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Today marks ten years since Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent the first tweet.

Since then, the social network has grown to 300 million monthly active users, and sees an average of 350,000 tweets sent per minute.

Twitter has gone through a series of changes since the first tweet. It started out as a text-based platform, with the 140 character limit designed with SMS in mind.

Since then, it has grown to include photos, embedded media. Then polls were added into the mix, where you can ask people what they think about anything.

Twitter’s 140 character limit lends itself easily to bite-sized chunks of information. Users can tell the world what they’re doing, eating, listening to or just thinking. Its name is a reflection of this.

All your tweets, from the deep and insightful to the random and inconsequential have been archived by the Library of Congress.

Twitter has been used to mobilize people for protest in the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement and in cities all over the world.

In 2013, Twitter launched Vine, an app that taught us that six seconds isn’t too short for a video…

https://vine.co/v/eIXejbQ2utM/

Twitter’s place in the pop culture collective stands out. There was Ellen’s record-breaking selfie…

Felix Baumgartner’s record-breaking jump…

And Justin Bieber…

Twitter is growing and changing, cementing its place as the social network where we go to get informed, entertained, and occasionally confused…

https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/709409643387297792

To commemorate the occasion, Twitter has launched an interactive visualization of some of the most popular tweets.

Twitter also released a video showcasing various events that brought the social network to the fore.

Here’s to ten more years. And hopefully, an edit button somewhere down the line.

Eric Mugendi Author

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