On March 21 2006, Jack Dorsey sent out the first Tweet that read, “just setting up my Twttr.” Seven years later, Twitter has filed its S-1 to take the company public, hoping to raise $1 billion from the market. Twitter has come a long way from its humble beginnings. Started as an SMS-based service where people could share their message in 140 characters with the remaining 20 characters reserved for advertising, today the platform has over 200 million users including some of the world’s most important leaders, celebrities, athletes, journalists and many more. Also Read - Deep Nostalgia brings old photos to life: Here's how to use this AI tool
just setting up my twttr Also Read - Twitter testing Spaces for Android; ahead of March launch
— Jack Dorsey (@jack) March 21, 2006 Also Read - Twitter brings Super Follows for creators, new Communities feature
Rather than being a platform where one could simply send out their message to multiple people, Twitter has evolved to a platform where news is broken (the raid that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden was accidentally reported live on Twitter), feats are celebrated (Barrack Obama’s tweet to declare his victory in 2012 US Presidential elections was viewed approximately 25 million times), revolutions are empowered (Arab Spring) and people around the world generally share moments together (remember Felix’s space jump earlier this year?). These are still early days for Twitter – Facebook has approximately five times more users – and there is still a long way to go. But one things is certain, its importance is growing as time passes. Let’s take a look at some important numbers related to Twitter.
140 characters: The maximum length of a tweet.
215 million: Monthly active users.
100 million: Daily active users.
500 million: Tweets sent every day.
75 percent: Of the monthly active users in 2Q, 2013 accessed Twitter from a mobile device.
65 percent: Advertising revenue generated in 2Q, 2013 that came from mobile.
$316.9 million: Revenues in 2012, a 198 percent increase from 2011 revenues.
$253.6 million: Revenues in H1, 2013, a 107 percent growth.
$69.3 million: Net loss in H1, 2013, a 41 percent increase.
2000: Number of Twitter employees on June 30, 2013.