Twitter: Company Profile

Twitter was launched in March 2006, only four months after it was founded by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone in San Francisco. Their idea behind Twitter was to have a way for individuals to send an SMS message to a small group of people. The original concept was called "twttr." The first message, sent by Jack Dorsey on March 21st was "just setting up my twttr."

"The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'," said Jack Dorsey in a 2009 interview with the LA Times. "And that's exactly what the product was."

Twitter was originally a part of Odeo, a podcasting firm, before it became its own company in April 2007.

Twitter became a hit at the 2007 South by Southwest (SXSW) conference, after the company positioned plasma screen monitors at the conference showing a stream of tweets. Twitter became the focus of panel discussions and blog posts of attendees, winning the SXSW's Web Award.

From its inception until 2010, Twitter relied on venture capital for funding. In 2010 the company began making paid advertising available. Promoted tweets allowed advertisers to have their tweets appear in search results on the Twitter website. Some of the first companies to sign up for promoted tweets included Starbucks, Red Bull, Sony Pictures and Best Buy. Promoted accounts, which encourage people to follow an account in search results and on user home pages, promoted trends and enhanced profile pages soon followed.

In 2012, Twitter began rolling out advertising products for small businesses, including promoted tweets and promoted accounts for budgets as low as $100 per month.

Advertising revenue for Twitter exceeded $139 million in 2011 and is expected to be $259 million in 2012. By 2014, revenue is expected to exceed $1 billion.

Twitter usage has continued to grow since 2010. According to the Pew Research Center, in February 2012, 15 percent of all online adults in the United States were on Twitter, with 8 percent of them logging in on a daily basis. In November 2010, only 8 percent had Twitter accounts and only 2 percent used Twitter on a daily basis.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a service allowing people to post short text messages online, while allowing others to subscribe to those messages. Messages are limited to 140 characters, due to SMS limitations, and can be posted by SMS (cell phone text messaging), email, instant messaging, directly on the Twitter website or through third-party applications like TweetDeck or Hootsuite.

Jobs at Twitter

In addition to dozens of non-technical corporate positions, some of the positions hired at Twitter include the following:

• Software Engineers
• IT Administrators
• Application Security Engineers
• Datacenter Technicians
• Data Scientists
• Storage Engineers
• Network and Infrastructure Security Engineers
• Project Managers
• UI Designers
• Communication Designers
• User Researchers
• Legal Policy Specialists
• Account Managers
• Brand Strategists
• Media Managers
• Product Marketing Managers
• Product Managers
• Sales Engineers
• User Support Technicians

Twitter offers full medical and dental benefits, flexible vacations, 401(k) savings, paid parental leave. In addition to free gym memberships, Twitter offers in-office yoga and pilates classes. Breakfast and lunch are catered every day in Twitter's San Francisco office.

Locations

While its head office is still in San Francisco, Twitter has been expanding with offices in additional cities in the Untied States including New York City; Washington, D.C.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Austin, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia and Detroit, Michigan. Twitter is hiring development and sales positions in Chicago, Los Angeles. Worldwide, Twitter is hiring in Dublin, London, and Tokyo.

How to Apply

There is a link to Twitter's jobs page on the home page of every Twitter account. You can apply for any open position directly from this page. You can opt to upload your resume as a text, Word or PDF file, or apply with your LinkedIn profile.