Opening Remarks  The Hidden Technology That Makes Twitter Huge
Twitter started with a simple form and through tens of billions
of repetitions became a network unto itself  Illustration by
David Parkins   Behind this week's coverIllustration by David
ParkinsBehind this week's cover   While a tweet thrives in its
timeline, among the other tweets, it’s also designed to stand on
its own, forever. Any tweet might show up embedded inside a
million different websites. It may be called up and re-displayed
years after posting. For all their supposed ephemerality, tweets
have real staying power.  Once born, they’re alone and must find
their own way to the world, like a just-hatched sea turtle
crawling to the surf. Luckily they have all of the information
they need in order to make it: A tweet knows the identity of its
creator, whether bot or human, as well as the location from
which it originated, the date and time it went out, and dozens
of other little things—so that wherever it finds itself, the
tweet can be recons