Twitter reaches half a billion users

If the estimates and calculations are correct, Twitter has now reached five hundred million users worldwide , an impressive figure for a service just over five years. So, using some resources I've found there, including this collection of Mashable and this fantastic Raak chart where you can see when you came in on Twitter, I've organized this chart overlaying that, in my opinion, have been important events in the history of Twitter.

Surely there will be missing many people who have different opinions about what was important and what is not in the short history of this network - the first tweet from Jack Dorsey is the end of March 2006 - but I just tried to raise So my team under my own story within Twitter and my personal biases, the issues that I think had some impact on how we now understand Twitter. Please, add the milestones that you it seemed important in the comments, in order to supplement the graph with your opinions.

Here are some clues as to why these events seemed to me worthy of being highlighted:

• March 21, 2006: First tweet from Jack Dorsey , a service created almost "by accident" (just wanted to make a system to find out where was each of the members of Odeo, your company time), a service that Twttr that time was called, without vowels.
• March 2007: the conference South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin , Texas, Twitter is offered to guests as a way to monitor their activity, their friends, and the many events of the conference. It is a huge success, and Twitter starts spreading through all the blogs of the attendees. Land classified as "the beginning of the expansion phase geek".
• April 12, 2007: earthquake in Mexico City, and many Twitter users then we learned through the social network long before through other means . For me, I lived in my office when the quake live living through the account of Eduardo Arcos , then residing there, was the first evidence of what Twitter is as of today as a tool to track the pulse of the present.
• April 29, 2007: Barack Obama's team, on the campaign trail, decided to open a Twitter account to account for events, news phrases and then candidate for President of the United States.
• March 2007: Dell opens his account @ DellOutlet to facilitate monitoring their computers cheap refurbished in what is one of the earliest uses of Twitter as a direct sales channel. The account earned more than a million dollars between its opening and the end of that year.
• July 11, 2007: Twitter itself open your corporate account in the tool, which quickly becomes one of the fastest track of the entire network.
• March 2008: Frank Eliason, then National Director of Customer Service Comcast opens an account called @ ComcastCares to begin to address service problems of their subscribers . The account gets an overwhelming success and results in improved scores on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), in what constitutes the first experience of corporate use of Twitter to manage the customer relationship.
• March 27, 2008: In full gagamania, Lady Gaga opens Twitter account and become one of the most followed personalities in no time. Today is nineteen and a half million followers.
• October 10, 2008: Following the trend, Britney Spears aims to open an account on Twitter, contributing to the phenomenon and strengthen the transition from a network with expansion majority geek community into a growing network generalist.
• January 15, 2009: A U.S. Airways plane miraculously manages to ditch in the Hudson River. The first photograph, taken within minutes of the event, and is spread by the media around the world is taken by a Twitter user who was on board the ferry that assisted the passengers . The idea of ​​citizen journalism linked to Twitter as a platform grows more and more.
• January 16, 2009: Ashton Kutcher opens his Twitter account. Adaptation to the environment, your ass photograph of his then wife, Demi Moore , and his challenge to CNN to see who was the first to reach a million followers - challenge also won - was widely discussed.
• April 17, 2009: Oprah Winfrey opens his account while interviewing Evan Williams on his program . It is estimated that during the broadcast, around one million two hundred thousand people made ​​their Twitter account .
• May 1, 2009: The White House opened its Twitter account .
• May 12, 2009: Justin Bieber open your account and makes waves Beliebers unrepentantly engaged in monopolizing the trending topics, Twitter being a demographic in which so far did not have much popularity.
• June 2009: A presidential election in Iran to end with the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad triggered protests and accusations of electoral fraud in favor of the candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi, express passing mainly through Twitter. The company has even delayed maintenance schedule that would have led to a temporary disruption of service, in order not to disrupt the activities of insurgent actions. Thereafter, and for all subsequent episodes ended resulting in the "Arab spring", Twitter is then regarded an essential tool for action and policy coordination.
• April 28, 2010: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president, opened his Twitter account and employs two hundred people to answer it , becoming one of the first to see the potential of the network in the face of manipulation of the political message.
• March 1, 2011: Charlie Sheen on Twitter discharged following a confrontation with CBS, and accumulates in a few hours hundreds of thousands of fans eager for controversy.

Undoubtedly, we could highlight many other things considered less relevant or reviewed here. But the fact is that, through stories how are you and many more (now sends half of one hundred forty million tweets per day), Twitter has grown into what today is the social sixth sense , the layer we communicate and through which we learn and gossiped in real time, the stage today, and even the window of political action.

A scenario that has now come that easy to say, the five hundred million users.