What Is Twitter You're at a family dinner when your dad tells a funny joke Everyone is laughing and having a blast Your brother decides to share the joke with his friends He logs in to Twitter and writes a tweet about the joke Instantly your brother's Twitter followers are in on the joke Many retweet it to their followers Soon your dad's silly joke is being spread around the Internet This is the power of Twitter Twitter is a content sharing website and app Users post status updates of 140 characters or less These posts are called tweets and are meant to be short Some social media users find longer posts on other sites to be overwhelming Twitter users share brief bits of information quickly They can also include photos videos and article links in their tweets
The Twitter community connects by following one another If a Twitter user follows another user he or she will see that person's posts in his or her feed Users tag each other in tweets and comment on posts They also retweet or share one another's content This is how tweets can go viral Some tweets are shared around the world by billions of people in just minutes
Twitter Site Bytes Purpose sharing information photos and videos Type of Service website and app URL www twitter com App name Twitter Date of Founding March 2006 Tech Terms Tweet A tweet is the name of a Twitter post It can contain up to 140 text characters several images and video Retweet A retweet is a tweet created by a Twitter user that is reposted by another user Hashtag Hashtags can be included in tweets A hashtag is a hash symbol followed by a word or phrase The hashtag becomes a link that groups tweets together Clicking on the hashtag takes a user to all posts with that hashtag Founders Jack Dorsey Evan Williams and Christopher Biz Stone Compatible Devices Tablet Smartphone Laptop
Founding Twitter Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey Evan Williams and Christopher Biz Stone The three men were working at a company named Odeo Dorsey first thought of the idea for Twitter He wanted to create a way to share short status updates Dorsey told this idea to Williams and Stone The trio created the first version of Twitter in 2006 At first only other Odeo employees could use Twitter and they loved it The founders soon decided to make Twitter available to the public Today there are more than 320 million active Twitter users Evan Williams Jack Dorsey Christopher Biz Stone Account Info Users must be at least 13 to create an account Once a user creates an account he or she chooses a username This is known as his or her handle It consists of the symbol followed by the username Users fill out the bio section of their Twitter pages with brief pieces of information about themselves Users find friends by searching for their usernames and then follow them Private users must approve followers before the followers can see their tweets and profile Public users let their tweets be seen by everyone Tweets can be up to 140 characters long This includes spaces Users can tweet up to two photos at a time or a video up to six seconds long
