 2012, Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday while also announcing that it has 140 million users and sees 340 million tweets per day. The number of users is up 40% from their September 2011 number, which was said to have been at 100 million at the time.[50]
In April 2012, Twitter announced that it was opening an office in Detroit, with the aim of working with automotive brands and advertising agencies.[51] Twitter also expanded its office in Dublin.[52]
On June 5, 2012, a modified logo was unveiled through the company blog, removing the text to showcase the slightly redesigned bird as the sole symbol of Twitter.[53]
On October 5, 2012, Twitter acquired a video clip company called Vine that launched in January 2013.[54][55] Twitter released Vine as a standalone app that allows users to create and share six-second looping video clips on January 24, 2013. Vine videos shared on Twitter are visible directly in users' Twitter feeds.[56] Due to an influx of inappropriate content, it is now rated 17+ in Apple's app store.[57]
On December 18, 2012, Twitter announced it had surpassed 200 million monthly active users. Twitter hit 100 million monthly active users in September 2011.[58]
On April 18, 2013, Twitter launched a music app called Twitter Music for the iPhone.[59]
On August 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Trendrr,[60] followed by the acquisition of MoPub on September 9, 2013.[61]
As of September 2013, the company's data showed that 200 million users send over 400 million tweets daily, with nearly 60% of tweets sent from mobile devices.[62]
On June 4, 2014, Twitter announced that it will acquire Namo Media, a technology firm specializing in "native advertising" for mobile devices.[63]
On June 19, 2014, Twitter announced that it has reached an undisclosed deal to buy SnappyTV, a service that helps edit and share video from television broadcasts.[64][65] The company was helping broadcasters and rights holders to share video content both organically across social and via Twitter's Amplify program.[66]
In July, 2014, Twitter announced that it intends to buy a young company called CardSpring for an undisclosed sum. CardSpring enables retailers to offer online shoppers coupons that they can automatically sync to their credit cards in order to receive discounts when they shop in physical stores.[67]
On July 31, 2014, Twitter announced that it has acquired a small password-security startup called Mitro.[68]
On October 29, 2014, Twitter announced a new partnership with IBM. The partnership is intended to help businesses use Twitter data to understand their customers, businesses and other trends.[69]
On September 12, 2013, Twitter announced that it had filed papers with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of a planned stock market listing.[70] It revealed its prospectus in an 800-page filing.[71] Twitter planned to raise US$1 billion as the basis for its stock market debut.[72] The IPO filing states that "200,000,000+ monthly active users" access Twitter and "500,000,000+ tweets per day" are posted.[26][73]
In an October 15, 2013 amendment to their SEC S-1 filing,[74] Twitter declared that they would list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), quashing speculation that their stock would trade on the NASDAQ exchange. This decision was widely viewed to be a reaction to the botched initial public offering of Facebook.[75] On November 6, 2013, 70 million shares[76] were priced at US$26 and issued by lead underwriter Goldman Sachs.[77]
On November 7, 2013, the first day of trading on the NYSE, Twitter shares opened at $26.00 and closed at US$44.90, giving the company a valuation of around US$31 billion.[78] This was $18.90 above the initial offering price and Twitter ended with a market capitalization of $24.46 billion.[79] The paperwork from November 7 shows that among the founders, Williams received a sum of US$2.56 billion and Dorsey received US$1.05 billion, while Costolo's payment was US$345 million.[80]
As of 13 December 2013[update], Twitter had "a market capitalization of $32.76 billion".[79]
On February 5, 2014, Twitter published its first results as a public company, showing a net loss of $511 million in the fourth quarter of 2013.[81]
This article is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this article to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (October 2013) |
As chief executive officer, Dorsey saw the startup through two rounds of capital funding by the venture capitalists who backed the company.[82]
On October 16, 2008,[83] Williams took over the role of CEO, and Dorsey became chairman of the board.[84]
On October 4, 2010, Williams announced that he was stepping down as CEO. Dick Costolo, formerly Twitter's chief operating officer, became CEO. According to a Twitter blog, dated October 4, 2010, Williams was to stay[dated info] with the company and "be completely focused on product strategy."[dated info][85]
According to The New York Times, "Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Costolo forged a close relationship" when Williams was away.[86] According to PC Magazine, Williams was "no longer involved in the day-to-day goings on at the company". He was focused on developing a new startup, and became a member of Twitter's board of directors, and promised to "help in any way I can". In 2011, Stone was still with Twitter but was working with AOL as an "advisor on volunteer efforts and philanthropy".[87] In January 2014 Stone announced the release of Jelly, a 'social Q&A network for mobile'.[88]
Dorsey rejoined Twitter in March 2011, as executive chairman focusing on product development. At that time he split his schedule with Square (where he is CEO), whose offices are within walking distance of Twitter's in San Francisco.[86]
In September 2011, board members and investors Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet resigned from Twitter's Board of Directors.[89]
In October 2012, Twitter announced it had hired former Google executive Matt Derella to become their new director of business agency development.[90]
Twitter has become internationally identifiable by its signature bird logo. The original logo was in use from its launch in March 2006 until September 2010. A slightly modified version succeeded the first style when the website underwent its first redesign.
