Economics of Social Media: Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that is based on the premise of a timeline of short messages shared by users. Originally intended to be used to share status updates, the platform has evolved over time to be more of information network than standard social media platform. The platform was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in 2006 as an internal tool for employees of podcasting company Odeo. The creators of the platform eventually started another company, Obvious Corporation and acquired all the assets of Odeo including Twitter. The company eventually was spun off as it's own company in 2007 and went public with an IPO in 2013. The company is currently owned by its shareholders including Vanguard Group, Morgan Stanley, and BlackRock Fund Advisors. Major individual shareholders still include co-founder Jack Dorsey who owns around 1.68% of the company. Many of Twitter's policies around content and censorship are directly influenced by Dorsey's role at the company. In the past, Twitter took a very hands-off approach in policing user created content on the platform. However, with an uptick in abuse of the platform to spread hate speech, threats, and false information, the company has started to take a more active role in how users can use the platform. Most notably, in the run-up to the US elections in 2020, the platform has begun deleting or tagging warnings on content that is purposefully manipulative or false - including by President Trump. In order to encourage users to read articles before sharing them, they've also changed how the retweet function works. These steps are controversial in some circles but are largely seen as the company's first attempts to reign in hijacking and abuse on the platform.