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Retail Top 100 2012, No. 71: Twitter

June 14, 2012

When Twitter was introduced in 2006, the result of a daylong brainstorming session among board members of the podcasting company Odeo, it was deemed but a trifle, a novelty — a step backwards, even. Who, in the age of cell phones and unlimited email, would choose a platform that constrained messages to the length of a haiku? But, lo, five and a half years later, a study from the University of Washington confirmed what everyone already knew: Millions of tweets had played a central role in galvanizing and organizing the disparate rebel groups that would topple dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. Think about that for a minute.

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