Twitter is a microblogging social network managed by Twitter Inc. It allows a user to send free micro messages, called tweets or tweets, over the internet, by instant messaging or SMS. These messages are limited to 280 characters.
| Creation | March 21, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams |
| Key figures | Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Elon Musk |
| Action | NYSE: TWTR |
| Slogan | What’s up? – Find out what’s happening right now in the people and organizations you care about – Follow your passions |
| Head office | Delaware USA |
| Direction | Elon Musk |
| Shareholders | Elon Musk (majority) |
| activity | Internet |
| Products | Microblog service |
| number of people | 3,900 (in 2018) 4,800 (in 2019) 5,500 (in 2020) 6,600 (in 2021) 3,500 (in 2022) |
| Website | twitter.com |
| Capitalization | $30 billion (as of February 2020) $38.6 billion (as of October 2022) |
| Turnover | $5.08 billion (2021) |
| Net income | −$221 million (2021) |
Twitter was created on March 21, 2006, by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass. The online service quickly became popular. On March 5, 2017, it has 313 million monthly active users, 500 million tweets sent per day, and is available in over forty languages. In 2018, the company announced for the first time that it had made a profit, especially as a result of budget cuts. On April 25, 2022, Twitter accepts the proposal to buy Elon Musk for the sum of $ 44 billion, it is however on October 27, 2022, that Elon Musk confirms the purchase of Twitter shares and becomes the new owner. The measures he took and his declarations after his arrival led to a drastic decrease in the number of employees.
The head office of Twitter Inc. is located in the United States, in Delaware, although the main premises are located on the opposite coast, in San Francisco.
History of Twitter
2006-2012: from zero to five hundred million users
Twitter was created in San Francisco within the start-up Odeo founded by Noah Glass and Evan Williams. Noah Glass marketed AudBlog, an application for publishing audio files to a blog using a phone. Evan Williams is known for being the co-founder of the company Pyra Labs, behind the blogging platform Blogger, bought by Google in 2003. Odeo offered a platform for web hosting, broadcasting and recording podcasts.
With the podcast market already very competitive, Jack Dorsey, a dispatching engineer, and Noah Glass, a former collaborator of Marc Canter (founder of MacroMind) and founder of the podcasting blog service AudBlog (which merged with Odeo), were tasked with developing a new service. The original idea launched by Jack Dorsey was to allow users to easily share their little moments of life with their friends. Open to the public on 13 July 2006, the first version was called Stat.us then Twttr, in reference to the photo-sharing site Flickr and Twitter, its current name. On the21 March 2006, Jack Dorsey sent his first tweet: “Just setting up my twttr”, marking the anniversary of the founding of the company by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass.
On 25 October 2006, Odeo’s assets were purchased by Obvious Corp. Then, on April 2007, an independent entity was created with the name Twitter with Jack Dorsey at its head until October 2008when he was succeeded by Evan Williams. In March 2008, Twitter has one million users. The company has 29 employees in February 2009, 300 in October 2010and 900 in April 2012.
In July 2008, Twitter bought the integrated tweet search engine Summize and became Twitter’s native search engine. On April 2010, the Twitter application and client, Tweetie is purchased, it becomes Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for Mac.
On October 4, 2010, Evan Williams, the co-founder, announces that he is handing over to Dick Costolo, former COO.
On March 2, 2011, Twitter entered into a 20-year agreement allowing the Federal Trade Commission to have a say in its advertising practices, including personal data collected for security reasons (such as email addresses and phone numbers). On May 25, 2022, the FTC found that the agreement had been violated from 2013 to 2019 and reached a new agreement with the company, which also paid a fine of $150 million, equivalent to 13% of its revenues in the first quarter of 2022.
On May 25, 2011, the Twitter client TweetDeck is bought for $ 40 million. On July 5, 2011, Twitter’s analytics management tool BackType is purchased. The September 21, 2011, Twitter acquires an Internet search specialist Julpan, founded in 2010 by Ori Allon, a former employee who had worked on Google’s search engine.
On January 20, 2012, Twitter acquires Toronto-based news aggregator Summify. On March 3, 2012, Twitter acquired the microblogging site Posterous a competitor of Tumblr. In April 2012, Hotspots.io, a service specializing in social analysis was also purchased. On May 10, 2012, Twitter buys the developer of personalized email notification marketing services RestEngin. In October 2012, it is the turn of Vine, a New York tool that allows users to publish videos by tweets via smartphones that is acquired by Twitter. This tool is offered directly to users on smartphones since January 24, 2013.
At the end of February 2012, the online service has more than five hundred million users worldwide. In June of the same year, the words “Twitter” (proper name), “twitt” or “tweet”, “twitteur” or “twitteuse”, as well as “Twitter” or “tweeter”, appeared in Le Petit Larousse 2013 edition.
On January 28, 2013, Twitter buys the analysis tool Crashlytics, which detects and reports any unexpected closure of a mobile application for iOS and Android that may affect users. On February 5, 2013, Twitter confirms the acquisition of Bluefin Labs based in Cambridge near Boston. The latter specializes in the analysis of conversations around television programs. With this acquisition, Twitter clarifies its development strategy in Social Television. On April 11, 2013, on the occasion of the Coachella music festival in California, with a view to launching an application, the company announced that it had acquired the music service WeAreHunted.com, a young company created in 2007 that lists the most popular songs on the Internet and social networks.
On May 13, 2013, Twitter announced that it had acquired Portland-based data visualization service Lucky Sort for US$600,000. In September 2013, Twitter announced the acquisition of MoPub for $350 million, its largest acquisition at the time. In August 2013, Twitter acquires Trendrr, a New York start-up that develops Curatorr, a service specializing in the real-time analysis of messages exchanged on social networks on television programs or advertisements.
Since 2013: listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Twitter, whose IPO price is set at $26, goes public on the New York Stock Exchange on October 31, 2013, under the symbol “TWTR” with a first quotation that is made at 45.10 dollars. The stock will peak at $73.31 in December 2013 before starting a drop to $31.85 at the end of the lock-up (a period during which a shareholder or investor cannot dispose of his shares) on May 6, 2014.
Twitter acquires the company on April 15, 2014of Mesagraph a young Lorraine company specializing in the measurement of the social audience (tweets) related to television shows. It also buys Gnip, its main partner in social data analysis on April 16, 2014. The young company is one of the few to have access to the entire stream of tweets (also called “Firehose”).
In June 2014, Twitter announces the acquisition of Namo Media, a company specializing in mobile advertising.
On February 11, 2015, Twitter announces that it has bought the start-up Niche, which connects advertisers with personalities who have made themselves famous on the Web with online videos.
On March 13, 2015, Twitter announces that it has bought the start-up Periscope, which allows the user to broadcast live what he is filming.
Dick Costolo resigns as CEO of Twitter in June 2015, against a backdrop of the disavowal of its strategy. He was replaced on an interim basis by one of its founders, Jack Dorsey.
In October 2015, Twitter announced 336 job cuts, or 8% of them, due to slower-than-expected growth in the number of its users. On October 2016, the company announced a similar elimination of around 9% of its workforce, or about 350 people. The same month, Twitter announced the closure of Vine.
On March 5, 2017, Twitter has 313 million monthly active users, 500 million tweets sent per day, and availability in more than forty languages. In 2018, Twitter announced for the first time that it had made a profit, particularly as a result of budget cuts.
On November 21, 2019, Twitter acquired the start-up Aiden.ai, a platform using artificial intelligence to generate marketing recommendations. In October 2021, Twitter announced the sale of its mobile advertising subsidiary MoPub for $1 billion to AppLovin.
On November 29, 2021, Jack Dorsey announces his resignation as CEO of Twitter. Parag Agrawal then replaced him immediately. In December 2021, Twitter announced the acquisition of Quill, a competitor of Slack.
