21 March, 2016
This is What's Trending Today...
On Monday, Twitter turned 10.
The 140-character messaging service launched in March 21, 2006. Since then, Twitter has become a global communication tool, with 320 million users.
It all began with a simple tweet from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. On the afternoon of March 21, 2006, he posted, "just setting up my twttr."
Some of the biggest news events in the past 10 years broke first on Twitter.
Twitter, the popular social media tool, turned 10-years-old on Monday, March 21. About 320 million people around the world use the Twitter service.
The first report of the U.S. raid that killed Osama Bin Laden came from a Pakistani man's tweet. And the first photo of an American airplane that landed in New York's Hudson River was posted on Twitter.
The pro-democracy Arab Spring protests played out and spread on Twitter. And the #BlackLivesMatter movement gained strength through the social media site.
Today, Twitter users are showing their gratitude for the past 10 years with the hashtag #LoveTwitter.
The idea for a hashtag came more than a year after Twitter's creation. On August 23, 2007, Chris Messina suggested the idea of using the pound (#) symbol to organize tweets.
The hashtag made twitter a more powerful platform for activists and a popular tool for breaking news.
The most commonly used hashtag is #FF, which stands for Follow Fridays. Twitter user Micah Baldwin proposed #FF in a tweet back in January of 2009.
The idea of a retweet function also came from a Twitter user. Eric Rice posted the world's "first" retweet on April 17, 2007.
The most retweeted post of the past 10 years is comedian Ellen DeGeneres' #OscarSelfie. DeGeneres took the famous selfie during the 2014 Academy Awards. It received more than 2 million retweets.
And for the first time ever, the number of Twitter users went down during the last quarter. The company reported it lost 2 million users during the last months of 2015.
The problems led Twitter's founder, Jack Dorsey, to return to the company.
Last year, the company said it was considering removing Twitter's famous 140-character limit.
But Dorsey said earlier this month that the limit would remain.
And that's What's Trending Today.
Do you use Twitter? What do you like best about it? What changes would you make to the site? Let us know in the Comments section!
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Words in This Story
movement - n. a series of organized activities in which many people work together to do or achieve something
gratitude - n. a feeling of appreciation or thanks
propose - v. to suggest something to a person or group of people to consider
quarter - n. one of four divisions of a year : a period of three months