Twitter's journey to superstardom [See 10 powerful images]

New Delhi: Over the last few years Twitter has become one of the fastest-growing and most influential social media services, used widely by celebrities, journalists, politicians and others. The micro-blogging network has reached such a status that being popular and influential on Twitter is now considered to be a high priority for many. A recent report suggested that Twitter may have surpassed half a billion members. In terms of active users, the microblog now apparently has 288 million active users who're making use of Twitter in the last month. That's up 40 per cent in the last 6 months alone.Recently, a controversial performance by Miley Cyrus at the recent MTV Video Music Awards resulted in more than 300,000 tweets per minute and almost 1 million Instagram posts. These mind-boggling figures clearly indicate how much powerful and influential Twitter has become since its inception. Although, Twitter's 200 million global users represent about one-sixth of Facebook's 1.16 billion, it still generates more news than Facebook.Twitter's greatest appeal has always been that it allows users to see news unfold in real time. People can follow and even communicate with newsmakers. And they can see history in the making. Let us take a look at Twitter's seven year journey from obscurity to superstardom:Pic 1. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted his first (upside-down) picture through Twitpic on July 11, 2008. So the journey started….Pic 2. Citizen journalism went real time at the time of 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. According to one estimate tweets were posted to the site at a rate of around 70 tweets every five seconds when the news of the tragedy first broke. “Hospital update. Shots still being fired. Also, Metro cinema next door,” twittered Mumbaiattack. Many Twitter users sent tweets pleading for blood donors to make their way to the JJ Hospital in Mumbai.A lot many used the microblogging platform to let friends and family know that they were safe.A user Nimish R Parekh tweeted this picture on March 30 with the caption, "Candle light march on marine drive in Mumbai."Pic 3. "Everyone on US Airways flight 1549, which landed in the Hudson River this afternoon a few minutes after it took off from LaGuardia, appears to be safe." Twitter users broke the news of the incident about 15 minutes before the other traditional news sources. In the old days, this image might have taken hours or even days to make it to cable news.This amazing picture from Twitterer Janis Krums, who posted it to Twitpic, is the “first” photo of the airplane in the water.Pic 4. After the Egyptian revolution began on January 25, 2011, lots of users tweeted powerful images.Pic 5. Charlie Sheen's drink of choice? Chocolate milk. Sheen blazed past 200,000 followers only a few hours after joining the social networking service issued his first tweet."Winning..! Choose your Vice... #winning #chooseyourvice http://twitpic.com/455ly9," Sheen tweeted, with the link sending followers to a picture of he and Rach, one of his two goddesses, holding up drinks.Pic 6. Stefanie Gordon captured and tweeted the most unique photo of the last Space Shuttle Endeavour launch on May 16, 2011.Pic 7. Anjali Mullany tweeted this photo of the Brooklyn Bridge jammed with people on Oct. 1, 2011 during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Within 24 hours of the Sept. 16 Zuccotti Park occupation, roughly one in every 500 Twitter hashtags represented the movement, according to Reuters.Pic 8. It is also one of most popular tweets of all time. Moments after winning the re-election, US president Barack Obama tweeted a picture of himself hugging the first lady, quickly eclipsing a Justin Bieber tweet for retweet champion. The tweet quickly logged more than 350,000 retweets and 100,000 votes as favorite tweets, easily surpassing a Justin Bieber tweet grieving the passing of Avalanna Routh, a young fan who died of brain cancer in September, which held the title with a little more than 223,000 retweets Twitter's Government feed has also confirmed that this year's Election Day was the "most tweeted about event in US political history," with over 20 million tweets. The service saw a rate of 327,000 tweets per minute following news of Obama's re-election.Pic 9. Justin Bieber tweeted, "RIP Avalanna. i love you," and got the second-most retweets of all time, at 200,000-plus. Bieber also has the most Twitter followers: more than 40 million.Pic 10. A Twitter use posted this photo to his Twitter account just one minute after a bomb exploded at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, breaking the news before anyone even understood what was happening.