The Twitter bluebird flew into the Bristol NUJ website meeting on 16 March, perched on our laptops, and tweeted.
We’d first heard about this little avian a full three years ago, at – of all things – a Bristol NUJ/Arnolfini Benn Lecture, when someone in the audience pointed out it was a really fast way to get hold of breaking news first-hand.
Since then Twitter has arguably driven the deposition of several tyrants, powered countless demonstrations, and been an organising tool for groups from the Wisconsin trade unionists to UKUncut.
The company, which is based in the US, has also resisted pressure from the US authorities to reveal the details of its users who support Wikileaks (#wikileaks, @wikileaks).
In its migratory routes across time and space, the small cyber-bird has created a whole new dialect: hashtag, DM, Tweeps and more, driven by the challenge of getting your message into just 140 characters.
So for news, views, updates and links, if you’re a Bristol NUJ member, or even if you’re not but just interested in what we’re up to, follow us now on @bristolnuj.
Note though – as with other social networking sites, Twitter is fundamentally public.
Thanks to the amazing Chris Brown of www.bristol247.com for getting all this started for us.
3 responses to “Bristol NUJ – now on Twitter”
Here are some figures:
In March 2006, a small team of people started working on a prototype of the service that we now know as Twitter. On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent the first Tweet.
Today, on every measure of growth and engagement, Twitter is growing at a record pace. Here are some numbers:
#tweets
3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.
1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).
6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.
#accounts
572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.
#employees
8. 29. 130. 350. 400. Number of Twitter employees in Jan 2008, Jan 2009, Jan 2010, Jan 2011 and today.
On Twitter’s fifth birthday 21 March 2011, Charles Arthur, Guardian Tech editor, says: “Twitter is only getting bigger and more pervasive – and more important to journalism in both directions.” http://bit.ly/eQCHZS
Thanks for introduicng a little rationality into this debate.