Buyout in 2022
On March 14, 2022, Elon Musk announced that he was buying 9.2% of the shares of Twitter, making him the company’s largest shareholder, but he refused the offer made to sit on the company’s board of directors because it would prohibit holding more than 14.9% of the shares. On April 14, he offered to buy all of Twitter for $44 billion. Elon Musk says he wants to buy the company in the name of the principle of freedom of expression. He also says he wants more transparency at the algorithm level by making the source code public and “defeating spam bots and authenticating all humans.”
On April 25, Twitter’s board of directors accepts Elon Musk’s takeover offer. Following this agreement, political figures reacted, in particular, Senator Elizabeth Warren who considered that “the agreement was dangerous for our democracy” while Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee declared: “I hope that Elon Musk will help to master Big Tech’s history of censoring users who have a different point of view”. The White House reacts by recalling the position of President Biden who supports the changes made to the Anti-trust law to counter the monopolies of digital platforms. For his part, former President Donald Trump, banned from Twitter the day after the Capitol riots, declares that he does not wish to re-register and will continue to communicate through his own social network Truth Social while considering that this takeover is a positive development in the social media space.
On May 13, 2022, Elon Musk announced that he was suspending the operation until he received the guarantee “that spam and fake accounts represent well under 5% of the number of users”.
On July 8, 2022, Elon Musk announced that he would definitively abandon the takeover of Twitter. On July 19, 2022, Twitter took legal action to force Elon Musk to respect his buyout commitment for $44 billion. On October 3, 2022, Elon Musk announced that he wanted to buy Twitter again at the previously agreed price of $44 billion in exchange for a halt to legal proceedings by Twitter, the latter announcing its acceptance of the offer on October 4, 2022.
On October 28, 2022, the new majority shareholder Elon Musk fires upon his arrival after the takeover of Twitter all senior management including Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, Legal and Corporate Policy Director Vijaya Gadde and General Counsel Sean Edgett. The following week, the company announced by email a wave of layoffs and blocked access to headquarters for all of its employees. The number of layoffs represents nearly 50% of Twitter’s workforce.
The firm is also parting with 4,400 external service providers and ending the teleworking authorizations issued during the Covid period. This ban is followed by an ultimatum by email asking the remaining employees to choose between being fired or giving themselves “fully, unconditionally” and “working long hours at high intensity […]”. This ultimatum is followed by several hundred resignations, threatening according to several observers the operation of the application due to the departure of certain teams of critical importance in the long term.
The announcement and then the confirmation of the takeover are causing concern among Twitter users. The open-source and decentralized network Mastodon, often seen as a non-commercial alternative to Twitter, sees registration peaks in April and then October, with 230,000 account creations between October 28 and November 5.
Elon Musk reinstates Donald Trump on November 20, 2022, following the favorable result of a poll by Musk on this subject among the community which follows him and which he considers to be representative of the “people”. From November 23, the network ceases to apply its old rules which aimed to combat misleading information about the Covid-1970 pandemic. On December 15, the American media CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post as well as several independent journalists who covered Twitter saw their accounts suspended. Several German and French government figures and several international institutions, the United Nations and the European Commission, issued warnings to Twitter for infringing on freedom of expression, and the European Commission threatened the network with sanctions.
At the same time, other personalities previously banned for hate speech, against a background of transphobia or misogyny, see the opportunity to return to Twitter during this month of November, such as Jordan Peterson banned several months earlier, or Andrew Tate excluded from this platform in 2017. In addition, climatosceptic false information increases sharply on the network in the months following the takeover. According to the director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, Elon Musk himself encouraged attacks on the scientific community in his posts and had the Twitter algorithm changed to severely limit the reach of scientists communicating about climate change.
On December 19, Elon Musk launches a poll on Twitter, asking users if they want him to remain at the head of the network. More than 17 million Internet users participate and decide at 57.5% that Musk should not remain the CEO of Twitter. Musk disputes the result, arguing that it was skewed by the involvement of bots, then explains that he will step down when he finds a replacement.
On January 12, 2023, most third-party applications using or providing access to Twitter ceased to function due to an identification problem with the Twitter client. Twitter does not provide an explanation for this issue. According to an internal exchange at Twitter made public by the site The Information, this is an intentional decision, linked to the fact that these third-party applications do not generate any income for Twitter.
Twitter’s relationship with ad companies has soured since Musk took over Twitter. Clients of the GroupeM advertising network have reduced their spending on Twitter by 40 to 50% since October 2022. Advertisers do not appreciate the unpredictability of Elon Musk.
Twitter lays off more than 200 people over the weekend of February 17, 2023, about 10% of its employees; the laid-off employees are product managers, data science employees, and engineers working on-site reliability and machine learning. This reduces the total number of Twitter employees worldwide to less than 2,000, down from 7,500 when the company was bought by Elon Musk in October 2022.
On February 24, the Slack platform, long used by Twitter employees for internal communication and to store work files, is disabled, ostensibly for “routine maintenance”, in reality probably to save the cost of the subscription as Twitter hasn’t been paying for it for some time. The network experienced new blackouts: in Asia for about twenty minutes on February 24, then a global blackout on March 1, during which Twitter remained unavailable for more than an hour worldwide. This is the second serious blackout of the network since its takeover by Musk. A new outage occurred on March 6, affecting the loading of images, the operation of hypertext links, and even access to TweetDeck for professional users.
On April 3, 2023, around 8 p.m., the Twitter logo was replaced by that of Dogecoin.
At the beginning of April 2023, the company X Corp., owned by Elon Musk created in 2022, located in Nevada in the United States, absorbs Twitter Inc. which disappears.
At the beginning of April 2023, Twitter decided to present several media as “government-funded”, including National Public Radio (NPR), the public service broadcasting network of the United States, and the BBC, the British public service broadcaster. The NPR disputes this label, recalling that it is independent of the government, since it forms a non-commercial structure financed in large majority by donations from individuals or institutions, and only 13% by funds from the federal government, of which the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In the absence of an agreement, the NPR announced on April 12 its departure from Twitter and the closure within two weeks of the fifty official accounts it has there. The BBC also disputes the relevance of the label attached to it.
The Public Broadcasting Service network, an American television network, left Twitter on the same day, for the same reasons. On April 17, Radio-Canada (CBC), a Canadian public service, announced that it was suspending its activities on Twitter in response to the same case. The next day, the Swedish public radio Sveriges Radio (SR) announces the end of its activities on the platform.
During the third week of April 2023, Twitter will remove the ability to search within the platform without being logged in.
That same month, the social network was accused of not fighting against climate skepticism, an accusation made on the platform in February 2013, unlike Tik Tok, which took action on this subject from Earth Day. having taken place on April 22, 2023, the climatosceptics who were initially Antivax have meanwhile become pro-Kremlin then now climatosceptics holding since the summer of 2022 a discourse worthy of the 80s by accusing global warming of being a “climate hoax” or a ” climate scam” and to the great indignation in particular of the experts examining the rise of this phenomenon with concern.
At the end of April 2023, the site and blog platform WordPress announced that it was no longer providing its Twitter sharing functionality. Twitter had announced major changes to the Twitter API terms of use and a sharp price increase, and negotiations between Twitter and WordPress were unsuccessful. WordPress announces plans to implement sharing features on Instagram and Mastodon soon.
On May 11, 2023, Elon Musk announces that he has recruited a new general manager for the social network Twitter and X Corp., who should take office six weeks later, but without first specifying the identity of the person who will replace him. thus in this position (he would remain chairman of the board of directors and technical director). A few hours after this announcement, two major American dailies, the Wall Street Journal then the Washington Post, indicated that the new general manager of the social network would be Linda Yaccarino, which then remains to be formalized. Elon Musk confirmed by tweet his appointment on May 12, 2023, specifying: “She will focus mainly on business, while I will take care of product design and new technologies”.
