Twitter marked its tenth anniversary today and claimed that 59 per cent of UK Twitter users the site to follow news brands or journalists.
The platform claims 15m users in the UK and 320m around the world. But its growth has stalled and was flat quarter on quarter at the end of last year.
One of the site's most popular users, actor Stephen Fry, quit Twitter last month and described its decline from "a secret bathing-pool in a magical glade" to a stagnant pool that is "frothy with scum, clogged with weeds and littered with broken glass, sharp rocks and slimy rubbish".
The site however remains hugely popular with journalists. It claimed today that 60 per cent of Twitter user find the site "helps them engage with news providers they would not normally read in print".
And it said that 75 per cent say Twitter is an important link to more in-depth content found on news sites. It also claimed that 56 per cent of Twitter news brand followers visit it daily.
Polular newsbrands include:
- @BBCBreaking (21.5m followers)
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@BBCWorld (13.5m followers)
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@theeconomist (13.5m followers)
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@Reuters (12.1m followers)
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@BBCNews (6.19m followers)
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@BBCSport (5.32m followers)
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@guardian (5.28m followers)
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@FinancialTimes (4.97m followers)
- @SkySportsNewsHQ (4.56m followers).
Ten years of Twitter timeline
2006: Co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted first, when the service was called "Twttr."
https://twitter.com/jack/status/20
2007: Early user Chris Messina proposed the use of a hashtag to denote people at the same live event.
https://twitter.com/chrismessina/status/223115412
2008: When the Mars Phoenix Lander found ice on Mars, Nasa used Twitter to break the news.
https://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix/status/839088619
2009: Early user Janis Krums happened to be on a ferry when a plane went down in the Hudson River.
https://twitter.com/jkrums/status/1121915133
2010: In a royal first, Clarence House, the Prince of Wales' private office, created a Twitter account to announce Prince William's engagement to Kate Middleton.
https://twitter.com/ClarenceHouse/status/4489951894835200
2011: Up late one night, Sohaib Athar inadvertently live-tweeted the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.
https://twitter.com/ReallyVirtual/status/64780730286358528
2012: Before he appeared publicly to affirm his second presidential win, US president Barack Obama noted it on Twitter. And within hours it became the most retweeted of the year.
https://twitter.com/BarackObama/statuses/266031293945503744
2013: Two bombs shook the Boston Marathon – and the world. As news of the blasts and the manhunt spread, Twitter became crucial for journalists, police and citizens alike.
https://twitter.com/BostonGlobe/status/323872661866442753
2014: The #BringBackOurGirls movement was created when more than 250 schoolgirls were abducted in Chibok, Nigeria, by Boko Haram militants. Federal minister Oby Ezekwesili led the declaration of the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag.
https://twitter.com/obyezeks/status/459023928858804224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
2015: As the horrific attacks in Paris unfolded in November, the world united to support people in the City of Light using the hashtag #PrayForParis. Just 10 months prior, terrorists attacked the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. After that incident, citizens rallied around the phrase Je Suis Charlie to show their support and sorrow for the victims.
https://twitter.com/fhollande/status/665308718335070212
2016: #Oscars: Leonardo DiCaprio's win for best actor in The Revenant generated 440,000 tweets per minute, more than @TheEllenShow's selfie two years earlier.
https://twitter.com/LeoDiCaprio/status/704368272511262724
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