On February 27, 2012, a tweet from an employee that works on the company's platform and API discussed the evolution of the "Larry the Bird" logo with Twitter's creative director and it was revealed that it was named after Larry Bird of the NBA's Boston Celtics fame. This detail had previously been confirmed when the Boston Celtics' director of interactive media asked Twitter co-founder Biz Stone about it in August 2011.[91]
On June 5, 2012, Twitter unveiled its third logo redesign, replacing Larry the Bird with an updated icon simply named as the "Twitter Bird." As of this logo revision, the word "Twitter" and the lowercase letter "t" are no longer used, with the bird becoming the sole symbol for the company's branding.[92] According to Douglas Bowman, designer of Twitter, the new logo resembles a Mountain Bluebird.[93] Twitter explains on their website not to modify the logo (e.g. rotate the bird, change the logo's color, etc.).[94]
Tweets are publicly visible by default, but senders can restrict message delivery to just their followers. Users can tweet via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries.[95] Retweeting is when a tweet is forwarded via Twitter by users. Both tweets and retweets can be tracked to see which ones are most popular. While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.[96]
Users may subscribe to other users' tweets – this is known as "following" and subscribers are known as "followers"[97] or "tweeps", a portmanteau of Twitter and peeps.[98] Users can check the people who are unsubscribing them on Twitter ("unfollowing") via various services.[99][100] In addition, users can block those who have followed them.
Twitter allows users to update their profile via their mobile phone either by text messaging or by apps released for certain smartphones and tablets.[101]
Twitter has been compared to a web-based Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client.[102] In a 2009 Time essay, technology author Steven Johnson described the basic mechanics of Twitter as "remarkably simple":[103]
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.
According to research published in April 2014, around 44 percent of user accounts have never tweeted.[104]
San Antonio-based market-research firm Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the United States and in English) over a two-week period in August 2009 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm (CST) and separated them into six categories:[105]
Despite Jack Dorsey's own open contention that a message on Twitter is "a short burst of inconsequential information", 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 "social grooming" and/or "peripheral awareness" (which she justifies as persons "want[ing] to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn't viable").[106] Similarly, a survey of Twitter users found that a more specific social role of passing along messages that include a hyperlink is an expectation of reciprocal linking by followers.[107]
Users can group posts together by topic or type by use of hashtags – words or phrases prefixed with a "#"
sign. Similarly, the "@"
sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users.[108] To repost a message from another Twitter user and share it with one's own followers, a user can click the retweet button within the Tweet.
In late 2009, the "Twitter Lists" feature was added, making it possible for users to follow (as well as mention and reply to) ad hoc lists of authors instead of individual authors.[97][109]
Through SMS, users can communicate with Twitter through five gateway numbers: short codes for the United States, Canada, India, New 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, O2[110] and Orange[111] networks. In India, since Twitter only supports tweets from Bharti Airtel,[112] an alternative platform called smsTweet[113] was set up by a user to work on all networks.[114] A similar platform called GladlyCast exists for mobile phone users in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.[115]
The tweets were set to a largely constrictive 140-character limit for compatibility with SMS messaging, introducing the shorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140-character limit has also increased the usage of URL shortening services such as bit.ly, goo.gl, and tr.im, and content-hosting services, such as Twitpic, memozu.com and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters. Since June 2011, Twitter has used its own t.co domain for automatic shortening of all URLs posted on its website.[116][117]
A word, phrase or topic that is tagged at a greater rate than other tags is said to be a "trending topic". Trending topics become popular either through a concerted effort by users, or because of an event that prompts people to talk about a specific topic.[118] These topics help Twitter and their users to understand what is happening in the world.[119]
Trending topics are sometimes the result of concerted efforts and manipulations by preteen and teenaged fans of certain celebrities or cultural phenomena, particularly musicians like Lady Gaga (known as Little Monsters), Justin Bieber (Beliebers), and One Direction (Directioners), and fans of the Twilight (Twihards), Rihanna fans (Rih Navy), and Harry Potter (Potterheads) novels. Twitter has altered the trend algorithm in the past to prevent manipulation of this type to limited success.[120]
Twitter's March 30, 2010 blog post announced that the hottest Twitter trending topics would scroll across the Twitter homepage.[121]
There have been controversies surrounding Twitter trending topics: Twitter has censored hashtags that other users found offensive. Twitter censored the #Thatsafrican[122] and the #thingsdarkiessay hashtags after users complained that they found the hashtags offensive.[123] There are allegations that Twitter removed #NaMOinHyd from the trending list and added an Indian National Congress-sponsored hashtag.[124]
There are numerous tools for adding content, monitoring content and conversations including Telly (video sharing, old name is Twitvid),[125] TweetDeck, Salesforce.com, HootSuite, and Twitterfeed. As of 2009, fewer than half of tweets were posted using the web user interface with most users using third-party applications (based on analysis of 500 million tweets by Sysomos).[126]
A verified Twitter account formally validates the identity of the person or company that owns the account—the aim of the "verified" status is to prevent impersonation through the placement of a small blue checkmark by the top-right corner of a user's page, or next to the username in the platform's Search function.[127] Twitter is responsible for assigning the blue checkmark, and it is frequently applied to the accounts of notable people in politics, music, movies, business, fashion, government, sports, media, and journalism.[128]
The owners of verified accounts can also access additional features that are not available to standard Twitter-account holders.[129] These features include the following:
Twitter has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Firefox OS, and Nokia S40.[132] There is also version of the website for mobile devices, SMS and MMS service.[133] Twitter limits the use of third party applications utilizing the service by implementing a 100,000 user limit.[134]
As of August 31, 2010, third-party Twitter applications are required to use OAuth, an authentication method that does not require users to enter their password into the authenticating application. Previously, the OAuth authentication method was optional, it is now compulsory and the user-name/password authentication method has been made redundant and is no longer functional. Twitter stated that the move to OAuth will mean "increased security and a better experience".[135]