On May 10, Musk announces the arrival of audio and video calling features. On May 19, private voice messages, which have been offered for years in some countries, are generalized.
Features
Twitter is a microblogging or microblogging service, which allows its users to blog through short messages, “tweets”. In addition to this imposed brevity, the main difference between Twitter and a traditional blog is that Twitter does not invite readers to comment on posted messages. Twitter’s original promise, “What are you doing?”, defines it as a service to tell what we are doing at the moment we are doing it. Taking note of the use of the service to exchange information and links, Twitter replaces it with “What’s happening?”, then by “Compose new Tweet…” in the latest version of September 2011.
In addition, Twitter is generally used as a social networking platform. On the other hand, its interface and format are very different from a universe like Facebook or Instagram, although there are some similarities. The very particular culture and specific to its community means that Twitter can ask for a little more effort from new users. Several guides exist to help new users better interfere in the world of tweets.
The original interface of Twitter is in English. A Japanese version is launched in April 2008. Twitter differs from other popular social media by its absolute adherence to the Keep it Simple, Stupid principle – its ease of use – making it one of the main factors of its success.
In September 2014: after its competitor Facebook, the social network also tests a “Buy now” button to make purchases from tweets. Among the associated partners, Burberry, The Home Depot or the rapper Eminem. In June 2015, the group launched a tool that better targets the ads that users see from applications installed on their mobile.
In December 2016, Jack Dorsey asked users of the social network the feature they would like to see appear, unsurprisingly, it will be the possibility of editing a tweet already written (in other words modify it even after publication). But this feature is difficult to implement, especially because publications on Twitter are fast and more easily shared than on other social networks that can lead to the questioning of the integrity of the message initially published.
The tweet and the retweet
Each short message, the tweet or tweet, is originally limited to 140 characters (until September 2016). It forces users to be concise in their writing. Initially, Twitter could be used via SMS. These being limited to 160 characters, Twitter took this limit and kept twenty characters to add his username. The limited capacity of 140 characters per message on the service has fostered the emergence of content platforms, such as TwitPic, which allows images and photos to be posted; bit.ly to shorten links.
However, it is a question of January 2016 that allows the publication of tweets exceeding the traditional 140 characters allowing a number of 10,000 characters. The objective is to reach a wider audience and promote the communication of companies on the medium. Since the summer of 2015, the group has lifted the 140-character limit on private messages.
There are two ways to “retweet”: either as initially by copying/pasting the entire tweet read by preceding it with the mention “RT @Bob”, or as since the end of 2009 by automatically “retweeting” it to display it to your subscribers as you saw it yourself, with the avatar of the original author, unless the original author is using a protected account.
Since June 15, 2016, Twitter offers the possibility to retweet or quote one’s own tweets.
Since September 19, 2016, Twitter no longer counts the number of characters used when inserting photos, videos, and GIFs into a tweet, freeing up an additional twenty characters.
Subscriptions
After logging into Twitter as a registered member, you access tweets (mini-messages) in feeds posted by your own subscriptions, i.e. through the accounts of users you have chosen to “follow”. If the user Alice “follows” the user Bob, Alice is said to be a subscriber of Bob and Bob is a subscription of Alice.
In the French version of the interface, a follower is initially called “follower” replaced by “subscriber” and a following, by “followed” then “abonnement”. Twitter is an asymmetric social network, that is to say not engaging reciprocity.
It is possible for a user to restrict the reading of his mini-messages by keeping access to his account private, thus avoiding making it public (“protected tweets“). The messages are then visible to the subscriber only after validation of a request to add to his subscription list by the user who applied for private access, these tweets cannot be retweeted.
Private access is not Twitter’s default mode. It is not really in the spirit of this service, and its very existence is not known to all users (some users say they left Twitter because they thought it impossible to make their account private). On the other hand, accounts that are not private are public, which implies that a tweet is indeed a public statement and can therefore be taken up and quoted in the media or in court for example.
| Ranking of the ten most followed accounts (on April 24, 2023): |
||
|---|---|---|
| Rank | Accounts | Subscribers (in millions) |
| 1 | @elonmusk | 136,3 |
| 2 | @BarackObama | 132,8 |
| 3 | @justinbieber | 113,0 |
| 4 | @Cristiano | 108,4 |
| 5 | @rihanna | 108,3 |
| 6 | @katyperry | 108,1 |
| 7 | @taylorswift13 | 92,5 |
| 8 | @narendramodi | 88,1 |
| 9 | @realDonaldTrump | 87,1 |
| 10 | @ladygaga | 84,6 |
Before its final suspension, in January 2021, Donald Trump’s account had more than 88 million followers.
News Feed
The News Feed, or “timeline” in English (abbreviated “TL”), is the main page on which the tweets of the accounts to which the user has subscribed appear.
On March 23, 2015, Twitter is launching a new filter on its mobile app to combat online harassment. This quality filter is intended to remove notifications and appearances on News Feed from tweets containing threats or offensive comments towards the user.
In December 2015, while tweets usually appear in anti-chronological order, Twitter decided to experiment with other ranking methods for its posts. Some users then see the order of their tweets completely upset and are quick to express their dissatisfaction on the social network.
Mentions
A name preceded by at sign “@” is a link to the Twitter account of the user of that name (which allows you to see all their tweets, unless they are protected). Each user can view the mentions they have received in the “@ Connect” tab, replaced by “@ Notifications”. If a tweet starts with a mention, only followers following the mentioned account will see the tweet in their News Feed (for example@Eve writes a tweet starting with @Bob, so among @Eve’s followers, only those who also follow @Bob will read the tweet from their News Feed).
Hashtags
A word preceded by the sign “#” (cross) is a hashtag. In Quebec, the “Office québécois de la langue française” created and proposed January 2011 the term “hashtag”. In France, the General Commission on Terminology and Neology proposed January 2013 the term “hashtag”. This is a subject attributed to the message, Twitter can display all tweets with a specific hashtag, and establishes a ranking of the most used words or hashtags of the moment (trending topics, now available for tweets written in French) – hence sometimes hijacking the system, on the same principle as the Google bombing.
In practice Twitter has its own vocabulary, users of the microblogging service create many hashtags in the form of abbreviations. Below are identified the most commonly used by users:
- #TT, Trending Topics;
- #FF, FollowFriday (a tradition — which is running out of steam — of listing, every Friday, Twitter accounts that you want to recommend to your feed followers);
- #PP, Profile Picture;
- #NP, Now Playing, used to talk about the music we are listening to (music, radio…);
- #NW, Now Watching, used to talk about what we are watching (television, film, videos…);
- #LT, Last Tweet, used when a user makes a reference to their previous tweet posted (for example, when they didn’t have enough room to write what they want in their tweet);
- #NSFW, Not Safe For Work, used to report inappropriate content in a workplace or in public, indecent, even vulgar, violent or sexual nature.
Every day, many hashtags emerge and become popular by virality, according to the news of the moment or for humorous reasons (memes). Many media, institutional players, brands… promote hashtags, on Twitter and other media (television, advertising, clipboard…) to encourage Internet users to communicate on their subjects (for example: #ConfPR during the press conferences of the President of the French Republic).
Trending Topic
Trending topics, abbreviated “TT” on Twitter, are the trending topics. These are words, hashtags or phrases that have been tweeted multiple times over a period of time. It is possible to display trends by country, city or worldwide.
Cashtags
Since 2012, in a tweet, the symbol “$” placed in front of the code of a stock exchange currency makes it possible to consult in real-time the discussions on companies listed on the stock exchange. For example “$AAPL” for Apple or “$TWTR” for Twitter.
Audited accounts
Following a complaint filed by Tony La Russa, manager of an American baseball team, for identity theft, and more generally to prevent identity theft on Twitter, the accounts of personalities can benefit from a blue logo “Certified Account”.
