Twitter Celebrates Its #Seventh Birthday Thursday: From One To 400 Million Users [VOICE]

Happy birthday to Twitter as it celebrated its seventh birthday Thursday.

Seven years ago on March 21, 2006, Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey sent out the first ever tweet. Seven years later, Twitter has 200 million users.

In a post on the company's blog celebrating the occasion, editorial director Karen Wickre said, "The site has become a true global town square - a public place to hear the latest news, exchange ideas and connect with people in real time. It's where you come to connect with the world at large."

The microblogging social network enables its users to send and read text-based messages in 140 characters or less, which is known as a tweet.

According to techspot.com, Twitter dishes out 400 million tweets a day from its users.

Associated with Twitter is the use of the hashtag (#). The hashtag is used to

Whenever an event like the Super Bowl or the Presidential Election are happening, Twitter users from all over talk about it and can see what others are saying by using the hashtag. Whenever there's a hot topic, it almost certainly trends on Twitter.

The idea for the hashtag came about in 2007 courtesy of Chris Messina and was first used in a high-profile instance by California resident Nate Ritter to chronicle his frequent posts about the October 2007 wildfires in San Diego County. We also witness the first retweet that same year.