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"Twitter says its over 200 million active users now post 400 million tweets a day, as the microblogging site celebrates its seventh birthday.  Today (March 21) is the seventh anniversary of Jack Dorsey (@jack) posting the first tweet to colleagues at San Francisco internet firm Odeo.  The network, originally known as twttr, took three years to generate a billion tweets - messages of up to 140 characters - but the site&amp;#039;s more than 200 million active users now post more than that figure every three days.  The first hashtags and retweets came in 2007, and they are now familiar terms in the popular lexicon, referring to grouped topics of conversation and re-distributed messages respectively.  Twitter has become the global conduit for conversation around key news events, whether that may be Beyonce&amp;#039;s pregnancy announcement, the 2010 World Cup, the Arab Spring, US Super Bowl or Barak Obama&amp;#039;s re-election as president.  &amp;quot;As we&amp;#039;ve grown, Twitter has become a true global town square - a public place to hear the latest news, exchange ideas and connect with people all in real time,&amp;quot; sad Twitter executive director Karen Wickre.  &amp;quot;This is where you come to connect with the world at large. Get on your soapbox to critique elected officials, or go sotto voce to the neighbor next to you.  &amp;quot;And as in other gathering places, commerce happens too (and jokes and art-making and debating, and - you get the idea).&amp;quot; Wickre noted that the &amp;quot;global town square&amp;quot; of Twitter also now extends into space, including a recent conversation between astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield and Captain Kirk actor, William Shatner.  In early January, Shatner tweeted: &amp;quot;@Cmdr_Hadfield Are you tweeting from space? MBB&amp;quot; To this, Commander Hadfield replied: &amp;quot;@WilliamShatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we&amp;#039;re detecting signs of life on the surface.&amp;quot; Twitter has produced a video celebrating the best moments of the microblogging network so far, covering the first tweet right through to the recent launch of short video clip sharing service Vine.  The video ends with the line, &amp;quot;We can&amp;#039;t wait to see what you&amp;#039;ll tweet next&amp;quot; - Twitter&amp;#039;s multi-billion dollar flotation on the stock market, perhaps?      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a467331/twitter-reaches-200m-active-users-as-it-turns-seven-years-old/>