In June 2012, Twitter introduces a reply hiding option (tweets starting with a mention to another user) for certified accounts. Thus, when you consult a certified profile, two tabs allow you to filter the “All / No Replies” tweets.
Since the end of July 2016, any Twitter user can request certification of their account by filling out a form that will then be validated by the microblogging site.
Following the acquisition of the company by Elon Musk, he announced a new way to acquire a certified account. It will be enough to pay 8 dollars per month and any personality or non-personality account will be able to receive the certification.
Direct messages on Twitter
Users can exchange private messages through “direct messages”, “MD” (“Direct Message” in English, abbreviated “DM”). However, DM can only be sent if you are subscribed to an account and this account is itself subscribed in return (reciprocal subscriptions).
On June 11, 2015, Twitter introduced the ability to send “direct messages” of more than 140 characters. This 140-character limit was removed on August 12, 2015.
Audio
In 2014, Twitter introduced a new service, Audio card, which allows you to share music, listen to and discover other users’ music directly on the microblogging site. One of the main partners of this new online listening system is the SoundCloud platform in which Twitter invested $ 70 million in June 2016.
On June 17, 2020, Twitter introduces audio tweets, i.e. the ability to include audio messages directly in its tweets.
In addition, on December 17, 2020, Twitter introduces Spaces, a new feature for creating live audio chat rooms.
On August 25, 2022, Twitter officially announced the arrival of podcasts on the platform.
Video
On January 24, 2013, Twitter launches Vine, an application that allows you to publish short six-second videos played on a loop on Twitter.
Since January 27, 2015, the Twitter application natively allows the publication of videos with a maximum duration of thirty seconds, up to ten minutes for certified accounts.
On March 26, 2015, Twitter launches the Periscope app allowing the user to stream live video to their followers from their smartphones. The application is permanently closed on March 31, 2021.
Fleets
The Fleets (“fleeting thoughts”), also called “stories“, since 2013 on Snapchat, and adopted by Twitter on November 2020, are a feature similar to what is found on Instagram and LinkedIn. It is a slideshow of ephemeral photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours.
When a Fleet is published by a user, it can contain text, videos, photos or GIFs. Unlike a tweet, however, other users cannot retweet, like, or post a public reply.
Shunned by Twitter users, the feature fails to find its place within the American social network and is permanently removed from the platform on August 3, 2021.
Tip Jar
The Tip Jar feature — launched in May 2021 for certain English-language accounts only — allows Twitter users to send money to accounts of their choice on an ad hoc basis, via intermediaries such as PayPal or Patreon and without commission from the social network.
Twitter tools
In October 2009, Google, following a partnership with Twitter, references the “tweets” published on the latter’s website by indexing them in real-time in the results of its search pages. This partnership was then suspended in July 2011 following the arrival of Google’s social product: Google Plus. The 20 May 2015, Twitter ended this suspension, allowing Google to reference its data feed, making it possible to redirect tweets in real-time in the United States. On August 21, 2015, Twitter and Google establish a partnership allowing posts on the former to appear in the search results of the latter. Made possible on smartphones since May 2015, this practice now extends to searches made from a desktop computer.
External uses
Since its earliest years, Twitter has offered an open and documented application programming interface (API). This makes it easy to build applications or services based on the Twitter platform. A large number of third-party software have been developed, not only to read and write on Twitter without using the site itself, but in some cases, they add functions of sorting, filtering, automatic replacement of URLs by those of a URL reduction service (almost essential since the limit of 140 characters includes any links), etc. Plus, there are some for all platforms, including smartphones.
On many blogs, a button allows a user, if they like a post, to immediately generate a Tweet in their name and giving a link to the post. It is this possibility of reuse that makes Twitter almost impossible to block. Even if a country wishing to limit freedom of expression blocks access to twitter.com, it cannot block all sites using an API that allows users to post a tweet from that site, unless it blocks all websites except a whitelist.
In August 2012, Twitter tightened the conditions for access to its API.
On August 16, 2018, the closure of two old APIs leads to the disappearance of key functionalities used by third-party applications, depriving them of real-time tweet streams, direct messages functionality or the display of certain types of notifications.
Smartphones
After launching different versions of its applications depending on the brand of the smartphone, Twitter has standardized all its mobile applications in December 2011. Under the code name Lets Fly, Twitter adopted a new simplified interface that made it easier to access your account and logins.
Personal data and security on Twitter
Twitter collects personal data about its users and shares it with third parties. Twitter considers this information an asset and reserves the right to sell it if the company changes hands. On the other hand, Twitter does not claim to have any rights to messages sent by users (see below). Twitter says you delete all your personal data after 30 days when you delete your Twitter account.
A security vulnerability was reported on 7 April 2007, by Nitesh Dhanjani and Rujith. Nitesh used FakeMyText to send a message on behalf of the victim by changing the header of the SMS to pretend to be another number. This identity theft can only be done if you know the phone number attached to the Twitter account. Following this announcement, Twitter introduced a PIN code that the user can enter to authenticate the SMS message.
The 5 January 2009, 33 Twitter accounts were hacked, including those of Barack Obama and Britney Spears. The hacker obtained the password of a Twitter administrator through a dictionary attack. He then used some of the technical support team’s tools such as editing or recalling emails associated with the Twitter account.
In July 2012, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo announced that the site would allow its users to upload all of their tweets.
On July 15, 2020, accounts belonging to Twitter employees with access to the company’s internal tools are compromised following a social engineering attack, the attackers then take possession of the accounts of many personalities such as Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West or XXXTentacion, but also companies such as Apple or Uber to publish tweets encouraging Internet users to send money to a bitcoin address, promising to double their bet. The attackers received the equivalent of more than 118,000. According to Rachel Tobac, president of the cybersecurity company SocialProof Security, this is probably the biggest attack Twitter has seen so far. “The most likely hypothesis is that the hackers came into possession of Twitter’s employee administration panel, which allows passwords to be changed and multi-factor authentication to be disabled,” she adds.
Pornography on Twitter
For Twitter, pornographic content is defined as “adult content”, allowed provided that the account is identified as “sensitive” and that the content is accessible after a click (not directly accessible). French associations have asked for a restriction.
Twitter’s terms of service exclude the company’s liability for pornographic content: “All Content is the sole responsibility of the person who created it. We do not necessarily monitor, control, and are not responsible for, all Content posted through the Services”.
Copyright
The copyright and intellectual property issue that applies to a message on Twitter is far from obvious. For example, if one copies a tweet of another, one cannot invoke the right of short quotation, because the “short” character of the quotation refers to the length of the work from which it is extracted. Retweets, on the other hand, can even be accused of plagiarism (if attribution to the original author disappears) or of violating the author’s moral rights when the post is modified.
However, a tweet cannot always be protected by copyright, because it only applies to “original creations” that have not yet fallen into the public domain. It is rare that such a short message can be considered a creation, but not impossible (for example, for advertising slogans).
Twitter itself encourages users to place their posts in the public domain, claiming no rights to them itself — earning praise from some of the defenders of free content (compared to Facebook).
Business model
In 2009, Twitter produced virtually no revenue due to the free service and no advertising (except on the Japanese version). This doesn’t seem to worry executives, as Twitter doesn’t need a complex infrastructure or to do its own advertising or any other such expense; Its expenditures were therefore very low, and the reserves obtained through fund-raising were probably sufficient to finance the service for several years.
Twitter has a contract with the company SocialMedia, which uses Twitter to broadcast tweets about products or can also use and quote tweets through “Twitter Pulse” in other advertisements on the Internet: “In other words, do not tweet anything that you would not want to see on a billboard in Times Square or broadcast during the Super Bowl” writes a journalist from the New York Times.
