Twitter Turns 5 Years Old; Read Some Of The Most Memorable Tweets

Five years ago this week, a small team of people started working on a prototype of the service that we now know as Twitter. On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent the first Tweet.

Some of the more memorable Tweets of all time include: “We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks,” Barack Obama Tweeted on Nov. 5, 2008 after winning the presidential election.

“We have just got word that Michael Jackson has died…,” Harvey Levin, of TMZ, Tweeted in summer 2009.

“Refudiate,” “misunderestimate,” “wee-wee’d up.” English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it! (Sarah Palin made waves and coined a new term, “refudiate,” after posting a tweet that read “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate,” Sarah Palin Tweeted, creating the new term “refudiate.”

“Winning..! Choose your Vice,” actor Charlie Sheen Tweeted for his first Tweet. His number of followers skyrocketed to more than a million in 24 hours.

Today, on every measure of growth and engagement, Twitter is growing at a record pace. Here are some numbers:

Tweets -3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet. -1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets. -50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago. -140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month. -177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011. -456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time). -6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year?s Day.

Accounts -572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011. -460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month. -182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.

Employees 8. 29. 130. 350. 400.Number of Twitter employees in Jan 2008, Jan 2009, Jan 2010, Jan 2011 and today.

For Best Tweets Websites and the most favorited Tweets of all time, click here. and here. and here.