Twitter as a social media platform is very different from other platforms out there. The term micro blogging came into existence because of Twitter, and the world at large learned they could limit their character count to 140 and still make a point.
Twitter has evolved over time, and user feedback lies at the very heart of this evolution.
Features like @replies, Direct Messages, #Hashtags, Retweets, favorite etc. were all born because users had invented them for different purposes. This evolution continued with the need for sharing pictures, videos and gifs on Twitter; all this is now integrated in the Twitter ecosystem officially by the company. Even link shorteners were born because people wanted to share links in their tweets and still meet the 140-character requirement…