Twitter’s strategy was widely exposed when confidential documents were stolen by the hack and then sent to TechCrunch blog headquarters; After negotiation, Techcrunch published what relates to the company’s strategy, but not private or security information. It appears that Twitter intends to generate revenue by offering advanced services for accounts created by companies. But not having an urgent need to generate revenue, Twitter maintains a wait-and-see strategy, seeking first to gather a maximum of users (objective: 1 billion in 2013), to better value its services when they are launched.
In December 2015, Twitter’s announcement of a series of tests to offer its users monetized advertising to non-users of the network resulted in a 6.35% increase in its stock on the New York Stock Exchange.
Purchase proposals
Rumors of purchase have been circulating since 2008. In November 2008, Facebook reportedly offered to buy Twitter for $500 million in stock based on Facebook’s valuation of $15 billion. Then the names of Google and Apple were mentioned. Twitter executives deny any purchase. In June 2012, rumors are insistent on the possible purchase of Twitter by Google, considering that the IPO of Facebook, considered “failed”, compromises Twitter’s chances of going public.
Since the end of September 2016, new rumors are swelling about a possible purchase and negotiations already seriously started between Google, Salesforce.com, Microsoft and Twitter. The American news channel CNBC even speaks of a proposal to buy $ 30 billion while the valuation of Twitter on the stock market is only $ 15 billion. In October 2016, we learned that all these proposals have failed, the last candidate (Salesforce) having given up.
Financing of the company
The company completed an initial public offering in 2007 with Union Square Ventures (investors in Delicious among others), Charles River Ventures and several business angels, including Marc Andreessen (founder of Netscape Communications and Ning), Dick Costolo (founder of FeedBurner), Ron Conway (one of Google’s first bankers) and Naval Ravikant (co-founder of Epinions).
The initial two public offerings raised $5.4 million and $15 million. A third public offering, which raised $ 35 million according to the American webzine TechCrunch, was completed in 2009. Benchmark and Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital provided the funds.
In October 2021, Twitter sold its MoPub advertising network to AppLovin for $1.05 billion.
Financial valuation
As mentioned above, Twitter was valued at $500 million at the end of 2008 and, at the end of 2009, at $1 billion, based on the purchase proposals.
At the end of August 2009, Robert Scoble valued Twitter at 5 to 10 billion dollars, based on the potential of this service. In September 2009, a new public offering gave Twitter a value of $1 billion, based on Twitter’s expected value in relating the fundraising to the company’s acquired share.
On December 15, 2010, Twitter raised $200 million, raising Twitter’s valuation to $3.7 billion.
In July 2011, Twitter is on track to raise its valuation to $7 billion.
These financial valuations remain fictitious, because the company still does not have a clearly established business model, even if advertising seems the most logical solution. We are therefore based on an estimated potential based on the current number of visitors, tweets and the amounts received during fundraising.
In 2013, Twitter published a proposed initial public offering (IPO). This could be the largest IPO in the industry since Facebook in 2012. Twitter hopes to raise nearly a billion dollars (734 million euros) during its IPO, and reveals its financial data: its turnover almost tripled in 2012, to reach 316.9 million dollars (for a net loss of 79.4 million). In the first half of 2013, revenue reached $253.6 million ($69.3 million in net losses).
The day after a 20% drop in Facebook shares on the New York Stock Exchange, Twitter, in turn, lost 20.54% at the close of trading on 27 July 2018, evaporating $6 billion and $836 million from its market capitalization. According to the Washington Post, it would be the deletions and suspensions of accounts, mainly in the United States, which would be the first explanation for this evolution of the stock market valuation.
In March 2020, the press refers to the criticism made by some shareholders regarding Jack Dorsey because of the user growth figures and “the relatively sluggish stock market performance compared to its competitors on social networks”, presenting him as the target of a possible dismissal.
Use
According to the Semiocast study (July 30, 2012), Twitter had in 2012, 517 million registered accounts, 140 million users in the United States, 40 million in Brazil, 30 in Japan and 7.3 in France. The United States accounts for 27.4% of Twitter users (up from 28.1% in January). Semiocast announces 688 million accounts in January 31, 2013. Worldwide, nearly 44% of the 974 million accounts opened in April 2014 never tweeted.
United States
Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has published a study on Twitter use in the United States. 11% of adult Internet users would use a microblogging service, compared to 9% in November 2008 and 6% in May 2008. The median age was 31 years. City dwellers are over-represented (35% of Twitter users live in cities, while they represent only 29% of Internet users). 76% of users of this service use wireless Internet connections.
European Union
Twitter was used as part of UK-EU relations by Jean-Claude Juncker to congratulate the new UK Prime Minister, stating that “the result of the UK referendum has created a new situation that the UK and the EU must respond to soon. I look forward to working closely with you and learning your intentions on this matter”.
France
During the month of February 2009, Twitter is the fastest-growing site in the community sites category according to Nielsen. According to an FIFG study published in August 2009, 28% of French Internet users know Twitter (compared to 4% in 2008), but only 2% have an account.
In October 2010, an IFOP study indicates that 80% of French Internet users are aware of Twitter and 7% have an account. Cross-checking with a study by Médiamétrie indicating that the number of Internet users in France at that time was 37.54 million, we can estimate the number of Twitter users in France at 2.6 million.
In 2012, according to comScore, 16% of 15-24 year olds had a Twitter account. In early 2012, the site experienced a resurgence of interest in France. It serves as a tool for politicians participating in the presidential campaign. Television shows are actively commented, some such as On n’est pas couché, Des Paroles et Des Actes, The Voice or Mots Croisés even offer their link to the viewer. The May 6, 2012, Twitter recorded a peak in traffic in France with 1.4 million unique visitors.
In 2015, Damien Viel was appointed CEO of Twitter France.
In 2018, according to W3Techs, an online service provider, French would be the seventh language used on Twitter, with only 2% of tweets written in French, far from English with 34% and Japanese with 16%.
Russia
According to the findings, taken up by The Guardian, of one of nine case studies in a series published in 2017 as part of the Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda project, covering more than 1.3 million Twitter accounts located in Russia and posting messages related to politics in that country. From February 2014 to December 2015, 45% of accounts that have posted more than 10 tweets related to this topic are bots. To determine whether the accounts were managed by bots, the analysis used an algorithm that looked for the absence of attributes characteristic of human users such as a name, biography, profile picture, location and exchanges with other users, as well as the absence or absence of followers. It is estimated that 9-15% of all Twitter accounts are actually bots.
In October 2017, Twitter banned all advertising on the accounts of the Russian media RT and Sputnik, due to accusations made by the US intelligence services about Russian media interference in the conduct of the 2016 US elections.
Impersonations and imposters
In some cases, it may happen that certain individuals or companies impersonate one or more identities in order to promote a point of view. In particular, some theories support some Russian companies for having used this ploy to influence the US elections in 2016. In July 2020, several Twitter accounts with very high audiences were compromised by hackers who solicited cryptocurrency donations from followers of these accounts. In April 2013, the Twitter account of the Associated Press was hacked and the message “Two explosions at the White House, Obama injured” was published, causing an instant stock market crash (fall of 145 points of the Dow Jones in two minutes).
Media coverage and usage
In January 2009, the publication on Twitter by a user of a photo of a plane in the Hudson marks the beginning of a media revolution. It was not the traditional press that reported the event, but a simple citizen equipped with a smartphone. One of the founders of Twitter, Biz Stone, says in an article in Le Monde: “This moment changed everything, suddenly, the world began to pay attention to us, because we were the source of information – and it was not us, it was the user on the boat, which is even more incredible “.
In France, Twitter received significant media coverage in the first months of 2009 according to Slate.fr. This is reflected in the search for the term “Twitter”. Médiamétrie reports that the term was typed 65,000 times in March, 158% more than in February.
Twitter’s media growth can partly be explained by the democratization of Social Television, a process that makes it possible to make a program participatory or interactive through the parallel use of social networks. A new segment on which Twitter seduces although its emblematic competitor Facebook, which also offers its own services, remains the leader.
