How to use Twitter ?

With a lack of growth and investors souring, the company pivoted and decided to conduct a hackathon one day. This brain-storming competition led to the birth of Twitter.

The platform could have also been dubbed “Twitch,” “Twitcher” and “Jitter.” Twitter was eventually settled on after one of the co-founders read the word's definition aloud from a dictionary: “The light chirping sound made by certain birds; agitation or excitement; flutter.” And -- chirp, chirp -- history was made.

Choose your lists: Twitter lists allow you to listen to relevant conversations, identify influencers and filter out the noise so you can focus on the people and topics you care about.

2. This was Twitter’s first ever homepage. The site opened to the public on July 15, 2006.

Twitter’s iconic bird logo is named after a sports legend.

Two ears and one mouth rule: Listen (and research first) before you speak. It is much better to listen about twice as much as you tweet if you want a strong following that is engaged and targeted to your purpose and passion.

3. Twitter was created on a playground. Founding team member Dom Sagolla says the group went on the top of a slide at a playground in South Park, a small neighborhood in San Francisco, and Jack Dorsey discussed an “idea so simple that you don’t even think about it—you just write.”

Hashtags date back to 1988, when people communicated via chat rooms called Internet Relay Chats (IRCs). The first hashtags made their way to Twitter in 2007, when Chris Messina, formerly of Google and now a lead developer at Uber, proposed using them as a way to lump together related tweets. The simple searchable tags instantly caught on.

This moment of inspiration has turned into a multibillion-dollar company.

Listen with Topsy. Topsy.com is a Twitter search engine that let’s you see if anyone listens or cares. Let’s you see the latest Twitter results in the past hour, day, week, 20 days, month or all time -- with a cool trending graph.

The chart-topping pop songstress has almost 85 million followers. That’s more followers than people who live in Egypt. Fellow pop sensation Justin Bieber comes in second (77 million followers) and Taylor Swift third (73 million). The most followed brand on Twitter is not Twitter. It’s YouTube (61 million followers).

4. When Twitter began, everyone’s first tweet was automated. It published, “Just setting up my twttr.”

Use Tweetdeck or HootSuite to listen to the conversation about you, your company, or your industry. Serious listeners step up to Radian6, what is now the saleforce marketing cloud.

Co-founder Dorsey sent the first tweet—beating Biz Stone by a minute—on March 21, 2006, at 4:50 p.m. PT. It now has more than 50,000 retweets.

The idea for Twitter was hatched on a slide at a playground.

Create and tweet great original content that fits your purpose. Create content that is informative and entertaining. Write about industry news, especially if you’re in a position to break the news. Stay on top of trends and provide commentary that adds context.

5. The user with the most followers is Katy Perry; the singer has nearly 67 million followers.

6. HootSuite, a social media management company, follows 1.6 million accounts, the second most of any user. @ArabicBest is in the lead; the profile shows it follows 2.4 million accounts.

Twitter co-founder Noah Glass, who originally came up with the company's name, was famously fired from the startup. The San Francisco-based developer’s heart-breaking story of being "forgotten" and betrayed by his fellow founding team made headlines in 2011. Today, his Twitter bio simply reads: “I started this.”

7. Who has tweeted the most?

Despite the social network’s massive global user base -- notably down for the first time last quarter amidst an internal shakeup -- the company is not profitable. With its accumulated revenue losses approaching $2.1 billion, Twitter stocks are now trading at about a third less than the $26-per-share price put forth with the company’s November 2013 IPO. So much for being the next Facebook.

That honor belongs to @Yougakduan_00, a girl from Japan, who posted a mind-boggling 36,402,262 tweets before Twitter suspended her account, likely because of the excessive tweeting.

The word "twitterpated" doesn’t just mean to be infatuated. The Twitter-related version sounds like constipation for a reason. As Dorsey explains, it's “when you’re overwhelmed with information or you’re just so excited that you forget to tweet or forget to share.” We know the feeling.

8. The most followed brand is YouTube with 49 million followers.

9. The official name of Twitter’s bird is Larry. Yes, his name is Larry Bird.