When was it launched – October 2006. By April 2007, 94 000 users – it is one of the fastest growing phenomena on the Internet. Critics mock the banality of most tweets and question whether we really need such an assault upon our powers of concentration. Pontin, J. (2007) From many tweets, one loud voice on the internet The New York Times Apr. 22, 2007 Who uses it – Not everyone uses email – trends indicate that IM is becoming the communication of choice for teens/young adults – portability, immediacy, chitty chat, informal talk. But it isn’t just teenagers who use this service. Active ‘fan-club’ is seeing continuing development of applications. Twitter is still very much in its infancy and in a process of evolution. What is its purpose - it’s about immediacy, portability and accessibility of receiving messages on a variety of devices. Essentially a net-based chat room filled with your friends – or the world if you prefer 140 characters or less – succinct – able to be sent in a single text message You can elect to send and receive messages any number of ways--through Twitter's website, through your mobile phone (via SMS), through your IM client, through RSS, or through a number of third-party tools that have emerged to help people access and interact with the Twittersphere. It’s a microblogging application, a instant messenger, a social presence notifier – “I’m off to the movies” microblog as something similar to a constant mind-dump e.g. “have you seen this article?” Difference between blogging and microblogging – a prolific blogger may update their blog once very few days, a microblooger may post several updates in a single day. – Java et al. (2007) Why we twitter: understanding microblogging usage and communities. Conference Aug. 12, 2007 In recent months Google has purchased Jaicoo which was a similar product to Twitter.