Unavailability
Twitter was widely criticized by its early users for the many periods during which the service stopped working. During these periods of downtime, Twitter displayed a whale drawing, originally titled Lifting Up a Dreamer, but renamed by users “Fail whale”.
Paradoxically, the extent of the outrage of Internet users when Twitter is unavailable is a testament to the success of the service.
In particular, Twitter was the victim of a denial-of-service attack in August 2009, presumably for political reasons.
Twitter’s strong growth has led to a dreaded event: Twitpocalypse, which would occur when tweet IDs are exhausted. Indeed, each tweet is identified by a unique number. For some external software using Twitter, this number was encoded in int32 or uint32 (on 32 bits, a bit being reserved or not for the sign), the numbers used were exhausted after 2147483647 tweets in the first case, 4294967295 in the second. The first Twitpocalypse took place in June 2009, the second in September 2009, in both cases without serious consequences. It should be noted to what extent the rapprochement between the two crises testifies to the tremendous progress of Twitter in 2009.
Since the end of August 2009, Twitter is strengthening its infrastructure to avoid downtime, planning to continue its strong growth.
Since August 31, 2010, Twitter’s APIS no longer use Basic Auth, forcing all applications in its ecosystem to use oAuth to connect to its servers. In the early days of Twitter, Basic Auth made it easy for developers to create apps, making it extremely easy to identify them. As a result of the switch to oAuth, an episode dubbed the oAuthpocalypse, thousands of first-generation Twitter apps disappeared.
On 21 October 2016, Twitter was made unavailable as a result of a DDoS attack of the Dyn DNS service.
The place of women in the company Twitter
Women are generally underrepresented in Silicon Valley; Along with Uber, Apple, and Google, Twitter is one of the companies with the most pronounced gender inequalities. Twitter’s staff is 70% male; The proportion rises to 90% for technical positions.
According to several analysts, these disparities are part of the context of the Bro culture typical of tech circles — a culture marked by connivance between men and the spirit of competition, and notorious for its misogyny. Academic and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa pointed out in the New York Times that Twitter’s board is made up exclusively of white men; he attributed this lack of diversity to “the elitist arrogance of the Silicon Valley mafia”. However, the legal director is Vijaya Gadde. Following these criticisms, Twitter welcomed a woman, Marjorie Scardino, to its board of directors, however, according to The Guardian, while this appointment is a sign of goodwill, the company still has “a very long way to go”.
The frequency of trolling and harassment on Twitter may be related to how this network was designed, in a workplace that tends to view these types of behaviors as unproblematic.
Visual identity
The Twitter mascot is a stylized bird, named Larry after American basketball player Larry Bird, inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1998. On June 6, 2012, Twitter introduces a new bird.
Number of people
| Evolution of the workforce by year | |
|---|---|
| Year | Number of staff |
| Q1 2018 | 3,400 |
| Q2 2018 | 3,500 |
| Q3 2018 | 3,800 |
| Q4 2018 | 3,900 |
| Q1 2019 | 4,100 |
| Q2 2019 | 4,300 |
| Q3 2019 | 4,600 |
| Q4 2019 | 4,800 |
| Q1 2020 | 5,100 |
| Q2 2020 | 5,200 |
| Q3 2020 | 5,400 |
| Q4 2020 | 5,500 |
| Q1 2021 | 6,100 |
| Q2 2021 | 6,600 |
Twitter shareholders
| List of major shareholders on April 25, 2022 | |
|---|---|
| Name | % |
| The Vanguard Group | 10.7 |
| Elon Musk | 9,5 |
| Morgan Stanley | 8.7 |
| BlackRock | 6.8 |
| Jack Dorsey | 2.3 |
Reviews
Stromae criticizes the excessive use of Twitter in his song Carmen; the clip of the song, directed by Sylvain Chomet, has for the protagonist in particular “a terrible blue bird with large teeth, which is reminiscent of the logo of the famous social network”.
Political hijackings
The case of Russian uses to bias the US election campaign has been widely commented. China has multiplied fake Twitter accounts to destabilize the pro-democracy opposition in Hong Kong. Many troll factories rely on purposely created Twitter accounts.
In March 2021, after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was authorized by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Twitter disabled about 3,500 fake accounts that were part of a campaign to influence the American public. Many accounts commented directly on tweets from US media outlets such as The Post, CNN, CBS News and The Los Angeles Times. Twitter could not identify the source of the influencer campaign.
In August 2022, the Ahmad Abouammo case was tried. Abouammo is accused of exploiting Twitter’s facilities to access the personal data of users such as the anonymous Mujtahidd, an opponent of the Saudi government whose Twitter account Mr. Binasaker wanted to stop and in return, he allegedly accepted a bribe in exchange for the personal data of Twitter users. On August 9, 2022, after a two-week trial in federal court in San Francisco, Abouammo was convicted of money laundering, fabricating files and being an agent for Saudi Arabia and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. He was arrested in Seattle in November 2019 along with another former Twitter employee, Ali Alzabarah, approached by Riyadh to share users’ personal information.
Loss of time
Twitter is accused by some studies of harming productivity at work. When a cat named Sockington became in May 2009a star of the Twittersphere, the productive aspect of the Twitter tool took a hit.
The founders of Twitter now admit that they themselves did not imagine that their service would be so successful. In 2009, the American satirical site The Onion, referring to the use of Twitter by the Iranian insurgents of the Green Insurrection, made one of the founders say that he himself was shocked, because Twitter had not been designed to be useful. Ironically aside, the Iranian crisis had indeed proved the usefulness of Twitter, surprising all those who saw it as a waste of time, and had its existence relayed by the mainstream media. Some commentators, such as Ethan Zuckerman and Shadi Sadr believe that Twitter’s impact in terms of empowering Iranian protesters has been exaggerated by the Western media (knowing that moreover, the movement has failed).
Contrary to the idea of wasting time, Twitter is also used by teachers in their classrooms, from primary school to university. Usage guidelines are created and the use of Twitter also allows social media learning in the classroom. Using the current network could be a factor in student success, and is associated with greater involvement in school work.
Media use
Twitter has shown that it is a way to circulate information at a tremendous speed. For technical reasons, Twitter’s updates are much faster than those of RSS feeds or traditional search engines, which even makes supporters predict that Twitter will “kill” RSS.
This power is a double-edged sword, as proponents and detractors point out. For example, Twitter users were able to learn about Michael Jackson’s death by exchanging the link to the first news site to mention it, long before the others picked up the information. The same is true for the earthquake of January 12, 2010, in Haiti where Haitians used Twitter to inform other users of the disaster and ask for help.
But Twitter can also spread false rumors at tremendous speed; the example was the announcement of the cancellation of Proposition 8, i.e. the reinstatement of same-sex marriage in California, an announcement that actually came from a misinterpretation of a message, which in reality predated Proposition 8. Like Facebook, Twitter has also faced criticism over its policy of removing posts. Thus in 2009, a tweet by the English presenter Jonathan Ross containing his email address remained visible for some time via the Twitter search module although it was deleted by its author.
The use of Twitter by political opponents in Iran in 2009 was highly noticed. Having realized this use, Twitter executives had even decided — after discussion with the US government, but without actually receiving an order, according to Twitter — to delay a maintenance operation suspending the service for a few hours during rest hours in Iran and not in the United States — where the majority of its users are. Mark Pfeifle, a former adviser to George W. Bush had publicly stated that for this, Twitter deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
Censorship filter and political bias on Twitter
In September 2011, Twitter was suspected of censoring the Occupy Wall Street movement.
