On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey tweeted the first ever tweet on Twitter.

The sheer fact that you can understand that sentence shows you how far Twitter has gone since then. It has become the de facto short message system of the internet and the favorite social networking service of celebrities all around the world.

And, with over 500 million users, it is the largest one-to-many open communication platform on the web.

However, the service's beginnings were modest. The service started out as an off-hand project from the creators of podcasting company Odeo, and though it immediately showed potential, it was plagued by frequent downtime in its first couple of years.





Stability problems seem to be a thing of the past now, and Twitter handles and hashtags have become a part of popular culture - they are regularly seen on TV and movie trailers. Ask a celebrity how you can reach them, and the most likely answer will be their Twitter nickname.

When it comes to business plans, in the last 12 months Twitter has been somewhat eclipsed with Facebook's IPO. The questions about Twitter still remain the same as on its last birthday: Will it go public, will it be acquired by a giant such as Google, Apple or Microsoft, or will it simply keep growing?

We'll see. In the meantime, happy birthday, Twitter!