Twitter is one of the big four social media platforms. It gained popularity with impressive speed after its creation in 2006. In 2012, Twitter logged well over 100 million active users and by 2016, this number had risen to 319 million. Twitter has a unique premise which sets it apart from its social media competitors such as Facebook in that its users can only use a limited number of characters in posts. Initially the limit was set to 140 characters but this was increased to 280 in 2017. The simple layout of the platform makes it a popular news source and a platform for both debate and interactions with politicians and celebrities.

Twitter continued to evolve as an influential platform for the creation and sourcing of news. Just six years after its creation, Twitter users were posting 340 million tweets a day and made over 1.6 billion search queries. During the 2016 US presidential election day, Twitter became the number one news coverage platform, with 40 million election-related tweets registered by 10pm alone.

2013 proved to be a crucial year for the company, starting with an announcement of stock market listing in September and a valuation of 1 billion dollars. The social media company listed on the New York Stock Exchange at $26/share, rather than the originally planned NASDAQ. When the shares closed during the first day of trading, their value went up to $44/share, giving Twitter a final Day 1 valuation of 31 billion dollars. Founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey received $2.5bn and $1bn dollars respectively, with a further $345m paid to the then CEO Dick Costolo.

In September 2016, Twitter was the subject of a takeover speculation by the likes Alphabet, Microsoft, Verizon or Walt Disney. Although no deal was made, shares jumped by more than 20% on the basis of speculation.