This feature adds websites to the bottom of a tweet's permalink page. If a website embedded a tweet onto one of their stories, the tweet will show the websites that mentioned the tweet. This feature was added onto Twitter so if the viewer doesn't understand what the tweet means, they can click on the sites to read more about what the person is talking about.[136]
This section is outdated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (October 2014) |
Twitter is ranked as one of the ten-most-visited websites worldwide by Alexa's web traffic analysis.[137] Daily user estimates vary as the company does not publish statistics on active accounts. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits.[138] In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing website in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had annual growth of 1,382 percent, increasing from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009.[139] In 2009, Twitter had a monthly user retention rate of forty percent.[140]
Twitter.com Top5 Global Markets by Reach (%)[141][142] | ||||
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Country | Percent | |||
Indonesia | Jun 2010 |
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20.8% | |
Dec 2010 |
|
19.0% | ||
Brazil | Jun 2010 |
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20.5% | |
Dec 2010 |
|
21.8% | ||
Venezuela | Jun 2010 |
|
19.0% | |
Dec 2010 |
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21.1% | ||
Netherlands | Jun 2010 |
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17.7% | |
Dec 2010 |
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22.3% | ||
Japan | Jun 2010 |
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16.8% | |
Dec 2010 |
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20.0% | ||
Note: Visitor age 15+, home and work locations. Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs. |
In 2009, Twitter was mainly used by 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.[143] According to comScore only eleven percent of Twitter's users are aged twelve to seventeen.[143] comScore attributed this to Twitter's "early adopter period" when the social network first gained popularity in business settings and news outlets attracting primarily older users. However, comScore also stated in 2009 that Twitter had begun to "filter more into the mainstream", and "along with it came a culture of celebrity as Shaq, Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher joined the ranks of the Twitterati."[144]
According to a study by Sysomos in June 2009, women make up a slightly larger Twitter demographic than men — fifty-three percent over forty-seven percent. It also stated that five percent of users accounted for seventy-five percent of all activity, and that New York City has more Twitter users than other cities.[145]
According to Quancast, twenty-seven million people in the US used Twitter as of September 3, 2009. Sixty-three percent of Twitter users are under thirty-five years old; sixty percent of Twitter users are Caucasian, but a higher than average (compared to other Internet properties) are African American/black (sixteen percent) and Hispanic (eleven percent); fifty-eight percent of Twitter users have a total household income of at least US$60,000.[146] The prevalence of African American Twitter usage and in many popular hashtags has been the subject of research studies.[147][148]
On September 7, 2011, Twitter announced that it has 100 million active users logging in at least once a month and 50 million active users every day.[149]
In an article published on January 6, 2012, Twitter was confirmed to be the biggest social media network in Japan, with Facebook following closely in second. comScore confirmed this, stating that Japan is the only country in the world where Twitter leads Facebook.[150]
On March 31, 2014, Twitter announced there were 255 million monthly active users (MAUs) and 198 million mobile MAUs.[151] In 2013, there were over 100 million users actively using Twitter daily and about 500 million Tweets every day,[152] with about 29% of users checking Twitter multiple times a day.[153]
In 2012, the country with the most active users on Twitter was the United States.[154]
Twitter raised over US$57 million from venture capitalist growth funding, although exact numbers are not publicly disclosed. Twitter's first A round of funding was for an undisclosed amount that is rumored to have been between US$1 million and US$5 million.[155] Its second B round of funding in 2008 was for US$22 million[156] and its third C round of funding in 2009 was for US$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.[155] Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos Expeditions.[157]
In May 2008, The Industry Standard remarked that Twitter's long-term viability is limited by a lack of revenue.[158] Twitter board member Todd Chaffee forecast that the company could profit from e-commerce, noting that users may want to buy items directly from Twitter since it already provides product recommendations and promotions.[159]
By March 2009 communications consultant Bill Douglass predicted in an interview that Twitter would be worth $1 billion within six months,[160] which came to pass when the company closed a financing round valuing it at $1 billion in September of that year.[161]
The company raised US$200 million in new venture capital in December 2010, at a valuation of approximately US$3.7 billion.[162] In March 2011, 35,000 Twitter shares sold for US$34.50 each on Sharespost, an implied valuation of US$7.8 billion.[163] In August, 2010 Twitter announced a "significant" investment lead by Digital Sky Technologies that, at US$800 million, was reported to be the largest venture round in history.[164]
In December 2011, the Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal invested $300 million in Twitter. The company was valued at $8.4 billion at the time.[165]
In July 2009, some of Twitter's revenue and user growth documents were published on TechCrunch after being illegally obtained by Hacker Croll. The documents projected 2009 revenues of US$400,000 in the third quarter and US$4 million in the fourth quarter along with 25 million users by the end of the year. The projections for the end of 2013 were US$1.54 billion in revenue, US$111 million in net earnings, and 1 billion users.[166] No information about how Twitter planned to achieve those numbers was published. In response, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone published a blog post suggesting the possibility of legal action against the hacker.[167]
On April 13, 2010, Twitter announced plans to offer paid advertising for companies that would be able to purchase "promoted tweets" to appear in selective search results on the Twitter website, similar to Google Adwords' advertising model. As of April 13, Twitter announced it had already signed up a number of companies wishing to advertise, including Sony Pictures, Red Bull, Best Buy, and Starbucks.[168][169]
The company generated US$45 million in annual revenue in 2010, after beginning sales midway through that year; the company operated at a loss through most of 2010.[162]
Users' photos can generate royalty-free revenue for Twitter, and an agreement with World Entertainment News Network (WENN) was announced in May 2011.[170] In June 2011, Twitter announced that it would offer small businesses a self-service advertising system.[171] Twitter generated US$139.5 million in advertising sales during 2011.
