Twitter: over 105 million users!

Credit: Matt Hamm on Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0

Ever since the start of Twitter in March 2006, Twitter has always kept silent about its users. However, the company finally revealed its amount of users during Twitter’s Chirp developer conference. Biz Stone, co-founder of this micro-blogging service, showed an impressive number of 105,779,710 registered users, and it is still growing by 300,000 users each day!

For those who are unfamiliar with this internet phenomenon, “Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets.” (Wikipedia) These so-called tweets are text-based posts that contains up to 140 characters. When a user sends a tweet, it will be displayed on the author’s page. However, other users who subscribe to that user’s page, also known as followers, will be notified of each new tweet from the author.

All registered users can send and receive tweets by using the Twitter website, SMS (Short Message Service/Text message), or external applications such as on smartphones. Even though this Twitter service is free, the cost of a SMS depends on your phone service provider. With this in mind, Twitter is sometimes also referred to as “SMS of the Internet.”

The micro-blogging service has always been free of advertisements on the site, but on April 13th 2010, it announced to have plans to include “Promoted Tweets” on the Twitter-site. These can be purchased, and would be targeted at a specific group based on the users’ surfing behavior on the site. It is known that companies such as Starbucks, Virgin America, and Best Buy have already shown interested in using Promoted Tweets. This would be Twitter’s first serious attempt to turn the company into a profitable one. However, it is still a work-in-progress and they might even change their model since there have been concerns about irritating users and therefore possibly losing them or reduce their activities on the site.

UseITM uses Twitter too, to keep its followers updated about updates on this blog: twitter.com/useitm. Twitter is excellent for sharing your status with others, leaving quick messages, or reading about other people’s daily businesses. Give it a try, and do not forget to follow UseITM as well!