Social media has only been around since the early 2000s, but in its short time, it has made some serious impact. One of the biggest social media marvels is Twitter. Most people simply think about Twitter as a 140-character social media platform that allows people to communicate with one another, but what they don’t realize is the fun and interesting history that comes with it. The following are 32 facts about Twitter.
1. Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey in March 2006.
2. It was first launched to the public on July 15, 2006.
3. The social network was initially called twttr, but was eventually changed to Twitter.
4. Twitter’s popularity rose in 2007 after the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. Use of the platform rose from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000 tweets per day.
5. In January 2008, there were only eight Twitter employees.
6. In 2011, there were over 400 Twitter employees.
7. There are over 1,000,000 third-party apps that work with Twitter. Some allow people to tweet without accessing Twitter, including Sprout Social and Hootsuite.
8. Over 60% of tweets come from those third-party applications.
9. Twitter received its billionth tweet after three years. Today, one billion tweets are sent every week.
10. Twitter record: When “Castle in the Sky” launched back on TV, there were over 25,088 tweets per second relating to the topic.
11. 92% of people say they will retweet content that they find valuable.
12. An average of 11 new Twitter accounts are created every second.
13. There are over 200,000,000 registered accounts on Twitter.
14. About 52% of all Twitter users will tweet at least once every day.
15. 18,000 search queries are performed on Twitter every second.
16. About 40% of all tweets are generated from a tablet or mobile phone.
17. 61% of all tweets are generated in English.
18. About 54% of all Twitter users are female.
19. The majority of Twitter users range between the ages of 30 and 49.
20. About 47% of all Twitter users have children.
21. About 30% of all Twitter users have a household income over $100,000.
22. A recent study found that 75% of Twitter users will purchase from a brand that they follow on Twitter.
23. The first tweet off of Earth came from astronaut TJ Creamer. He tweeted from the International Space Station on January 22, 2010.
24. Twitter is currently worth about $8 billion.
25. The name Twitter was created by Noah Glass. He no longer works for the company.
26. Lady Gaga has the most followers out of every Twitter user.
27. CNN is the most popular news source on Twitter.
28. Twitter users came up with the use of hashtags.
29. Any Twitter user can create their own hashtag.
30. In 2011, protesters in Egypt used Twitter to communicate with one another.
31. On June 2, 2009, China blocked Twitter. It is still blocked today.
32. Stephen Colbert won the first Golden Tweet Award, which is given to an individual who has the most retweets.
Lauren Williams is a social media manager writing on behalf of SEOMap – the SEO keyword strategy experts.