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Twitter Turns Five


Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative, in New York (File Photo)
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative, in New York (File Photo)

It has been five years since Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent out the first message of the social medium, "just setting up my twttr."

Since then, the micro-blogging site has grown to more than 140 million text messages of 140 characters or less every day.

Users now fire off messages at a rate of about a billion every eight days. In comparison, it took slightly more than three years and two months for the first billion tweets to be sent at the service.

It registers nearly half a million new accounts daily.

Twitter messages, called Tweets, have been sent by astronauts like T.J. Creamer; politicians like President Barack Obama; earthquake and tsunami survivors in Japan; and protesters in Egypt.

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