History of Twitter and More

Twitter was founded in March 2006 by Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone. In 2006 Williams and Biz Stone co-founded Obvious Corp along with other former Odeo employees. Twitter was created as a separate company in April 2007 by Obvious Corp. Jack Dorsey was chief executive officer of Twitter until October 2008 when Williams became CEO and Dorsey shifted to the position of chairman of the board.

Since its creation in 2006, Twitter has become very popular worldwide. Twitter is the fastest growing free micro-blogging software that allows you to keep in touch with people through quick, frequent answers to one question: What are you doing? That one little question has launched a media revolution.

"Tweet" is the term for the 140 maximum character messages posted on Twitter. For tweeting to be effective, it must be done systematically, with posts being made daily. For the average business owner or marketing executive, this can be very impractical because of the time required. Fortunately, technology provides ways to get things done quicker.

One such technology is a tool called BigTweet. BigTweet is a plugin for your Web browser that lets you post a tweet to Twitter by just clicking the BigTweet button, located on your browser's link menu. Highlighting a passage on a web page and clicking the button creates a tweet from the text you highlighted, in addition to the title of the page and a short URL. If you do not highlight any words on the page, then the text of the tweet will just contain the page title and short URL.

Another more powerful technique is to use Tweet Later. Tweet Later is a Twitter management application that lets you accomplish a few critical Twitter tasks automatically. For one, it lets you pre-program "spinnable" tweets in advance. By spinnable, I mean that the tweets can contain alternate words or passages that that software chooses from at random. It's a dynamic technology that allows one tweet to become the basis for numerous unique tweets. Tweet Later will also automatically follow back anyone who follows you and send a personal message to all new followers.

Business people are just now beginning to realize the power of Twitter as an online promotional tool. It seems strange and awkward at first, and it takes some time to get good at it. So don't spin your wheels trying to figure it out. Use tools like BigTweet and Tweet Later to get more done in less time.

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History of Facebook

Facebook is a popular social network that has grown to rank with MySpace has. But what is it about Facebook that has special appeal and makes it even more popular than MySpace? What makes Facebook Facebook? And what made it a mega hit?

It all got started back in 2003, as Facemash. Mark Zuckerberg created it, along with help of his friends and roommates Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz. Zuckerberg was in his sophomore year at Harvard when opened it up, as a way to get his mind off his crush.

Facemash placed photos of undergraduate two side by side, and asking the viewers which one is “hotter”. The site was originally only for Harvard, but quickly grew to other colleges, then high schools and finally for anyone over age 13.

After it was initially started, it was forwarded to Harvard’s school admins and it was quickly shut down. Zuckerberg was charged and faced expulsion for breaching privacy.

Later on, Harvard dropped their charges against Zuckerberg. After the charges were dropped, the following semester he recreated Facemash, and opened The Facebook in February 2004.

In 2005, he dropped “the” from the name and URL. Also in September 2005, he launched the High School version of Facebook. When he first started the high school version, each high school had to be invited before being allowed to join the network. Shortly after launching the high school version he started allow companies to have their own networks on Facebook as well.

Now a group of operators, a year after they launched their high school version, they opened it up to the public for everybody over the age of 13.

Syria and Iran have blocked Facebook from being accessed in their countries. Some companies have forbidden it from their offices. It has also been said that Zuckerberg had stolen the code and intellectual property from former classmates of his.

They have been sued more than once and have been the subject of criticism.

In Aug 2007, the code that normally creates the pages for Facebook showed instead of the content, leaving many to wonder if their data on Facebook is even safe.

In February 2009, Facebook changed their privacy policy, causing an up roar along the way. They made it so that their users once upload data onto their servers, that they own all the rights. Even after the user deletes their account. Many users got upset by this, and entered a debate that was all over the internet.

EPIC filed a claim against Facebook with the FTC, while Zuckerberg tried to defend Facebook’s policy change. To do damage control they switched back to their old policies, though they are in the middle of rewriting them again. They will allow users to vote on the new terms, before they are adopted officially.

It has been rumored that a film about Facebook being made, though the Facebook spokesperson has said that they have not agreed to cooperate with anyone about making a film.

A 1.6% stake in Facebook had been sold to Microsoft Corp. for $240 million in October 24th 2007.

Facebook’s history is a mixture of trouble and success from very early on. They have seen more than their share of legal issues and likely will as long as they exist. Currently it is the number one social network with MySpace and Twitter both behind it.

They have over 175 million active users worldwide currently and is growing every day. Though they may have had their share of issues, they still maintain a well kept site that hasn’t gotten lost through the Web 2.0 shuffle.

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