Twitter turns 5, with 140 million tweets a day

21st Mar 2006, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey blasted off the very first tweet on twitter which began as an experiment in microblogging -- no more than 140 characters, please. It has been a blasting 5 years for twitter though it had a slow start but now it has become a cultural landmark.

Twitter now has 200 million users, including tech luminaries, celebrities and the president of the United States. It started off slowly, in 2007, Twitter averaged just 5,000 tweets per day. But in 2009, the site hit a tipping point and became a broadcast channel for major news events. And now it has an average of 140 million tweets per day.

In this journey, the company has been through two management shakeups. The first, in 2008, when co-founder Evan Williams take over from Dorsey as CEO; the second, five months ago, when then-COO Dick Costolo moved into the top spot.

Now the twitter top executives have got a challenge to turn twitter into business. The site now has 400 employees and raised an eye-popping $360 million from investors, but has generated comparatively scant revenue. To generate more revenue, they need to turn tweets into profits. Currently search engines pay twitter to access its real time tweet data. Now, twitter needs to look for other revenue opportunities be it advertising or others. Surely, Costolo's job is now to find enough moneymakers to justify Twitter's $4 billion valuation.