10 years of Twitter and some interesting facts that will blow your mind

Did you know that one of the early names considered for the platform was “Friendstalker”? We’re not so sure how successful the network would have been with that name or even if it would reach its 10^th birthday; but, having done so and with over 305 million monthly users, we’re sharing some of the most impressive and fascinating facts about the platform to date.

Most retweeted tweet

Can you guess? That’s right, Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscar selfie, with her Hollywood A-lister friends, received over 3.3 million retweets on Twitter. Selfie-taking (for better or worse!) has now become a way of life for us all, to the extent that the term itself has now been accepted into our dictionaries. It somehow seems fitting then that the modern selfie phenomenon would lead to Twitter’s most significant sharing moment to date.

Most followed person

Somewhat surprisingly you might think, given the competition, American pop-star Katy Perry is Twitter’s most-followed person, boasting nearly 85 million users, which is more than the population of Spain. Katy is closely followed by pop prince Justin Bieber, with 78 million followers and pop princess, Taylor Swift, with 74 million.

Most tweeted emoji

To date, the most tweeted emoji with 14.5 billion impressions is the ‘tears of joy’ emoji. Personally, we like the aubergine!

Most tweeted hashtag

Hashtags have been named ‘the child of Twitter’. Their development enabled users to employ the hashtags to start a conversation, participate in trends and make new connections. The most popular hashtag to date is #FF – Follow Friday. For those of you not already #FF savvy, this is a popular phenomenon where users encourage their followers to follow new accounts; either because they’re new to the network or have done something worthy of recognition.

Total number of tweets

Since Twitter’s launch 10 years ago, the network has managed to generate 500 million tweets per day across the world. On average, 6,000 tweets are tweeted every second, which corresponds to over 350,000 tweets per minute.

Most geo-tagged location

Surprisingly, the most geo-tagged location is south-east Brazilian city Sao Paulo, having received over 638 million tags. Sao Paulo is classed as one of the world’s most popular cities with well over 11 million inhabitants.

With Twitter reaching its 10^th birthday and generating 6,000 tweets per second, us marketers are intrigued to know what the numbers will look like on its 20^th birthday? Will it even get there? With the rapid rise of rivals Instagram and Snapchat eating into Twitter’s audience and user base, some marketers are heralding its imminent demise. Will it become the next MySpace or have Twitter got something up their sleeve to secure its position in the social media platform hierarchy for another decade? Only time will tell…

If you’ve found any more fascinating facts about Twitter which you think is worthy of being added to our list, get in touch!