The self-service advertising platform was launched in March 2012 to American Express card members and merchants in the U.S. on an invite-only basis. Twitter later reported that numerous small businesses and people who used the self-service tool provided feedback that indicated they were impressed by the feature.[172] To continue their advertising campaign, Twitter announced on March 20, 2012 that promoted tweets would be introduced to mobile devices.[173] In April 2013, Twitter announced that its Twitter Ads self-service platform, consisting of promoted tweets and promoted accounts, was available to all U.S. users without an invite.[172]
Twitter's financial revenue statistics for the first quarter of 2014 was reported as US$250 million.[151]
Twitter places great reliance on open-source software.[174] The Twitter Web interface uses the Ruby on Rails framework,[175] deployed on a performance enhanced Ruby Enterprise Edition implementation of Ruby.[176]
In the early days of Twitter, tweets were stored in MySQL databases that were temporally sharded, that is the databases were split by time of posting. MySQL was causing problems with both reading and writing to Twitter and the company decided that the system needed re-engineering.[177]
As of April 6, 2011, Twitter engineers confirmed they had switched away from their Ruby on Rails search stack, to a Java server they call Blender.[6]
From Spring 2007 to 2008 the messages were handled by a Ruby persistent queue server called Starling,[178] but since 2009 implementation has been gradually replaced with software written in Scala.[179] The switch from Ruby to Scala and the JVM has given Twitter a performance boost from 200—300 requests per second per host to around 10,000–20,000 requests per second per host. This boost was greater than the 10x improvement that Twitter's engineers envisioned when starting the switch. The continued development of Twitter has also involved a switch from monolithic development of a single app to an architecture where different services are built independently and joined through remote procedure calls.[177]
The service's application programming interface (API) allows other web services and applications to integrate with Twitter.[180][181]
Individual tweets are registered under unique IDs using software called snowflake and geolocation data is added using 'Rockdove'. The URL shortner t.co then checks for a spam link and shortens the URL. The tweets are stored in a MySQL database using Gizzard and acknowledged to users as having been sent. They are then sent to search engines via the Firehose API. The process itself is managed by FlockDB and takes an average of 350 ms.[174]
On August 16, 2013, Twitter's Vice President of Platform Engineering Raffi Krikorian shared in a blog post that the company's infrastructure handled almost 143,000 tweets per second during that week, setting a new record. Krikorian explained that Twitter achieved this record by blending its homegrown and open source technologies.[177][182]
On April 30, 2009, Twitter adjusted its web interface, adding a search bar and a sidebar of "trending topics" — the most common phrases appearing in messages. Biz Stone explains that all messages are instantly indexed and that "with this newly launched feature, Twitter has become something unexpectedly important – a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now."[183]
In March 2012, Twitter became available in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu, the first right-to-left language versions of the site. About 13,000 volunteers helped with translating the menu options.[184] In August 2012, beta support for Basque, Czech and Greek was added, making the site available in 33 different languages.[185]
When Twitter experiences an outage, users once saw the "fail whale" error message image created by Yiying Lu,[186] illustrating eight orange birds using a net to hoist a whale from the ocean captioned "Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.".[187] In a November 2013 WIRED interview Chris Fry, VP of Engineering at that time, noted that the company had taken the "fail whale" out of production as the platform was now more stable.
Twitter had approximately ninety-eight percent uptime in 2007 (or about six full days of downtime).[188] The downtime was particularly noticeable during events popular with the technology industry such as the 2008 Macworld Conference & Expo keynote address.[189][190]
Twitter messages are public but users can also send private messages.[205] Twitter collects personally identifiable information about its users and shares it with third parties. The service reserves the right to sell this information as an asset if the company changes hands.[206] While Twitter displays no advertising, advertisers can target users based on their history of tweets and may quote tweets in ads[207] directed specifically to the user.
