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35 surprising facts you probably don't know about Twitter

#milestones
It all began as a side project
We indirectly have Apple to thank for Twitter
The idea was born in a kid's playground
Jack Dorsey had his billion-dollar eureka moment on a slide
Twitter might have been called stat.us
Stat.us was soon changed to SMS-friendly twttr
The prototype was built in just two weeks
The first tweet was fittingly short and sweet
Twttr became Twitter six months later
Twitter got a web-friendly tweak the following month
Twitter was acquired for a relatively paltry $5 million
There were only 16,000 Twitter accounts by the end of 2006
Twitter scored its big break in March 2007 at SXSWi
'Tweet' was coined the same month
Twitter, Inc. was created in April 2007
The company was valued at $20 million in June 2007
Followers were first known as friends
#barcamp is the first ever Twitter hashtag
Twitter raised $23 million from investors in 2008
Twitter acquired its first company in July 2008
Jack Dorsey was fired and rehired
Twitter surpassed the 1 billion tweet mark in November 2008
Ashton Kutcher is the first Twitter celeb to pass 1 million followers
Twitter bagged the all-important Oprah endorsement that same month
Celeb-friendly verified accounts were introduced in June 2009
Twitter made the dictionary the following month
Twitter was valued at a cool $1 billion in September 2009
2.5 million tweets per day were posted in 2009
The first live tweet from space was sent in January 2010
Twitter introduced Promoted Tweets in April 2010
Active Twitter users numbered 100 million by September 2011
Twitter went public in November 2013
Ellen Degeneres posted the most retweeted tweet in March 2014
Caitlyn Jenner is the fastest Twitter account to reach 1 million followers
Twitter now has 320 million users worldwide
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rvlsoft/Shutterstock

#milestones

The microblogging platform famed for its 140-character word limit has just celebrated its 10th anniversary. To mark a decade of hashtags, likes and retweets, we take a look at Twitter's evolution from fledgling startup to social media behemoth.
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24 March 2016

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