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Twitter
Type of site
Micro-blogging
Available inEnglish, Japanese
OwnerTwitter, Inc.
Created byObvious, LLC[1]
URLTwitter.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationRequired

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.

Origin

File:Twitter twitters page.JPG
Twitter's Update Page

Twitter began as a research and development project inside San Francisco start-up company Obvious in March 2006. It was initially used internally by the company's employees, and officially launched in October 2006.[2]

The service rapidly gained popularity [citation needed]. In March 2007, it won the 2007 South by Southwest Web Award in the blog category.[3] Jack Dorsey, widely acknowledged as the man behind the concept of Twitter, gave the following playful acceptance speech at SXSW: "We'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"

In April 2007, Obvious spun off the service as a separate entity under the name Twitter, Inc.,[4] with Jack Dorsey as its CEO.

Enterprise use

Availability in other languages

On April 22, 2008 Twitter announced on their blog that they had created a version of Twitter for Japanese users, because they are prominent users of the service, despite the user interface being completely in English.[12] One week after its launch, it was reported that the Japanese version of Twitter had started gaining traction.[13] Unlike the US service, the Japanese service is advertising supported.[14]

Similar services

A number of services exist with a similar concept but adding country-specific services (e.g., frazr) or combining the micro-blogging facilities with other services, such as filesharing (e.g., Pownce, Jaiku). Most of these have emerged due to Twitter's success [citation needed].

In May 2007, one source counted as many as 111 such "Twitter look-alikes" internationally.[15] Despite Twitter efforts to localize, Chinese-language Twitter clones have far outdone Twitter's own progress in China.[16]

Reactions

In 2007, Twitter began experiencing problems related to its growing user base. The service has experienced outages resulting from traffic overloads due to its increased popularity.[17] The Wall Street Journal wrote, "These social-networking services elicit mixed feelings in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters. Fans say they are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel 'too' connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they're having for dinner."[18] The Industry Standard has pointed to its lack of revenue as limiting its long-term viability.[19]

Security

The first Twitter security vulnerability was reported on April 7, 2007 by Nitesh Dhanjani. The problem was due to Twitter using the SMS message originator as the authentication of the user's account. Nitesh used fakemytext.com to spoof a text message, whereupon Twitter posted the message on the victim's page. This vulnerability can only be used if the victim's phone number is known.[20] Within a few weeks of this discovery, Twitter introduced an optional PIN that its users can specify to authenticate SMS-originating messages.

Technology

Twitter is written in Ruby on Rails.[21] The Twitter API itself allows the integration of Twitter with other web services and applications.[22]

In late April 2008, some sources reported that due to downtime related to scaling problems, Twitter would abandon Ruby on Rails as their web framework and start from scratch with PHP or Java.[23] However, this was soon debunked by Evan Williams, in a Tweet that he sent on May 1, 2008.[24]

Failures

Twitter experienced approximately 98% uptime in 2007, or about 3 full days of downtime.[25][26] Twitter's downtime was particularly noticeable during events popular with the technology industry, such as the 2008 Macworld Conference & Expo keynote address.[27][28] When Twitter crashes, users see the "fail whale" error message. Beluga whales are known as 'canaries of the sea' due to their high-pitched twitter[29], and the fail whale is a whimsical illustration of red birds using nets to hoist a whale from the ocean.[30] The message reads: "Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again."[30] The fail whale has been featured on NPR.[17]

During May 2008 Twitter's new engineering team implemented necessary architectural changes to deal with the scale of growth. Stability issues resulted in down time or temporary feature removal. http://status.twitter.com/

As of July 2008, instant messaging support has been "temporarily unavailable" for approximately two months. [31]

Social justice implications

Twitter has been used as a "social justice tool" to connect groups of people in critical situations. On April 10 2008, James Buck, a graduate journalism student at UC Berkeley, and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested in Egypt for photographing an anti-government protest. On his way to the police station, Buck used his mobile phone to send the message “Arrested” to his 48 "followers" on Twitter. Those contacted UC Berkeley, the US Embassy in Cairo and a number of press organizations on his behalf. While being detained, Buck was able to send updates about his condition to his "followers". As a result of the message and the efforts of his Twitter friends [dubious – discuss], he was released the next day from the Mahalla jail after the college hired a lawyer for him.[32][33]

Research reported in New Scientist magazine in May 2008 [citation needed] found that blogs, maps, photo sites and instant messaging systems like Twitter did a better job of getting information out during emergencies such as the shootings at Virginia Tech than either the traditional news media or government emergency services. The study—performed by researchers at the University of Colorado—also found that those using Twitter during the fires in California in October 2007 kept their followers (who were often friends and neighbors) informed of their whereabouts and of the location of various fires on a minute by minute basis. Additionally, organizations that support relief efforts are also using Twitter. The American Red Cross uses Twitter (http://twitter.com/RedCross) to exchange minute-to-minute information about local disasters, including statistics and directions.[34][35] The first trade union Twitter service was launched by the news and campaigning website LabourStart in June 2008. [36]

