Twitter celebrates 10th anniversary Monday March 21,2016

Microblogging Website Twitter Turns 10 Today

Twitter, which turns 10 years old Monday, has grown into one of the leading global social networks

Twitter is the number three social network behind Facebook (1.5 billion) and Facebook-owned Instagram (400 million)

Just three years after Twitter's launch, for many the platform became the primary source of the latest news.
On January 15, 2009, flight number 1549 of the US Airways made an emergency landing in the Hudson river between New York City and Weehawken in New Jersey.

The first image of the rescue mission in which all the 155 passengers were evacuated to safety were taken by a Twitter user and it became viral within minutes of uploading it on the platform.



 Rivals 

Using a broader definition of social platforms, it is also dwarfed by Google-owned video sharing service YouTube with one billion users; other messaging platforms with a large user base include WhatsApp (900 million), China-based QQ (860 million), Facebook Messenger (800 million) and Chinese app WeChat (650 million)

China's blogging platform QZone has an estimated 653 million users and Yahoo-owned Tumblr 555 million

LinkedIn, the professional social network, has some 414 million registered members, and the bulletin-board style network Pinterest has 100 million. 

History 

Twitter came to life on March 21, 2006, when co-founder Jack Dorsey sent out the first tweet: "just setting up my twttr."

Jack Dorsey followed up with the first "human-generated" tweet: "inviting coworkers."

The company was incorporated in April 2007 after it stole the show at the influential South by Southwest technology and music festival in Austin, Texas.

It was co-founded by Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Dorsey -- @biz, @ev and @jack

Some 500 million tweets are sent out each day, adding up to some 200 billion per year.

Stars on Twitter... 

The reigning queen of Twitter for some time has been singer Katy Perry, whose followers now number more than 84 million.

Justin Bieber ranks second with 77 million, and Taylor Swift third at 72 million. The @BarackObama account, which is run by the US president's entourage, holds the number four spot with 71 million.

Among official public figures, the most popular after Obama is Queen Rania of Jordan with 4.6 million followers, the British prime minister's office with 4.3 million and... the late president Hugo Chavez of Venezuela at 4.2 million, even though his account has been inactive since he died in 2013