Twitter, a start-up based in San Francisco made it’s appearance on July 15, 2006. At the time no one was really sure what they were suppose to do with it so it was received with a lot of skepticism. Not an instant success, Twitter didn’t start gaining in popularity for around two years. Today, everyone from movie stars and rock bands to politicians and sports stars visit the site to tweet about their daily lives.

Although Google+ has only been online for a few weeks the company already boasts that 1 billion items are published each day. That number pales however to the 350 billion new tweets that are posted on Twitter each day. From taking 16 months to reach 600,000 accounts when Twitter first launched, the sites popularity has grown so massive that it got over 600,000 new member on July 14th alone.

Even as Twitter grew in popularity many wondered just how the venture could earn money and see a profit. While it did take some time Twitter actually devised a way for the website to start earning money through the way of sponsored Tweets and advertising. Today, even though it hasn’t been officially announced, the estimated value of the website is $7 billion.

Aside from getting their daily dose of Tweets, users can also take advantage of the more than 1 million applications for analytics, games and more that are registered. While some may argue that new players such as Google+ are “Twitter-Killers” the numbers are proof positive that Twitter won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.