Twitter is a social networking web site that permits its users to send and receive short text messages. These short messages or posts are known as Tweets and are restricted to a maximum length of 140 characters. The Tweets are present on individual users profile page and are viewed or are sent to users who are members of that particular profile. These members are known as followers in Twitter. Users can limit tweet delivery to just their immediate friends group or members, or their profile can be set to public access. Users can also send and receive Tweets through Short Message Service (SMS).
Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey who wanted to build a service that would help people be aware of what their friends were up to; a type of user status service. ‘Twitch' was the first name that was considered for the service by the Twitter team. It later evolved into ‘twitter’ which actually, as per the Oxford dictionary, means ‘to talk rapidly in a nervous or trivial way’.
Twitter is considered to be one of the most popular web sites in existence today. It is the third most popular social networking web site, in terms of usage. It has a monthly growth rate of 1,382 percent; but it is able to convert only about 40 percent of its users.
Technology framework
The Twitter web interface utilizes the Ruby on Rails framework. Twitter message handling is done by software written in the programming language Scala. The framework allows for additional web services and applications to interact and combine with Twitter. The search functionality on Twitter makes use of hashtags to search for specific messages. A hashtag is basically the # symbol followed by the search term. Users correspond with each other via SMS, by means of five gateway numbers.
Twitter based applications and services
There are a number of services and applications that are built to work with and improve Twitter. These services and applications enable users to send and receive tweets from other devices. Certain services and applications aim to enhance user experience with Twitter. Some of the Twitter based services and applications are:
- 2TwitME – Twitter client for Palm OS
- UberTwitter – application used to post twitter updates on Blackberry phones and also to find other UberTwitter users.
- Autopilot Tweet – desktop application for Twitter automation
- Auto Tweeter – desktop application that can be used to send automatic tweets from a user’s computer at scheduled intervals.
- Blip.FM – music sharing web site that can be integrated with Twitter accounts.
- aMAP.to – web site service that allows users to create short URL map links for Twitter, email and other posts.
