Twitter

X

Logo used since July 2023
Formerly	Twitter (2006–2023)
Company type	Private
Industry	Websites
Founded	San Francisco, California, United States
Founder	Jack Dorsey Evan Williams Biz Stone
Headquarters	795 Folsom St., Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94107 , United States[1]
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Elon Musk (Owner, CTO & Chairman) Linda Yaccarino (CEO) Evan Williams (Product Strategy) Biz Stone (Creative Director)
Services	Social networking, Microblogging
Revenue	US $5.081 billion (2021)[2]
Number of employees	7,500 (2021)[3]
Website	x.com

Twitter, officially known as X since July 2023, is a social networking and microblogging service. Users of any device with an internet connection and a web browser can send and read messages, called "tweets", on X. For years, tweets could be up to 140 characters long, then doubled to 280 characters in November 2017.^[4] Tweets appear on the user's profile webpage. Tweets can usually be read by anyone, but senders can also keep messages private. Private tweets only go to their list of friends. Users may subscribe to tweets from other people. This is called following, and subscribers are known as followers. As of late 2009, users can also follow lists of authors.^[5][6]

All users can send and receive tweets using the X website. They can also use other applications that work with X on smartphones. Twitter by Short Message Service (SMS) is available in certain countries.^[7] Using X is free, but sending or getting tweets by SMS may cost money. The website is based in San Francisco, California. X also has servers and offices in San Antonio, Texas and Boston, Massachusetts, and soon in Salt Lake City, Utah.

As Twitter, the service became very popular worldwide since Jack Dorsey created it in 2006. It had more than 126 million active users as of 2019.^[8] It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet".^[9]

On April 25, 2022, the Twitter board of directors agreed to Elon Musk's US$44 billion offer to buy the company.^[10] On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk took control of the company and fired CEO Parag Agarwal along with other top executives.^[11]

1. ↑ "Contact Us". Archived from the original on 2012-03-11. Retrieved 2017-08-31.
2. ↑ Claire Cain Miller, Brad Stone (July 15, 2009). "Hacker Exposes Private Twitter Documents". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 14, 2011. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
3. ↑ "Press Info" Archived 2012-03-22 at the Wayback Machine, Twitter. Retrieved May 27, 2010.
4. ↑ Cite error: The named reference max280 was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
5. ↑ "There's a List for That". blog.twitter.com. October 30, 2009. Archived from the original on April 29, 2013. Retrieved February 1, 2010.
6. ↑ "Twitter Lists!". help.twitter.com. November 9, 2009. Archived from the original on December 22, 2009. Retrieved February 1, 2010.
7. ↑ "Using Twitter With Your Phone". Twitter Support. Archived from the original on 2010-03-15. Retrieved 2010-06-01. We currently support 2-way (sending and receiving) Twitter SMS via short codes and 1-way (sending only) via long codes.
8. ↑ Shaban, Hamza (2019-02-07). "Twitter reveals its daily active user numbers for the first time". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2024-08-05.
9. ↑ D'Monte, Leslie (April 29, 2009). "Swine flu's tweet tweet causes online flutter". Business Standard India. Business Standard. Archived from the original on June 13, 2020. Retrieved May 28, 2009. Also known as the 'SMS of the internet', Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service
10. ↑ Feiner, Lauren (2022-04-25). "Twitter accepts Elon Musk's buyout deal". CNBC. Archived from the original on 2022-04-26. Retrieved 2022-04-25.
11. ↑ Duffy, Donie O'Sullivan and Clare (2022-10-27). "Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter and fired its top executives". CP24. Archived from the original on 2022-10-28. Retrieved 2022-10-28.