It's been seven years since Twitter creator Jack Dorsey first tweeted. And in the time that has passed, the social network has gathered over 200 million users who generate over 400 million tweets each day.
To mark the social network's birthday, the folks at Twitter made a video covering some of the key moments in Twitter's history.
The year 2007 brought the hashtag — the invention often credited to Google's Chris Messina— and the first retweet. In 2007, Oprah Winfrey joined Twitter, only to be promptly teased by Shaquille O'Neal. Soon after that, astronaut Mike Massimino sent the first tweet from space. In January 2013, Twitter introduced Vine, a video-sharing service.
While Twitter has gathered over 200 million users in the last seven years, the number is dwarfed by Facebook's billion or so users. (That social network's been around since 2004.) Google+, by comparison, launched in mid-2011 and has since racked up 135 million active users.
No matter Twitter's size next to its fellow social networks, one must admit that it has played a role in many historical events, and been a highly disruptive force in the media, being the first medium to report the slaying of Osama bin Laden and the Hudson River plane crash of 2009, among many many other breaking news items.
It also has the most whimsical logo. The Twitter bird, named Larry after former NBA basketball player Larry Bird, is likely pecking at some birthday cake today.
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