9781422277324

Tech 2.0 World-Changing Social Media Companies

TM by Craig Ellenport Twitter ®

World-Changing Social Media Companies

Tech 2.0

Facebook ® Instagram ® Reddit ® Snapchat ® Twitter ® WhatsApp ®

World-Changing Social Media Companies

Tech 2.0

by Craig Ellenport Twitter ®

Mason Crest

Mason Crest 450 Parkway Drive, Suite D

Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com

© 2019 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-4060-1 Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4222-4065-6 EBook ISBN: 978-1-4222-7732-4

First printing 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Produced by Shoreline Publishing Group LLC Santa Barbara, California Editorial Director: James Buckley Jr. Designer: Patty Kelley www.shorelinepublishing.com Cover photographs byWorawee Mepian/Dreamstime.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ellenport, Craig, author. Title: Twitter / by Craig Ellenport. Description: Broomall, PA : Mason Crest, [2018] | Series: Tech 2.0: world-changing social media companies | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017058189| ISBN 9781422240656 (hardback) | ISBN 9781422240601 (series) | ISBN 9781422277324 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Twitter (Firm)--Juvenile literature. | Twitter--Juvenile literature. | Online social networks--Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC HM743.T95 E45 2018 | DDC 302.30285--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc. gov/2017058189 You may gain access to certain third party content (“Third-Party Sites”) by scanning and using the QR Codes that appear in this publication (the “QR Codes”). We do not oper- ate or control in any respect any information, products, or services on such Third-Party Sites linked to by us via the QR Codes included in this publication, and we assume no responsibility for any materials you may access using the QR Codes. Your use of the QR Codes may be subject to terms, limitations, or restrictions set forth in the applicable terms of use or otherwise established by the owners of the Third-Party Sites. Our linking to such Third-Party Sites via the QR Codes does not imply an endorsement or sponsorship of such Third-Party Sites, or the information, products, or services offered on or through the Third-Party Sites, nor does it imply an endorsement or sponsorship of this publication by the owners of such Third-Party Sites. QR Codes disclaimer:

CONTENTS

Introduction: What’s in a Tweet? . 6 Chapter 1: Hatching Twitter . 10 Chapter 2: Global Dominance . 24 Chapter 3: The EvolvingWorld of Twitter . 36 Chapter 4: The Consciousness of theWorld . 50 Find Out More. 62 Series Glossary of Key Terms. 63 Index. 64 Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic moments, and much more! Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented here. Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text, while building vocabulary skills. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. KEY ICONS TO LOOK FOR

Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

Tech 2.0

Introduction What’s in a Tweet?

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I n 2011, the editors of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictio- nary added a new definition of the word “tweet.” Since the year 1768, the dictionary had defined tweet as simply “a chirping note.” As of 2011, a second definition of the word was “a post made on the Twitter online message service.” Oh, but it is so much more than that. A tweet can be a statement, an opinion, an announcement. It might be a question that results in more tweets from people who think they have the answer. It can be breaking news, reaction to breaking news, public service announcements, safety alerts. It can be a photo or a video. It can be a live video stream of a sporting event or a concert. It can be an advertisement or a campaign de- signed to build awareness for a brand. It can be messages from a celebrity to his or her fans. It can be updates from a professional sports team. It can be a proclamation from the president of the United States. Whatever the message, tweets are delivered through Twitter, the social media platform that was created in 2006 and has since become a ubiquitous presence in modern society. How ubiquitous? This is how Twitter defines itself in official company press releases: “Twitter, Inc., iswhat’s happening in theworld andwhat people are talking

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Tech 2.0

Why 140?

T o provide you with the ultimate example of how much a user can express in a tweet, this is a sentence that contains exactly 140 characters. So how did the folks who cre- ated Twitter settle on the original 140 characters? Well, the foundation for Twitter was based in SMS—text messag- ing from cell phones. At the time, text messaging was limited to 160 characters. So the Twitter braintrust

decided that tweets would be no longer than 140 characters—which would allow up to 20 characters for the username that appears before the tweet. One of the advantages of Twitter was that users could send and re- ceive tweets through their phones—but they were delivered as text messag- es, and thus users were charged a fee for texting. If a tweet were more than 160 characters, it would be sent as multiple texts, so it would cost twice as much. This was long before the days where unlimited text messaging was common, so it was an important consideration. Over the years, Twitter users have come up with clever abbreviations to fit their messages within 140 characters. Of course, they’ve also taken to expressing thoughts in a series of related tweets, something that has come to be known as a “tweetstorm.” As explained on page 40, Twitter made the move to expand the limit to 280 in 2017.

