Today, Twitter users are showing their gratitude for the past 10 years with the hashtag #LoveTwitter.
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And a lot of those first attempts at writing something interesting, witty and informative within 140 characters failed.
As of December 2015, Twitter boasts 320 million monthly active users and one billion visits monthly to sites with embedded Tweets. Following those reports there was uproar from thousands of Twitter’s faithful fans, who believed the 140-character limit was an essential aspect of the site, and that unlimited tweets would mean it was no different to something like Facebook.
Another feature that made Twitter the first of its kind, is the satisfaction and often unmatched excitement that it provides an average user to interact with his or her favorite celebrity or a global sports superstar.
It’s been ten years since Twitter started life as a fledgling social network with dreams of allowing everyone to instantly share their random musings.
Nevertheless, with tweets like Leonardo DiCaprio’s post-Oscars post generating 440,000 tweets a minute, Twitter doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.
Combine that with an array of platform changes that has left the majority of users dissatisfied, a sharp decline in revenue and a series of layoffs and Twitter’s future remains quite muddy. Speaking around the time of the IPO, Evan Williams, former Chairman and CEO of Twitter said that, “With Twitter, it wasn’t clear what it was”. However getting away from the 140 character limit would have been a mistake. They would eliminate the 140-character limit and expand it to possibly 10,000 characters, the rumors said. In the Middle East, Twitter gave people a new place for discussion, debate and organisation.
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Despite all of this, Twitter’s mandatory 10-K filing shows that the company is yet to turn a profit and has apparently lost over $2 billion since the company’s inception. It became so much easier to complain publicly about the bad pizza delivery you received last night when you can tag the company in your tweet.
