While sitting on a children's slide in March 2006 with a couple of friends, Jack Dorsey created Twitter. The concept of the social website is quite simple: every user has the opportunity to post a text message of 140 characters ('a tweet') on his or her profile. Your Twitter-connected friends are following your updates and vice versa: you can follow your friends updates. Exactly five years after the launching of Twitter; 190 million people use the social medium, the revenues are annually approximately 150 million dollar and Twitter counts 400 employees worldwide. The most remarkable fact: a couple of worldwide revolutions started with Twitter.
In june 2009, a large number of Iranian people were doubtful about the results of the presidential elections. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remained, according to the results, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, clashes broke out between the police and groups protesting the election results. Ahmadinejad responded with a downshot of all the communication tools, but he was too late: the first protests messages arrived the rest of the world. How? Yes, Twitter...
During the January 2011 protests in Egypt against the government of Hosni Mubarak, Twitter was inaccessible for the Egyptian users. The reason for that? The threat for the government was too high after a notification on Twitter to demonstrate on the Tahrir Square against the current regime. In the end, Mubarak left his position and the 'Twitter-revolution' succeed.
Instead of a 'simple' social medium, Twitter is nowadays a powerful weapon. Which population will follow after Iran, Egypt and several other nations in the Middle-East? Is Twitter the new Facebook or Google in terms of internet market share? The comming years of our 'five years old child' will tell that. For now a happy fifth birthday to you, Twitter!
