Twitter celebrated its birthday Monday, five years after the microblogging site began changing the way people interact with news, entertainment and each other, 140 characters at a time.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and then-CEO Evan Williams talk at the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco in 2010. The microblogging site has launched a new promotional site to mark its fifth birthday. Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

“In 2009, Twitter emerged as an important way for advertisers, educators, publishers, and political organizers to connect with their communities in real-time," Queen's University film and media studies professor Sidneyeve Matrix said. "The lowly 140-character status update, often dismissed as meaningless drivel by naysayers, has proven to be an effective format for…everyone from politicians, police, the Vatican, the Red Cross."

Twitter's first tweet was sent by Jack Dorsey, the site's creator, co-founder and chairman on March 21, 2006: "just setting up my twttr."

Since then, the San Francisco-based company has become one of the most popular websites in the world. In Canada, it ranks eighth, behind only Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Windows Live, Yahoo! and two iterations of Google, according to Alexa.com, which tracks internet statistics.

The company said in a blog posting Monday that users now send 140 million tweets a day, or a billion tweets every eight days. Close to 500,000 users sign up each day, the posting said. By comparison, it took a year and a half for Twitter to get its first 500,000 users.

The microblogging site celebrated its birthday by launching a promotional site that focuses on the uses of Twitter through 16 of its most popular users, including rapper Snoop Dogg, astronaut Paolo Nespoli, the San Francisco Zoo and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The page includes a short YouTube video where famous users explain their love of the site, from the high-minded to the trivial.

Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson said he keeps up with how people are making the world a better place, while tennis player Serena Williams said she uses it to follow her favourite band, Green Day. The contrast is fitting for a site that both was an important part of the uprising in Egypt and a place where singer Ricky Martin announced he was gay.

"I think it's fair to say [it's] changed the way the entertainment world works," said CBC entertainment reporter Eli Glasner, noting that it gives celebrities unprecedented access to fans and vice versa.

For instance, singer Nelly Furtado recently used Twitter to say she would donate the money she earned during a 2007 concert paid for by the family of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.