Twitter, however, was nothing more than a challenging idea from Jack Dorsey, a scholar at New York University at the time. At the time, Dorsey, who was working on the podcasting firm Oedo, offered his idea to his coworkers for an SMS service that would allow users to communicate publicly with a whole group rather than privately with a single person as is the case with conventional messaging.
Today, Twitter is widely used. It claims to have more than 200 million active daily users, and the information shared on its platform indisputably influences tradition, politics, and common conversation around the globe.
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Investors concurred, however many have since questioned whether Williams understood more about Twitter’s potential than he initially said.
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The Odeo team connected with the idea, and Dorsey and Noah Glass further refined it. After a year, Evan Williams, the creator of Odeo, informed investors that the company was switching its emphasis from podcasting to Twitter. In an effort to protect investors from a loss, he offered to buy back Odeo’s stock.
The following months saw Twitter formally expand to become its own company, with Dorsey serving as its CEO. At a $20 million valuation, it raised $5 million in its initial round of funding.
Twitter initially received little attention, but after the team went to South by Southwest Interactive in 2007, where they were widely praised, the platform’s usage tripled in a single day, and Twitter established itself as the leading force in the developing social media landscape.
Twitter proved to have widespread appeal, drawing not only users who wanted to join and share messages with the growing social community, but also businesses who suddenly had an easy way to communicate with their customers and market their products.
Additionally, it turned out to be particularly valuable for public personalities, politicians, and celebrities who wanted to engage their audience and demonstrate their importance.
For instance, in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Barack Obama garnered more than 20 times as many supporters as John McCain. This demonstrated the value of a Twitter following and laid the stage for political use of the site going forward. And journalists adopted swimsuit.
Twitter made it possible to share breaking news right away, enabling the rapid circulation of information. When Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday in 2012, it reported having 140 million users and sending out 340 million tweets daily. By that time, it had distinguished itself as a prominent platform for the dissemination of a vast range of information, from everyday thoughts to breaking news.
On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), a worker exposes a floor mat with the Twitter logo and the symbol for the stock on which Twitter will trade (TWTR), on November 7, 2013, in New York City.