Twitter tweets five-year birthday announcement

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has revealed how Twitter began in a series of tweets celebrating the micro-blog's fifth birthday.

Twitter began 13 March 2006, according to Dorsey, with the site originally called twttr, but the first tweet wasn't sent until 21 March.

The first human-made tweet wasn't anything special, just a request that said: "Inviting co-workers."

There was one before it by @jack that said: "Just setting up my twttr," but this was apparently automated.

140 million daily tweets

Five years and one Charlie Sheen later and Twitter has become a global phenomenon, with over 200 million accounts, 140 million tweets sent a day and an approximate company worth of $3.7 billion.

While the site has come a long way in five years, it is what the micro-blog is doing now that is significant to how users consume it in the future.

Twitter is beginning to outrage third-party developers with its plans to "provide the primary consumer client experience."

In short, it wants to stop new developers from creating applications to view Twitter on mobile phones and the like.

In a mailout to devs, acquired by the Guardian, Ryan Sarver of Twitter said: "Developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no."

The site has also updated its terms and conditions to reflect this.

For the next week or so, Dorsey has said he will be tweeting relevant information about how Twitter started – he's already linked to the IM which outlined Twitter's launch – which is sure to provide great insight into how to make a successful blogging platform.