At the end of 2011, the US government took a dim view of jihadist movements using Twitter to disseminate their news. In response to government pressure, Twitter launched a censorship filter by country, in order to adapt their content according to the laws of each country. For jihadism specialist Romain Caillet, impunity remained almost total until 2014. Twitter announced that it had deleted 235,000 accounts in the first half of 2016 and 377,000 in the second. This moderation makes the network less used in favor of Telegram in particular.
In 2013 and early 2014, the French government, in the person of its spokesperson Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, Minister of Women’s Rights, asked Twitter to help prosecute the authors of certain posts, claiming that hateful tweets are illegal, as well as the implementation of alerts and security measures. The British daily The Guardian is astonished by such arguments, which, according to it, are the same as those used “by censors and tyrants of all ages and cultures”. Between January and July 2014, the French government launched 108 requests to delete tweets, ranking France second just below Turkey, first in the censorship ranking.
In February 2016, Twitter is suspected of filtering messages conveying conservative opinions, performing a “shadow ban”. These suspicions are reinforced by a Twitter employee and a publisher in contact with the company, who claim that Twitter maintains a whitelist and a blacklist of user accounts: whitelisted accounts would be prioritized in search results, while messages from blacklisted accounts would be hidden from both search results and the timeline of users following those accounts. Devin Nunes, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California, filed a lawsuit seeking $250 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages against Twitter and a handful of its users, accusing the social networking site of secretly hiding conservative posts. systematically censor opposing views and “ignore” lawful complaints of repeated abusive behavior altogether.
In October 2020, after the New York Post account was blocked by Twitter after the newspaper published articles about Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and Twitter gave the reason that it was limiting the spread of the article because of questions about “the origins of the materials” included in the article. Jack Dorsey is severely criticized in the Senate by Republican Senator Ted Cruz for his company’s decision to prevent users from tweeting this New York Post report that allegedly contains evidence of unethical and possibly illegal behavior by Hunter Biden.
Cruz suggested that Twitter would have blocked tweets linking to New York Post reports because of anti-conservative political bias. Jack Dorsey denied these accusations and was supported in this by elected Democrats. In April 2022, the blocking of the sharing of the New York Post is mentioned by the new main shareholder Elon Musk who considers that “suspending the Twitter account of a major press organization, for publishing a truthful article, was, obviously, incredibly inappropriate”.
The social network acknowledges in a study published at the end of 2021 that its algorithmic ranking (which aims to display at the top of users’ home feed messages from accounts to which they are not subscribed) favors right-wing parties and media over those on the left. In almost all countries studied (Canada, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States), messages published by right-wing parties and media are amplified more by the algorithm than those of left-wing parties and media. Only Germany does not know this bias. In France, the party Les Républicains is the one that has been most favored by the social network over the year 2020, while La France Insoumise is the one that has been the most disadvantaged.
Use by personalities
Some professionals, mostly related to the media industry, have started to use this service professionally. This is the case of some news newspapers, such as CNN or BBC that use a robot to send news flashes on Twitter. John Edwards and Barack Obama also used Twitter as a media tool during the campaign for the 2008 US presidential election. In November 2009, while his account has 2.6 million followers, Obama confessed that he had not written any messages himself. This does not prevent him from calling on countries such as China not to restrict access to Twitter.
Many celebrities use Twitter to send messages to their fans via this network; This allows them to send a message directly, without it being formatted by the media in a way they don’t want. Ashton Kutcher is the very first person to have surpassed one million followers on Twitter. Caitlyn Jenner is the personality who reached the million followers the fastest, four hours and three minutes after her registration.
Oprah Winfrey’s inscription was very noticed. It seems to have had a significant accelerating effect on registrations, and it has allowed Twitter in the United States to no longer be a tool reserved for technology fans. Katy Perry is the person who has, to date, the most followers on Twitter. She is ahead of Justin Bieber and Barack Obama.
In June 2012, Valérie Trierweiler, the companion of François Hollande, former president of the French Republic, declares on Twitter that she supports the socialist dissident Olivier Falorni in view of the general elections. She then openly opposed the candidacy of the president’s ex-companion, Ségolène Royal, a candidate in the constituency of La Rochelle. It thus triggered a controversy in France. Some then evoke a “Dallas” at the Élysée.
Chain exclusions in early January 2021
Following a message from Donald Trump, during the 2020 US presidential elections, in which he accuses the Democrats of stealing the elections, while the final results have not yet fallen, Twitter decided to activate a device preventing presidential candidates from sowing doubt about the results. However, like Facebook and YouTube, the microblogging social network is struggling to stem the continuous flow of fake news, especially those produced by the US president. It is overwhelmed not only by the volume of information disseminated in English, but also by many messages in other languages, those propagated by the Spanish-speaking community in particular.
In January 2021, two days after the Capitol events, Twitter decided to permanently ban the US president because of the new risks of incitement to violence he presents, “this after careful consideration of his recent tweets, and the context around them — especially in view of the way they are understood and interpreted, on the platform and elsewhere”. This exclusion of Donald Trump leads to an anthology of reactions, some favorable, others doubtful about the power of modern platforms. Thus, in France, Cédric O, Secretary of State for Digital Affairs, wondered: “The regulation of public debate by the main social networks with regard to their GTCU (general conditions of use) alone, while they have become real public spaces and bring together billions of citizens, seems at the very least a little short from a democratic point of view”.
The decision of Twitter and other social networks to close the account of a head of state is indeed a world first, which also raises questions elsewhere in the world. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador questions “freedom and the right to information” and “the role of legally and legitimately constituted authorities”, while whistleblower Edward Snowden reports a “turning point in the battle for control of information”. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also considers the closure of the outgoing president’s accounts by several social networks, including Twitter, “problematic”.
Several pro-Trump personalities were banned by Twitter in the days following the events of January 6, 2021: Lin Wood (one of his lawyers), Jake Angeli, Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, Gary Coby, as well as Trump’s campaign account “Team Trump”.
If some conservatives consider for a time to take refuge on Parler, obviously much more conciliatory, this competitor of Twitter is then banned from Apple’s application download platform shortly after having been banned from that of Android.
A number of figures in the conservative camp cry censorship, including President Trump’s son: “Free speech is dying and is controlled by all-powerful leftists”.
On January 12, Twitter announces the suspension of 70,000 accounts that, according to Twitter, widely disseminate contentious content associated with the QAnon movement.
Question of “citizen journalism”
The use of Twitter by non-professionals to communicate information is quite controversial. For its supporters, it allows to be informed faster and with details that only direct witnesses can provide. But the example of the Fort Hood shooting showed that a witness at the scene could perfectly well launch information with significant errors.
The other criticism of citizen journalism is that of the behaviors it provokes. Typically, a professional journalist is unlikely to be near a seriously injured person without a third party already coming to the aid of the journalist.
These arguments are the subject of debate; the argument in favor of Twitter is that the abundance of information from different, uncensored sources is a good thing — even if you have to sort out the real from the fake.
Digital support for a form of harassment
By its nature, Twitter makes it possible to spread cyberhate, when the moderation mechanism is not sufficient. Around 2014, the problem became visible in the media when many personalities, more or less famous, were victims of hate tweets or death threats, which, in some cases, led to the suicide of the person concerned or his decision to close his account and leave the social network.
For its part, Amnesty International has announced its desire to “put an end to the cyber-hostile environment for women”. The NGO, assisted by a company specializing in artificial intelligence, analyzed millions of tweets addressed to several women journalists and activists. 7.1% of them, or 1.1 million tweets, would be problematic.
Since 2010, Saudi Arabia has set up a digital cell to harass dissidents. The Saudi authorities seek to discredit dissidents on social networks and turn public opinion against them.
In 2014, Twitter was criticized for its weak moderation regarding inappropriate, violent or hateful content. This led him to establish a policy of moderation, particularly in relation to false political messages. n an interview with Le Monde, Collin Crowell, Twitter’s director of public affairs, said: “We announced in early 2017 that safety and abusive behavior would be our top priority… Now we’re taking action on ten times more abusive behavior on Twitter than we were a year ago.”
