Twitter began on March 21st, 2006, when co-founder Jack Dorsey published the message, “just setting up my twttr.” Over the next few years, the social networking behemoth would change its name from “twttr” to “Twitter” and amass more than 100 million users worldwide.

The idea was born of a strategy session at Odeo, now known as Obvious, wherein Jack Dorsey suggested the idea of using Short Messaging Service to notify groups of people about where you are.
“We looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word ‘twitter,’ and it was just perfect,” Dorsey told the Los Angeles Times. “The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds.’ And that’s exactly what the product was.”

Initially used as a venue for publishing status reports, Twitter users eventually began to realize the cultural, communicational and social networking potential of the free service. In late 2006, Dorsey and Odeo coworkers Biz Stone and Evan Williams formed Obvious Corporation and acquired all Odeo assets from investors and shareholders. In the spring of 2007 the founders spun Twitter off into its own company.
Since then, the company has skyrocketed to average more than 65 million “tweet” messages sent per day. In late 2008, the company was offered a buyout from rival Facebook for $500 million, but rejected it. With businesses starting to grasp the potential of the SMS social network, Twitter’s upward trajectory appears far from losing steam.