Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which offers
a social networking and microblogging service which enables its users
to send and read other users' messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based
posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's profile page. Tweets
are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message
delivery to their friends list. Users may subscribe to other author tweets—this
is known as following and subscribers are known as followers. As of late
2009, users can follow lists of authors instead of just following individual
authors.
How It Works
All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, compatible
external applications (such as, for smartphones), or by Short Message
Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is
free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
The website is based in San Bruno, California near San Francisco (where
the website was first based). Twitter also has servers and offices in
San Antonio, Texas and Boston, Massachusetts.
Who Created Twitter
Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability
and popularity worldwide and currently has more than 100 million users
worldwide. It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet."The
use of Twitter's application programming interface (API) for sending
and receiving SMS from other applications often dominates the direct
use of Twitter.
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