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Introduction: What’s in a Tweet?

about right now. On Twitter, live comes to life as conversations unfold, showing you all sides of the story. From breaking news and entertainment to sports, politics and everyday interests, when things happen in the world, they happen first on Twitter.” Sounds impressive, and the numbers back it up. According to Omnicore, a digital marketing agency, here are some stagger- ing statistics regarding usage of Twitter, and the numbers con- tinue to grow: • 330 million monthly active Twitter users Here’s a number that might be the most staggering, and certainly the most important to the more than 3,000 employees of the company: The business world says the value of Twitter, Inc., exceeds $25 billion. Twitter is unique among the major social media networks in that it truly brings together “social”—everyday people sharing thoughts and experiences—with “media”—news organizations and their reporters telling us what is happening in the world in real time. As of late 2017, Twitter.com was among the top 15 most popular websites on the internet overall and second only behind Facebook among social media networks. • 500 million tweets sent per day • 100 million daily active users

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1 Hatching Twitter

10

S trange as it may sound, the origins of Twitter can be traced back to a young teenager listening to a police scanner. That young teenager was Jack Dorsey (left), who would become one of the co-creators of Twitter as well as other groundbreaking technological advancements. Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, Dorsey was the son of an engineer. His father’s job gave Dorsey access to computers before most of the other kids his age. He first began playing with com- puters at the age of eight. That was in 1984, and most adults didn’t even have computers back then. But merely using computers was not enough for Dorsey; he wanted to understand how they worked. He taught himself how to build computer pro- grams at a time when his fellow students didn’t even know how to use a com- puter. All this took place before he was even a teenager. Dorsey’s other passion was trains, and it went hand-in-hand with his in- terest in technology. He decorated his room with posters of maps and trains,

WORDS TO UNDERSTAND functionality the ability of a product to be successfully used urban planner a person who puts together designs and plans for cities, including buildings, open space, utilities, and transportation

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Tech 2.0

all the while thinking about how the city was connected in one large grid. Dorsey has said that if he hadn’t become so interest- ed in computers, he might have become an urban planner in- stead. He wanted to get to the heart of how vehicles moved and communicated. He used a police scanner to pick up radio signals transmitted from emergency vehicles moving through his area of town. The way the people in the vehicles communicated with one another fascinated Dorsey. “They’re always talking about where they’re going, what they’re doing, and where they currently are,” he said.

Dorsey used a police scanner like this one that later inspired Twitter.

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1: Hatching Twitter

The people he listened to on the police scanner did not speak in full sentences. Instead, they used short codes to com- municate what was happening. Dorsey thought this was very ef- ficient, and began thinking of ways these short bursts of com- munication could be used in other areas of life. The signals he listened to through his police scanner became his very first inspi- ration for the future creation of Twitter. An Idea Forms W hile still in college, Dorsey was already a programming wizard in great demand. He dropped out of New York Uni- versity and began to think about how technology could be used to improve the world. He reflected on the dispatch conversations he listened to as a child and thought of ways to apply that think- ing to the internet, which was now expanding rapidly. When he began working for a podcasting company in 2005, his dreams began to take shape. Dorsey saw a clear connection between the internet and the increasing use of cell phones. “Now, we all have these cell phones. We had text messaging. Suddenly we could update where I was, what I’m doing, where I’m going, how I feel. And then it would go out to the entire world,” he said in an interview. At the time, smartphones were uncommon and just start- ing to come out. If Jack wanted to connect everyday people to the internet through cell phones, he would need to do it through

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Tech 2.0

text messages. Dorsey wasted no time pitching his new idea to his new employer, Odeo. One former executive recounted the ex- perience: “He came to us with this idea: ‘What if you could share your status with all your friends really easily, so they know what you’re doing?’” Odeo was interested in his idea for Twitter, which he referred to as “twttr” when the project first began. The short name, which is credited to Odeo colleague Noah Glass, came from the trend at the time to keep abbreviations short. When us- ers received a text from Twitter, it would be distributed from the abbreviation twttr, and the SMS code 40404. Developers of the website hoped the code would be easy for users to memorize and recognize. Jack received help for his newproject fromBiz Stone, Odeo’s creative director, and another contractor named Florian Weber. All three were very talented programmers, and they were able to build the first version of Twitter within two weeks. On March 21, 2006, Jack sent out his first Twitter update (an update wasn’t called a “tweet” until 2007). It said, “just setting up my twttr.” Only Odeo employees used the first version of Twitter, as it was not ready to be shared with the world. The developers of Twitter spent a lot of money testing the functionality of the website. Having an unlimited text-message planwas almost unheard of at the time, so theywere forced to pay for each individual text message that was sent or received during testing. They racked up thousands of dollars in SMS charges to

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