Ecosystem

An ecosystem of websites and technology has grown up around Twitter, primarily using Twitter's API. Elements of this ecosystem include:

  • Authoring tools, such as Twhirl, as well as numerous tools for mobile phones and as browser extensions.
  • Search engines, such as Summize (which Twitter announced the purchase of on 15 July, 2008.)
  • "hashtags" trackers, such as Hashtags and Twemes
  • Mashups, such as Twittervision
  • Charts for the popularity of users such as Twitterholic

See also

References

  1. ^ "About Us". Twitter. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  2. ^ Williams, Evan (2007-04-16). "Twitter, Inc". Obvious. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  3. ^ Stone, Biz (2007-03-14). "We Won!". Twitter. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  4. ^ Stone, Biz (2007-04-18). "Incorporating Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  5. ^ Los Angeles Fire Department (2008-05-07). "Twitter / LAFD". Twitter. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  6. ^ Madrigal, Alexis (2008-06-19). "Wired News". Wired News. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
  7. ^ Chang, Kenneth (2008-05-31). "The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
  8. ^ CNN (2008-05-07). "Twitter / cnn". Twitter. Retrieved 2008-05-07. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  9. ^ Obama, Barack (2008-05-07). "Twitter / BarackObama". Twitter. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  10. ^ Ralph Nader (2008-07-13). "VoteNader.org - Road-trip Across America". Nader for President 2008. Retrieved 2008-07-13.
  11. ^ University of Texas at San Antonio College of Engineering (2008-05-07). "Twitter / EngineeringUTSA". Twitter. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  12. ^ Stone, Biz (2008-04-22). "Twitter for Japan". Twitter. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  13. ^ MacManus, Richard (2008-04-28). "Early Stats Show Twitter Taking Off in Japan". ReadWriteWeb. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  14. ^ Crampton, Thomas (2008-05-23). "Joi Ito: Twitter makes money in Japan". ThomasCrampton.com. Retrieved 2008-05-23.
  15. ^ "The Twitter-clone/twitter-like sites collection". THWS. 2007-05-11. Archived from the original on 2007-08-24. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  16. ^ Crampton, Thomas (2008-05-23). "Twitter in China (Cloned of Course)". ThomasCrampton.com. Retrieved 2008-05-23.
  17. ^ a b The Bryant Park Project (July 3, 2008) NPR Twitter, What Are You Doing? Co-Founder Tells All.
  18. ^ Lavallee, Andrew (2007-03-16). "Friends Swap Twitters, and Frustration". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  19. ^ Snyder, Bill (2008-03-31). "Twitter: Fanatical users help build the brand, but not revenue". The Industry Standard. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  20. ^ Dhanjani, Nitesh (2007-04-07). "Twitter and Jott Vulnerable to SMS and Caller ID Spoofing". Nitesh Dhanjani. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  21. ^ Kenzer, Josh (2007-03-29). "5 Question Interview with Twitter Developer Alex Payne". Radical Behavior. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  22. ^ "API Documentation". Google Groups. Retrieved 2008-05-08.
  23. ^ Arrington, Michael (2008-05-01). "Twitter Said To Be Abandoning Ruby on Rails". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  24. ^ Williams, Evan (2008-05-01). "FWIW Twitter has no plans to abandon RoR". Twitter. Retrieved 2008-05-01.
  25. ^ Caverly, Doug (2007-12-20). "Twitter Downtime Revealed, Ridiculed". WebProNews. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  26. ^ Schonfeld, Erick (2007-12-20). "Twitter Downtime On the Upswing". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  27. ^ Dorsey, Jack (2008-01-15). "MacWorld". Twitter. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  28. ^ Kuramoto, Jake (2008-01-15). "MacWorld Brings Twitter to its Knees". Oracle AppsLab. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
  29. ^ Harris, Patricia; Lyon, David; (April 8, 2007) Boston Globe Enter close quarters: colonial to nuclear subs. Section: Travel; Page 8M.
  30. ^ a b Whyte, Murray. (June 1, 2008) Toronto Star Tweet, tweet there's been an earthquake; How an online social network chirpily called Twitter is becoming anything but trivial. Section: Ideas; Page 1.
  31. ^ "Twitter IM down May 23rd-May24th". Retrieved 2008-07-29.
  32. ^ http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/25/twitter.buck/index.html
  33. ^ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/twitter-saves-man-from-egyptian-justice/
  34. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1914750/Facebook--%27more-effective-than-emergency-services-in-a-disaster%27.html
  35. ^ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080502.WBmingram20080502170858/WBStory/WBmingram/
  36. ^ http://www.ericlee.info/2008/06/twitter_as_a_campaigning_tool.html
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