It has become an essential part of the Internet: The popular microblogging platform Twitter turns 10 on March 21, 2016. From politics to entertainment, here are some of the tweets that made it big.
#HappyBirthday, Twitter! Created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, the platform allows users to post public short messages of 140 characters or less, which can include links, photos and videos, creating a personalized news ticker. Ten years after its creation, over 320 million people have an account.
Hashtags have also become part of popular culture. Words or expressions written after the pound sign, #LikeThis, allow all tweets under that hashtag to be found quickly.
The journalist’s tool
Twitter is incredibly popular for spreading news and opinions. Journalists often rely on the short messages, while the platform registers hundreds of thousands of tweets during important events.
For example, during the re-election of US president Barack Obama in year 2012, Twitter indexed over 320,000 tweets per second.
Amateur pictures can be posted on Twitter even before news agencies are able to publish theirs. Local users have been providing information directly from their part of the world, making the platform an important source of information for newsmakers.
Numerous hashtags, such as #Egypt, have supplied journalists worldwide with information from the streets. Spreading news in 140 characters has also turned into a job requirement for a whole generation of reporters.