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.[208] The vulnerability could 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 use to authenticate their SMS-originating messages.[209]
On January 5, 2009, 33 high-profile Twitter accounts were compromised after a Twitter administrator's password was guessed by a dictionary attack.[210] Falsified tweets — including sexually explicit and drug-related messages — were sent from these accounts.[211]
Twitter launched the beta version of their "Verified Accounts" service on June 11, 2009, allowing famous or notable people to announce their Twitter account name. The home pages of these accounts display a badge indicating their status.[212]
In May 2010, a bug was discovered by İnci Sözlük, involving users that allowed Twitter users to force others to follow them without the other users' consent or knowledge. For example, comedian Conan O'Brien's account, which had been set to follow only one person, was changed to receive nearly 200 malicious subscriptions.[213]
In response to Twitter's security breaches, the US Federal Trade Commission brought charges against the service which were settled on June 24, 2010. This was the first time the FTC had taken action against a social network for security lapses. The settlement requires Twitter to take a number of steps to secure users' private information, including maintenance of a "comprehensive information security program" to be independently audited biannually.[214]
On December 14, 2010, the United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena directing Twitter to provide information for accounts registered to or associated with WikiLeaks.[215] Twitter decided to notify its users and said in a statement, "...it's our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so".[205]
A "MouseOver" exploit occurred on September 21, 2010, when an XSS Worm became active on Twitter. When an account user held the mouse cursor over blacked-out parts of a tweet, the worm within the script would automatically open links and re-post itself on the reader's account.[216] The exploit was then re-used to post pop-up ads and links to pornographic sites. The origin is unclear but Pearce H. Delphin (known on Twitter as @zzap) and a Scandinavian developer, Magnus Holm, both claim to have modified the exploit of a user, possibly Masato Kinugawa, who was using it to create coloured Tweets.[217] Kinugawa, a Japanese developer, reported the XSS vulnerability to Twitter on August 14. Later, when he found it was exploitable again, he created the account 'RainbowTwtr' and used it to post coloured messages.[217] Delphin says he exposed the security flaw by tweeting a JavaScript function for "onMouseOver",[217] and Holm later created and posted the XSS Worm that automatically re-tweeted itself.[216] Security firm Sophos reported that the virus was spread by people doing it for "fun and games", but noted it could be exploited by cybercriminals.[216] Twitter issued a statement on their status blog at 13:50 UTC that "The exploit is fully patched".[216][218] Twitter representative Carolyn Penner said no charges would be pressed.[219]
In May 2011, a claimant known as "CTB" (subsequently identified as Ryan Giggs) in the case of CTB v Twitter Inc., Persons Unknown took legal action at the High Court of Justice in London against Twitter,[220] requesting that Twitter release details of account holders. This followed gossip posted on Twitter about Giggs' private life, causing conflict relating to privacy injunctions.[221][222] Tony Wang, the head of Twitter in Europe, said that people who do "bad things" on the site would need to defend themselves under the laws of their own jurisdiction in the event of controversy, and that the site would hand over information about users to the authorities when it was legally required to do so.[223] He also suggested that Twitter would accede to a UK court order to divulge names of users responsible for "illegal activity" on the site.[224]
On May 29, 2011, it was reported that South Tyneside council in England had successfully taken legal action against Twitter in a court in California, which forced Twitter to reveal the details of five user accounts. The council was trying to discover the identity of a blogger called "Mr Monkey"[225] who allegedly posted libellous statements about three local councillors.[226]
On January 23, 2012, it was reported that Twitter would be acquiring Dasient, a startup that offers malware protection for businesses. Twitter hopes that Dasient will help remove hateful advertisers on the website.[227]
On January 26, 2012, Twitter began offering a feature which would allow tweets to be removed selectively by country. Twitter cited France and Germany as examples, where pro-Nazi content is illegal. Previously, deleted tweets were removed in all countries.[228][229] The first use of the policy was to block the account of German neo-Nazi group Besseres Hannover on October 18, 2012.[230] The policy was used again the following day to remove anti-Semitic French tweets with the hashtag #unbonjuif ("a good Jew").[231]
On February 20, 2012, a third-party public-key encryption app (written in Python and partially funded by a grant from the Shuttleworth Foundation[232]) for private messaging in Twitter, CrypTweet, was released.[233]
On May 17, 2012, Twitter announced it would implement the "Do Not Track" privacy option, a cookie-blocking feature found in Mozilla's Firefox browser. The "Do Not Track" feature works only on sites that have agreed to the service.[234]
In August 2012 it was reported that there is a market in fake Twitter followers that are used to increase politicians' and celebrities' apparent popularity.[235] The black market for the fake followers, known as "bots", has been linked to "nearly every politically linked account from the White House to Congress to the 2016 campaign trail." In June 2014, POLITICO analyzed Twitter handles with the highest rates of fake followers: US President Barack Obama with 46.8 percent, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz with 35.1 percent, and Senator John McCain with 23.6 percent. The culprits working to generate the fake followers, or "bots", include campaign workers or friends of political candidates. One site offers 1,000 fake followers for $20. The people creating the "bots" are often from Eastern Europe and Asia.[236][237] In 2013, two Italian researchers calculated 10 percent of total accounts on Twitter are "bots" however, other estimates have placed the figure even higher.[238]
In April 2013 Twitter warned news organizations around the world to secure their Twitter accounts after a number of high profile hacks of official accounts including those of the Associated Press and The Guardian.[239] In May 2013, Twitter announced a two-factor login verification as an added measure against hacking.[240]
In August 2013, Twitter announced plans to introduce a "report abuse" button for all versions of the site. A petition for making the process of complaining about harassment easier had collected over 100,000 signatures. The move followed the posting of abusive tweets, including rape and death threats to historian Mary Beard, British feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and the British MP Stella Creasy.[241][242][243] Three men were arrested under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 in connection with the incidents.[244]