In 2016, Twitter employees and former employees interviewed by Buzzfeed consider that Twitter has never really sought to fight against cyber violence, which was not part of their priorities, acting only very occasionally, most often when it is celebrities who are affected or when there is a strong media coverage. The tweet report button only appeared in 2013 following a harassment campaign against Caroline Criado-Perez, 6 years after the creation of the network. The lack of minority employees who are therefore more likely to experience (and therefore understand) harassment is also pointed out.
In March 2018, Twitter announces that improving the moderation of hate exchanges is a priority. The social network claims to limit the visibility of messages from users who do not respect the rules or are blocked by many people with whom they interact. Despite this, in 2018 we see that some users say they no longer like Twitter because of the level of violence and the lack of moderation on the part of the platform.
In April 2019, the press accuses Twitter of having delayed in removing death threats against Ilhan Omar, elected to the US Congress. The incident highlights persistent flaws in the platform’s moderation process. Commentators consider that the social network is slow to clearly define the type of content that should be allowed on its service.
On April 30th, 2019, the French Secretary of State for Gender Equality Marlène Schiappa presents an initial assessment of the entry into force of the offense of sexist contempt. Referring to the criminalization of “cyberbullying in packs”, she pointed to the lack of cooperation of Twitter, which “does not provide the IP addresses (of the harassers), and sometimes does not remove tweets that have been incriminated and convicted in court”. This lack of cooperation led to several lawsuits for the platform.
In 2020, believing that the company was “old and persistently” failing to comply with its moderation obligations, six associations, including SOS Homophobie, filed a lawsuit against Twitter to force the platform to provide details of its means of combating online hate. They won their case on July 6 of the following year, the French justice having condemned Twitter to, within two months, provide “any administrative, contractual, technical or commercial document relating to the material and human resources implemented within the framework of the Twitter service to fight against the dissemination of offenses of apology for crimes against humanity, incitement to racial hatred, hatred against persons on the basis of their sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, incitement to violence, including incitement to sexual and gender-based violence, as well as outrages upon human dignity”, as well as details of the persons involved in handling reports.
The company had appealed, denying the malfunctions of which it was accused, an appeal that will be rejected on January 20, 2022. Dominique Sopo, president of SOS-Racisme, one of the associations behind the complaint, believes that “Twitter has been squinting for years to avoid having to disclose the resources devoted to online moderation. The level of hate that is deployed too frequently on this platform is not acceptable”, he said. “The company must stop taking refuge in opacity and delaying tactics to avoid having to assume the counterparties to [its activity]”.
In January 2021, several feminist accounts denounce two-tier moderation, leaving abusive and threatening content against them unpunished, but regularly banning their accounts on the basis of what they assume to be waves of defamatory reports.
Other uses
Pedagogical or literary dissemination tool
Since 2009, teachers have been using Twitter for pedagogical purposes in primary, middle school, high school and higher education. Its format lends itself to the distribution of writers’ journals. Among the most widely read royalty-free authors’ newspapers on Twitter is Samuel Pepys (20,000 subscribers mid-day on November 2011) and Samuel Johnson (38,000 subscribers on the same date), while downloads of the same newspapers on Gutenberg do not exceed a thousand.
In the twenty-first century, the development of its information skills is essential. However, the use of Twitter leads a learner to analyze, exploit and evaluate a large amount of information. The advantage is that the learner can interact with this information and his teacher can easily guide him face-to-face or remotely.
In addition, Twitter offers a unique power of communication. By being broadcast online instantly, the apprentice writer is strongly aware of the importance of expressing himself well. He will quickly discover the power that comes with a good command of the language. In addition, the obligation to express tweets in 140 characters forces the learner to develop his ability to synthesize.
In Quebec, in 2012, students of all levels in the province were invited to the first Twitter festival. A golden opportunity to make young Quebec learners aware of the importance of mastering the language.
Since 2013, French-speaking classes have been using Twitter to learn spelling and grammar: they exchange short dictations and tools to correct them as part of the Twictée system, developed by two French teachers.
In 2013, the microblogging site BabyTwit was proposed by the association AbulÉdu-fr to primary schools to respond to privacy and confidentiality issues of personal data. Following a democratic exercise, this site will change its name to Edutwit in 2017.
Twitter as an object of study or support for studies
Twitter’s database is a statistical and semantic substrate from which scientists or commercial or communication companies can derive information.
Twitter, its hashtags and smileys and its users thus become subjects of study and research, thus:
- as with large evolving corpora, made up of texts digitized by or on Facebook, blogs, articles and talk pages of Wikipedia or via text messages, Twitter was quickly used to try to study rumors and variations in public opinion (including through the sociology of controversies and conflicts), not without risks of bias related to the great responsiveness of the medium and partial representativeness of Twitter;
- to better understand Twitter and its uses, linguists also study the linguistic corpus that emerges, in particular from the constraint of 140 characters;
- it has been suggested that Twitter be used to track the effects of a disaster or to detect the onset of an influenza epidemic.
In 2014, an international American-French team used Network Science to, from 3 large databases (translated books, Wikipedia and Twitter), create and publish maps to visualize how information and ideas circulate today in the world according to the language of the original message, the average GDP of the countries where this language is spoken, the language of the first translations and those that will convey the information or according to the medium (book, Wikipedia, Twitter).
To draw this “map” these researchers studied on the one hand the available data on literary translation (based on 2.2 million translations of books published in more than 1,000 languages) and on the other hand the two major global networks of exchange through language.
In this context, the authors were able to evaluate the role of bilingual tweets from the study of 550 million tweets, from 17 million users in 73 languages, selected for the study, which was made possible by the fact that the database is open and that it allows to associate a tweet with a language and the person tweeting with one or more communities. Language. However, they are aware that there are interpretation biases to avoid, noting for example, that while soon 7% of the world’s population will have a Twitter account, the demographics of this population do not reflect those of the real ones; thus, Twitter users in the United States are significantly younger than the average population and have more liberal views than the general population of the country.
Limiting access to older publications
Twitter prioritizes recent posts. The basic search engine, displays popular or recent results. On the other hand, the advanced search engine allows access to old publications by selecting date ranges. Twitter has also integrated since the month of March 2013, the ability to download an archive containing all publications in a user account.
Twitter competitors
Various comparable services also exist.
- Google Plus, closed in April 2019, allowed users to share short messages publicly or privately, as well as import information from Picasa, Flickr, and Twitter.
- pump.io, distinguished by the fact that it is free microblogging software and allows to create a decentralized microblogging network (formerly microblogging service Identi.ca based on status.net software);
- Myspace, one of the first social networks.
If from the point of view of functions, Facebook seems very different from Twitter, from the point of view of audience measurement, Facebook is the only one that can be considered a serious competitor of Twitter. Conversely, even though Twitter has far fewer users than Facebook, Facebook’s evolution shows that it considers Twitter a serious threat.
Some services that are partly in competition with Twitter allow Twitter messages to be displayed on their pages (this was the case with Google Buzz), or conversely to send a message on Twitter from this service (this is the case of pump.io). Such a service may therefore simultaneously be a competitor of Twitter and a service using Twitter.
Mastodon is a free and decentralized competitor to Twitter that relies on independent and interconnected bodies. Launched in October 2016, Mastodon began to be known in April 2017, a month in which the number of subscribers increased from 30,000 to more than 500,000 in the space of three weeks. Thereafter, growth continued at a more steady pace, reaching 700,000 users across 1,481 instances on June 11. The milestone of one million users was passed on December 1, 2017.
Criticism of Twitter’s lack of neutrality and moderation was amplified during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Users have turned to other conservative alternatives such as Parler or Gab, despite the technical difficulties encountered on these platforms facing an influx of activity.
References (sources)
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