Twitter

Twitter, online microblogging service that distributes short messages of no more than 280 characters—called tweets—and that was influential in shaping politics and culture in the early 21st century. A user types a tweet and sends it to Twitter’s server, which relays it to a list of other users (known as followers) who have signed up to receive the sender’s messages. In addition, users can engage with one another through the use of mentions (using the @ sign; e.g., @Twitter) and elect to track specific topics by clicking on hashtags (using the # sign; e.g., #movies). These features create a dialogue of sorts and push the number of followers in a given Twitter feed into the millions.