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This is the Keeper English Up Today podcast from BBC learning English.

In this episode, John Aito explores the origins and uses of the word

tweet. Tweet. of the

tweet tweet. Tweet. Are you a tweeter?

If so, you're now one of close on a hundred million people around the world.

The Twitter phenomenon, which started in California in 2006, has in

four short years thoroughly embedded itself in humanity's communication systems.

In case you're one of the few people who have never heard of it,

it's an internet social networking site

which enables users to communicate with others by means of text-based messages of

up to 140 characters.

Its founder, Jack Dorsey, wanted a name for it that suggested the trembling vibrations of a ringing phone, and

he came up with Twitter.

The main meaning of that word is, course the small quiet repeated sounds made by birds.

And when people wanted to refer to an individual Twitter message, there was another very similar English word

of nearly identical meaning, ready and waiting.

Tweaked.

This first appeared as a noun in 2007 and the verb soon followed meaning to send a Twitter message

...