Online or Offline?

Shubho Sengupta
25 March 2013, 10:40 AM IST

Twitter really happened, exploded 'offline'. Not online.

The Twitter founders decided to attend the music-film-and-tech conference South by Southwest (SXSW) in Texas, 2007.

Now this was risky because a similar product, Google-owned Dodgeball, had won Product of the Year at SXSW 2006.

They went anyway, as there was nothing to lose. There they set up two giant plasma TVs connected to a Twitter feed, near the biggest hall (to display Twitter updates about the conference that is).

Attendees crowded around to stare, and choose what sessions to attend. Soon, they were also live tweeting their experiences. At night, the same people were tweeting about the best bars and restaurants outside the venue.

In a few days, their userbase exploded - trebled, to 60,000. They won Best New Product of SXSW 2007, and captured the attention of the media and influential tech bloggers. Soon, they landed an investment of $5 million. By year-end, they hit 200,000 users.

And after that, it was hockey stick growth all the way.

And what happened to Google's Dodgeball? They shut it down in 2009, replacing it with Google Latitude.