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Introduc ing Twi t ter
25
The developers of Twitter spent a lot of money testing the
functionality
of the website. Having an unlimited text message plan was almost unheard
of at the time, so they were forced to pay for each individual text mes-
sage that was sent or received during testing. They racked up thousands
of dollars in SMS charges to their phones during this time. Fortunately, this
investment
would eventually prove that it was all worth it.
Everything began to change starting in July 2006 when Twitter was
released publicly. It took off very slowly at first, but it showed a lot
of promise. Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams created a new
company, which they named Obvious Corporation. They also
acquired
Odeo and every
asset
Odeo owned. One year later, Twitter branched
off as its own company.
GAINING USERS
Jack and his team were finding it hard to get people to use Twitter,
and the reasons were obvious. Evan Williams, one of Jack’s partners,
explained why in a 2013 interview: “With Twitter, it wasn’t clear what
Make Connections: Short Messages
Twitter has restricted users to 140 character messages since it first
began. Jack always envisioned that Twitter should be restricted
to short messages, but the real reason he limited Twitter posts to
exactly 140 characters is so that they could be sent and delivered
using just one text message. At the time, text messages were limited
to anywhere between 140 and 160 characters each. Even though SMS messag-
ing has changed since Twitter first began, Twitter’s restriction has not. All tweets
are still only allowed to be 140 characters or less in length.