History of Twitter - Assignment Example

Running Head: HISTORY OF TWITTER HISTORY OF TWITTER By Introduction Together with Facebook and MySpace, Twitter has revolutionized social networking and microblogging in the last four years. Relying on the SMS, IRC and IM technology, Twitter has made microblogging a social norm with people ‘tweeting’ what they are doing and what they are feeling at any time of the day to anyone who cares to know. Twitter does not only serve as a medium for impulsive babbling or for expressing deep thoughts, however, but has time and again prove that it can be used to serve significant political and social ends, such as when a media person was arrested while touring a hostile territory or when a celebrity launches a campaign for a worthy social or environmental crusade. Barely into its fifth year, Twitter registered users are already currently estimated to be in the hundreds of millions and its revenues to be in the billions of dollars. Indeed, Twitter is a successful story worth telling and following. The Birth of Twitter In 2006, a software engineer named Jack Dorsey approached Odeo, a media syndication company, to discuss his ideas of creating a “real-time status-communication platform with a social spin” where one could share and simply broadcast to others just about anything from gossip to simple thoughts. Biz Stone, the founder of Odeo, liked the idea and Dorsey’s proposal was declared as a side project of Odeo. It was decided that the SMS platform of mobile phones would be ideally suited for the project and a maximum of 140 characters, short of the 160 characters-limit of SMS text messaging, should be used as the broadcast limit (Thomases, p. x; Sagolla, p. xvii). Dorsey’s idea was a breath of fresh air to Odeo, which was at that time having a difficult time selling its latest technology Audio Blogger to users because of the stiff competition posed by such heavyweights as Apple Corp. The company decided it had to reinvent itself and Dorsey’s social networking microblogging idea was seen as an opportunity after it was presented in a day-long brainstorming of Odeo technocrats. Dorsey, Biz and Florian Weber went on to hammer out the prototype model of Dorsey’s proposal while the others continued with the usual company business to make sure that if Dorsey’s idea fails the company has something to fall back on (Sagolla p. xviii). The prototype was built in two weeks and the service was first tested by Odeo personnel and other insiders such as their immediate family members. It was entirely web-based and the first messages, which were broadcasted by Dorsey, were “waiting for dom to update more” and “oh this is going to be addictive.” This test was, of course, top secret because of fears that other competitors might get wind of it before it was released. After 10 days, Twttr Alpha was presented and a larger circle of friends, excluding large companies, were allowed to join. The name Twttr was inspired by Flickr and influenced by the fact that there are only 5 characters in the American SMS application names. While the new product was being tested, Odeo continued to suffer financially forcing Williams to release some of its employees (Sagolla p. xviii-xix). On July 15, 2006 Odeo officially released Twttr to the public. The mechanics of the new service included sending a text message to “40404” that can be viewed via SMS or at the Twttr’s website by all of the sender’s friends or “followers” (Arrington 2006). In October, 2006 Williams bought Odeo from its investors and started a new company called Obvious Corp. together with Stone and other Odeo employees. The sale transferred to Obvious Corp. all assets of the old Odeo, including twitter (Malik 2006). At first, people did not know what to make of Twitter, but the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in 2007 changed all that. During the festivities, the company used two huge plasma screens to continuously stream twitter messages. Twitter dominated the event and attracted a large number of new users. The usual 20,000 a day tweets swelled to 60,000 during the event (Gratton & Gratton, 2011). In May, 2007, Jack Dorsey took the position of Chief Executive Officer of the just formed Twitter, then already worth millions of dollars. Immediately, the Company launched glitzy events to promote and introduce twitter to a larger audience and capture more users. The first of this was the 2007 summer MTV Music Awards where its “moon man” posted the tweet “MTV tells me to get hip to the digital age. ‘Try twitter’ they said. So here I am. What? –mtvmoonman.” This promotional stunt increased the number of twitter users to one million. That same year, twitter released a search tool to aid its users in searching for names or usernames of twitter users (Sagolla xxiii). The year 2008 was even more productive for the Company even though it suffered a few setbacks. Businesses started to find use in twitter, with Comcast, a publicly traded company, being its first company user. @ComcastCares made its first tweet in April 2008 when a tech blogger tweeted his internet problems. This started other business companies flocking into the tweeting game and later government authorities and news media joined the fray. Twitter’s positive value to the world, however, was first illustrated in the case of photojournalist James Buck, who, after he was arrested in Egypt immediately tweeted the word “Arrested.” A day after, US authorities secured his release – thanks to twitter. However, it was also that same month that Twitter began experiencing trouble with service reliability after its chief architect Blaine left the company. During that time, Twitter’s Fail Whale icon became the symbol of this crisis. Nonetheless, the increase of celebrity users of Twitter that year created a ripple effect as this attracted more and more followers registering. In the winter of 2009, Twitter users were estimated to number 6 million (Sagolla, p. xxv). Twitter and the Future In an interview with Biz Stone earlier this year, he revealed some of Twitter’s immediate plans for the future. Two of the ideas being mulled by the Company are to attract more businesses as paying users and leveraging the data it has at its disposal. While acknowledging that Twitter’s direction will be largely determined by its users, Stone also admitted that there is a need to attract more paying users if the Company is to make money. For this goal, Twitter has to look in the direction of businesses since it has been established that individual users are not likely inclined to spend a dime on it as revealed in the 2010 Digital Future Study. Twitter’s new direction, therefore, is to focus on developing new features and services that are business-friendly as well as creating business-focused applications, which only a few are existing at the moment. In addition, Twitter management realizes it is in possession of data that millions of tweeters contribute daily and the potential for extracting valuable information from such data represents a gold mine. Thus, the future may see Twitter as a competitor for Google and a predictor of box-office revenues and the Dow Jones industrial average, among others. Conclusion Today, with Jack Dorsey under its helm again after being booted out as CEO in 2008, Twitter is looking at a very bright future. Its current users are estimated to be around 200 million (Shiels 2011). In 2009, the financial standing of the company was exposed – thanks to a hacker who had successfully breached the internet accounts containing confidential information of some important Twitter officers, including Williams. According to that revelation, the revenue forecast of the company stands at $140 million by the end of 2010 (The New York Times 2009). Just recently, however, Twitter was reported to be negotiating for a $400 million deal that would purportedly increase its company value to $8 billion (The New York Times 2011). References: Arrington, M. (2006) Odeo Releases Twttr. TC. http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting/. Gratton, S. and Gratton, D. (2011) Zero to 100,000: Social Media Tips and Tricks for Small Businesses. Que Publishing. Makice, K. (2009) Twitter API: Up and Running. OReilly Media, Inc. Malik, O. (2006) Odeo RIP, Hello Obvious Corp. http://gigaom.com/2006/10/25/odeo-rip-hello-obvious-corp/. Sagolla, D. (2009) 140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form. John Wiley & Sons. Shiels, M. (2011) Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey rejoins company. BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12889048. The New York Times. (2009) Hacker Exposes Private Twitter Documents. The New York Times On-Line. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/hacker-exposes-private-twitter-documents/?hpw. The New York Times (2011). Twitter. The New York Times On-Line. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/twitter/index.html. Thomases, H. (2010) Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day. John Wiley and Sons. Read More