In August 2014, Twitter said that in certain cases it would delete pictures of people who had died after requests from family members and "authorized individuals". The move followed controversy over the sharing of images on Twitter showing the killing of American journalist James Foley.[245][246]
On December 2014 Twitter announced new reporting and blocking policies;[247][248][249][250] a blocking mechanism devised by a target of GamerGate also received notable coverage.[251][252][253]
Twitter has a history of both using and releasing open source software while overcoming technical challenges of their service.[254] A page in their developer documentation thanks dozens of open source projects which they have used, from revision control software like Git to programming languages such as Ruby and Scala.[255] Software released as open source by the company includes the Gizzard Scala framework for creating distributed datastores, the distributed graph database FlockDB, the Finagle library for building asynchronous RPC servers and clients, the TwUI user interface framework for iOS, and the Bower client-side package manager.[256][257] The popular Twitter Bootstrap web design library was also started at Twitter and is the most popular repository on GitHub.[258]
On April 17, 2012, Twitter announced it would implement an "Innovators Patent Agreement" which would obligate Twitter to only use its patents for defensive purposes. The agreement went into effect in 2012.[259]
t.co is a URL shortening service created by Twitter.[116] It is only available for links posted to Twitter and not available for general use.[116] All links posted to Twitter use a t.co wrapper.[260] Twitter hopes that the service will be able to protect users from malicious sites,[116] and will use it to track clicks on links within tweets.[116][261]
Having previously used the services of third parties TinyURL and bit.ly,[262] Twitter began experimenting with its own URL shortening service for private messages in March 2010 using the twt.tl domain,[260] before it purchased the t.co domain. The service was tested on the main site using the accounts @TwitterAPI, @rsarver and @raffi.[260] On September 2, 2010, an email from Twitter to users said they would be expanding the roll-out of the service to users. On June 7, 2011, Twitter announced that it was rolling out the feature.[117]
On June 1, 2011, Twitter announced its own integrated photo-sharing service that enables users to upload a photo and attach it to a Tweet right from Twitter.com.[263] Users now also have the ability to add pictures to Twitter's search by adding hashtags to the tweet.[264] Twitter also plans to provide photo galleries designed to gather and syndicate all photos that a user has uploaded on Twitter and third-party services such as TwitPic.[264]
A Twitterbot is a computer program that automatically posts on Twitter, they are programmed to tweet, retweet, and follow other accounts. According to a recent report, there were 20 million, less than 5%, of accounts on Twitter that were fraudulent in 2013. These fake accounts are often used to build large follower populations quickly for advertisers, while others respond to tweets that include a certain word or phrase.[265] These 'bots' embody the automation of modern life as they connect directly to Twitter's mainline computing the information they intake and posting on a whim. Twitter's wide-open application programming interface and cloud servers make it possible for twitterbots' existence within the social networking site.[266]
Twitter has been used for a variety of purposes in many industries and scenarios. For example, it has been used to organize protests, sometimes referred to as "Twitter Revolutions", which include the 2011 Egyptian revolution, 2010–2011 Tunisian protests, 2009–2010 Iranian election protests, and 2009 Moldova civil unrest.[268] The governments of Iran and Egypt blocked the service in retaliation.[269][270] The Hill on February 28, 2011 described Twitter and other social media as a "strategic weapon ... which have the apparent ability to re-align the social order in real time, with little or no advanced warning."[271] During the Arab Spring in early 2011, the number of hashtags mentioning the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt increased.[272] A study by the Dubai School of Government found that only 0.26% of the Egyptian population, 0.1% of the Tunisian population and 0.04% of the Syrian population are active on Twitter.[273]
The service is also used as a form of civil disobedience: in 2010, users expressed outrage over the Twitter Joke Trial by making obvious jokes about terrorism;[274] and in the British privacy injunction debate in the same country a year later, where several celebrities who had taken out anonymised injunctions, most notably the Manchester United player Ryan Giggs, were identified by thousands of users in protest to traditional journalism being censored.[275]
Another, more real time and practical use for Twitter exists as an effective de facto emergency communication system for breaking news. It was neither intended nor designed for high performance communication, but the idea that it could be used for emergency communication certainly was not lost on the originators, who knew that the service could have wide-reaching effects early on when the San Francisco, California company used it to communicate during earthquakes.[276] The Boston Police tweeted news of the arrest of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing suspect.[277] Another practical use that is being studied is Twitter's ability to track epidemics and how they spread.[278] In addition, Twitter has acted as a sensor for automatic response to natural disasters such as bush fires.[279][280]
Twitter has been used by Somalia's al-Shabaab rebels, who had their accounts suspended after they used the site to claim responsibility for an attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi in September 2013.[281][282]
In May 2008, 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."[283]
Twitter has been adopted as a communication and learning tool in educational settings mostly in colleges and universities.[284][285] It has been used as a backchannel to promote student interactions, especially in large-lecture courses.[286] Research has found that using Twitter in college courses helps students communicate with each other and faculty, promotes informal learning, allows shy students a forum for increased participation, increases student engagement, and improves overall course grades.[287][288][289]
