Twitter by the numbers at age five

Five years ago on 21 March, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey fired off the first tweets officially giving life to the micro-messaging service.


Five years ago on March 21, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey fired off the first tweets officially giving life to the micro-messaging service:


Here are some facts about the San Francisco-based startup:

-Dorsey's Twitter account @jack automatically sent out the first tweet, 'just setting up my twttr,' on 21 March 2006 and Dorsey followed it up with the first 'human-generated' tweet 'inviting coworkers'.

-Twitter has more than 200m registered users sending more than 140m tweets a day.


-Last year, Twitter users sent 25bn tweets and the company added more than 100 million new registered accounts. It has averaged 460,000 new accounts per day over the past month.


-Pop star Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) has the most Twitter followers with 8.78m followed by Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) with 8.13m million, Britney Spears (@britneyspears) with 7.12m, Barack Obama (@barackobama) with 6.97m and Kim Kardashian (@kimkardashian) with 6.73m.


-Actor Charlie Sheen (@charliesheen) was the fastest to one million followers, picking them up in just 24 hours.


-The hashtag (#) feature on Twitter which groups tweets by subject debuted in August 2007, proposed by a user.

-In October 2009, Google and Microsoft began integrating tweets into their search products.


-Twitter has 400 employees and is adding workers almost weekly.


-Twitter is based in San Francisco, with additional employees in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington.


-Twitter was incorporated in April 2007; it was co-founded by Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey - @biz, @ev and @jack.


-The initial Twitter logo was created by Stone, a former graphic designer.


-Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo is a former improvisational comedian.