Biz Stone and Evan Williams started Twitter as a way for people in their office to keep in touch with each other by exchanging short messages about what they were doing. They limited the size of each message to 140 characters so that people could send and receive messages using text messaging on their cell phones. Discuss Twitter's main features.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Twitter has experienced rapid growth despite modest beginnings, and is now used by technology and social media enthusiasts, journalists, celebrities, politicians, and others.

The number of unique visitors to Twitter surpassed that of the New York Times, Digg, and LinkedIn during 2009.

Twitter is an online application for creating a social network in which you interact by sending and receiving short messages from two groups of people: people from whom you receive messages, known as your following, and people who receive messages from you, known as your followers. Every time that you send a message, or tweet, on Twitter, the tweet is broadcast to every one of your followers. Every time that one of the people who you are following sends a tweet, you will receive it, as will all of their other followers. Users can access Twitter through their cell phones, desktop applications, or other Web sites.

Messages on Twitter can spread virally. If one of your followers forwards a message that you sent, or retweets your message, all of his or her followers will receive it as well. Retweeting drastically expands the reach of any message that you send. Searching Twitter has become a useful way to get a pulse on what people in the Twitterverse (slang for everybody on Twitter) are collectively talking about.