Tech writer Bruce Sterling commented in 2007 that using Twitter for "literate communication" is "about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite the Iliad".[290] In September 2008, the journalist Clive Thompson mused in a The New York Times Magazine editorial that the service had expanded narcissism into "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."[291] One of the earliest documented forms of celebrity related twitter-like disclosures dates from 1980, when real estate mogul William Desmond Ryan made round the clock press releases about his relationship with comedienne Phyllis Diller, even revealing what she was making him for dinner on a nightly basis.[292] Conversely, Vancouver Sun columnist Steve Dotto opined that part of Twitter's appeal is the challenge of trying to publish such messages in tight constraints,[293] and Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School, said that "the qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful".[294]
The novelist Rick Moody wrote a short story for Electric Literature called "Some Contemporary Characters," composed entirely of tweets.[295]
In 2009, Nielsen Online reported that Twitter has a user retention rate of forty percent. Many people stop using the service after a month, therefore the site may potentially reach only about ten percent of all Internet users.[296] In 2009, Twitter won the "Breakout of the Year" Webby Award.[297][298] During a February 2009 discussion on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, the journalist Daniel Schorr stated that Twitter accounts of events lacked rigorous fact-checking and other editorial improvements. In response, Andy 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.[299] On November 29, 2009 Twitter was named the Word of the Year by the Global Language Monitor, declaring it "a new form of social interaction".[300] Time magazine acknowledged its growing level of influence in its 2010 Time 100; to determine the influence of people, it used a formula based on famous social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook. The list ranges from Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey to Lady Gaga and Ashton Kutcher.[301][302] The U.S. government, seeing social media's role in the 2010 Arab Spring revolts, covertly developed a Cuban alternative to Twitter called ZunZuneo as part of a long-term strategy to "stir unrest". The service was active from 2010 to 2012.[303]
During the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, in which he appeared at the London Olympic Stadium in person,[304] Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, tweeted "This is for everyone",[305] which was instantly spelled out in LCD lights attached to the chairs of the 80,000 people in the audience.[304]
World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter's rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy, the use of Twitter to engage with foreign publics and their own citizens. US Ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul has been attributed as a pioneer of international Twitter diplomacy. He used Twitter after becoming ambassador in 2011, posting in English and Russian.[306] On October 24, 2014, Queen Elizabeth II sent her first tweet to mark the opening of the London Science Museum's Information Age exhibition.[307] A 2013 study by website Twiplomacy found that 153 of the 193 countries represented at the United Nations had established government Twitter accounts.[308] The same study also found that those accounts amounted to 505 Twitter handles used by world leaders and their foreign ministers, with their tweets able to reach a combined audience of over 106 million followers.[308]
According to an analysis of accounts, the heads of state of 125 countries and 139 other leading politicians have Twitter accounts that have between them sent more than 350,000 tweets and have almost 52 million followers. However, only 30 of these do their own tweeting, more than 80 do not subscribe to other politicians and many do not follow any accounts.[309]
More than twenty Roman Catholic cardinals manage active Twitter accounts,[310] nine of whom were cardinal electors for the 2013 Papal conclave.[311]
Twitterbots are capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication.[312] The New York Times states, "They have sleep-wake cycles so their fakery is more convincing, making them less prone to repetitive patterns that flag them as mere programs".[313] The tweets generated vary anywhere from a simple automated response to content creation and information sharing, all of which depends on the intention of the person purchasing or creating the bot. The social implications these Twitterbots potentially have on human perception are sizeable according to a study published by the ScienceDirect Journal. Looking at the Computers as Social Actors (CASA) paradigm, the journal notes, "people exhibit remarkable social reactions to computers and other media, treating them as if they were real people or real places". The study concluded that Twitterbots were viewed as credible and competent in communication and interaction making them suitable for transmitting information in the social media sphere.[314] While the technological advances have enabled the ability of successful Human-Computer Interaction, the implications are questioned due to the appearance of both benign and malicious bots in the Twitter realm. Benign Twitterbots may generate creative content and relevant product updates whereas malicious bots can make unpopular people seem popular, push irrelevant products on users and spread misinformation, spam and/or slander.[315]
In addition to content generating bots, users can purchase followers, favorites, retweets and comments on various websites that cater to expanding a users image through accumulation of followers. With more followers, users' profiles gain more attention, thus increasing their popularity.[316] Generating Web traffic is a valuable commodity for both individuals and businesses because it indicates notability.[317] With Twitterbots, users are able to create the illusion of "buzz" on their site by obtaining followers from services such as Swenzy and underground suppliers who operate bot farms or click farms.[312][317] The companies that facilitate this service create fake Twitter accounts that follow a number of people, some of these Twitter accounts may even post fake tweets to make it seem like they are real. This practice of obtaining mass amounts of twitterbots as followers is not permitted on Twitter.[318] The emphasis on followers and likes as a measure of social capital has urged people to extend their circle to weak and latent ties to promote the idea of popularity for celebrities, politicians, musicians, public figures, and companies alike.[319] According to the New York Times, bots amass significant influence and have been noted to sway elections, influence the stock market, public appeal, and attack governments.[313]
After claims in the media that the hashtags #wikileaks and #occupywallstreet were being censored because they did not show up on the site's list of trending topics, Twitter responded by stating that it does not censor hashtags unless they contain obscenities.[320][321][322]
According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published in July 2014, the United Kingdom's GCHQ has a tool named BIRDSONG for "automated posting of Twitter updates", and a tool named BIRDSTRIKE for "Twitter monitoring and profile collection".[323][324]
Twitter is also increasingly used for making TV more interactive and social.[325] This effect is sometimes referred to as the "virtual watercooler" or social television — the practice has been called "chatterboxing".[326] Twitter has been successfully used to encourage people to watch live TV events, such as the Oscars, the Super Bowl[327] and the MTV Video Music Awards; however this strategy has proven less effective with regularly scheduled TV shows.[328] Such direct cross-promotions have been banned from French television due to regulations against secret advertising.[329]
In December 2012, Twitter and Nielsen entered a multi-year agreement to produce social TV ratings, which are expected to be commercially available for the fall 2013 season as the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating.[330][331] Advertising Age said Twitter had become the new TV Guide.[332] Then in February 2013, Twitter acquired Bluefin Labs for an estimated US$50 million to $100 million, which was the company's largest acquisition as of 2013. Founded in 2008 at the MIT Media Lab, Bluefin is a data miner whose analysis tells which brands (e.g., TV shows and companies) are chatted about the most in social media.[330][331][333] MIT Technology Review said that Bluefin gives Twitter part of the US$72 billion television advertising market.[334]
In April 2013, the Associated Press' Twitter account was briefly hacked into, sending out a message that US president Barack Obama had been injured in an attack on the White House. Stocks lost $134 billion in value almost instantly, before recovering in value when it was discovered the report was false.[335]
In May 2013, it launched Twitter Amplify – an advertising product for media and consumer brands.[336] With Amplify, Twitter runs video highlights from major live broadcasts, with advertisers' names and messages playing before the clip.[337] Then in October 2013, Comcast announced a partnership with NBCUniversal and Twitter, to allow users to tune into live streaming from their set-top box, smartphone or tablet by tapping a 'See It' button embedded in selected tweets.[338]
in an attempt to compete with Twitter's leadership in TV, Facebook introduced a number of features in 2013 to drive conversation around TV including hashtags, verified profiles and embeddable posts. It also opened up new data visualization APIs for TV news and other media outlets, enabling them to search for a word and see a firehose of public posts that mention it as well as show how many people mentioned a word in both public and private posts during a set time frame, with a demographic breakdown of the age, gender, and location of these people.[339] In January 2014, Facebook announced a partnership with UK-based social TV analytics company SecondSync which saw the social network make its social TV available outside the company for the first time. Facebook struck the partnership to help marketers understand how people are using the social network to talk about topics such as TV.[340] However, Twitter responded by acquiring SecondSync and Parisian social TV firm Mesagraph three months later. These acquisitions, as well as a partnership with research company Kantar (which it had been working with to develop a suite of analytics tools for the British TV industry since August 2013) strengthened Twitter's dominance of the "second screen" - TV viewers using tablets and smartphones to share their TV experience on social media. With the additional analytic tools, Twitter was able to improve the firm's offering to advertisers, allowing them to, for instance, only promote a tweet onto the timelines of users who were watching a certain programme.[341]
By February 2014, all four major U.S. TV networks had signed up to the Amplify program, bringing a variety of premium TV content onto the social platform in the form of in-tweet real-time video clips.[342] In March 2014, ITV became the first major broadcaster in the UK to sign up to Twitter Amplify[343] and Twitter introduced one-tap video playback across its mobile apps to further enhance the consumer experience.[338]
In June 2014, Twitter acquired its Twitter Amplify partner in the U.S., SnappyTV, as part of its ongoing efforts to be the leader in social television.[344] The company was helping broadcasters and rights holders to share video content both organically across social and via Twitter's Amplify program. In Europe Twitter's Amplify partner is London-based Grabyo, which has also struck numerous deals with broadcasters and rights holders[66] to share video content across Facebook and Twitter.[345]
As of May 21, 2014, the Twitter accounts with the most followers were:[346]
The oldest Twitter accounts are 14 accounts which became active on 21 March 2006, all belonging to Twitter employees at the time and including @jack (Jack Dorsey), @biz (Biz Stone) and @noah (Noah Glass).[347]
On February 3, 2013, Twitter announced that a record 24.1 million tweets were sent the night of Super Bowl XLVII.[348]
A selfie orchestrated by 86th Academy Awards host Ellen DeGeneres during the March 2, 2014 broadcast is the most retweeted image ever.[204][349] DeGeneres said she wanted to homage Meryl Streep's record 17 Oscar nominations by setting a new record with her, and invited other Oscar celebrities to join them. The resulting photo of twelve celebrities broke the previous retweet record within forty minutes, and was retweeted over 1.8 million times in the first hour.[350][351][352] By the end of the ceremony it had been retweeted over 2 million times, less than 24 hours later, it had been retweeted over 2.8 million times.[349][350] As of 18 March 2014[update], it has been retweeted over 3.4 million times.[349] The group selfie effort was parodied by Lego, and Matt Groening with The Simpsons.[353][354] It beat the previous record, 778,801, which was held by Barack Obama, following his victory in the 2012 presidential election.[352][355][356]
The most tweeted moment in the history of Twitter was during the airing of Castle in the Sky on August 2, 2013, when fans tweeted the word "balse" at the exact time that it played in the movie. There was a global peak of 143,199 tweets in one second, beating the previous record of 33,388.[357]
Twitter emphasized its news and information-network strategy in November 2009 by changing the question asked to users for status updates from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?"[358][359] On November 22, 2010, Biz Stone, a cofounder of the company, expressed for the first time the idea of a Twitter news network,[360] a concept of a wire-like news service he has been working on for years.[361]
Also known as the 'SMS of the internet', Twitter is a free social networking service
After high school in St. Louis and some time at the University of Missouri-Rolla, Jack headed east to New York University.
We currently support 2-way (sending and receiving) Twitter SMS via short codes and one-way (sending only) via long codes.
The deal will give WENN exclusive rights to sell images posted on the TwitPic service.[dead link]
We recently migrated Twitter from a custom Ruby 1.8.6 build to a Ruby Enterprise Edition release candidate, courtesy of Phusion. Our primary motivation was the integration of Brent's MBARI patches, which increase memory stability.
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