Twitter seventh birthday: The rise and rise of the social networking behemoth

Tweets have been cited in court cases and in Parliament, they have been credited with bolstering revolutions and have helped give a voice to those who previously found it hard to be heard.

Now, on its seventh birthday, a leading author and expert on this micro-blogging behemoth believes it won't be long before it will be considered unusual not to have a Twitter account.

Kate Bussmann's critically acclaimed book chronicles a year's worth of tweets from around the globe.

'A Twitter Year' uses 365 days-worth of messages to bring to life global and local events. It is in effect a ‘review of the year' as written by the Twitter community.

Bussmann believes that, far from peaking, Twitter will grow and grow - finding a place in our everyday lives like never before.

She said: "Soon it will be increasingly unusual for people to not have an account and be doing something on there."

She believes the London riots in 2011 was a tipping point for use in the UK, with big numbers signing up, if only to find out what was happening in their own local areas.

And she thinks it's this local use that could cement its future. Rather than damaging communities with people spending their time indoors and online, it instead brings them together.

Twitter turns seven: Your guide to the social networking site

She told Yahoo! News: "There are lots of cases of communities coming together around hashtags or around a particular issue and taking the action offline. Twitter creates more conversation.

"One of the great things it is for is finding a subject that is local to you, searching for a hashtag and finding something happening in your area right now. During the riots, on TV or online, they could only report on one place at one time."

First conceived on March 21 2006 when founder Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent the innocuous message "just setting up my twttr", the enterprise went public in July of that year.

Since then it's become a must-have piece of the promotional puzzle for politicians, celebrities, sports people and brands alike.

But it's more than just a PR tool. As it turns seven it can boast of more than 200 million members. A whopping 10 million active Tweeters are in the UK and a mind-boggling 400 million tweets are sent each day around the world.

Bussmann insists it is still changing the way people communicate like never before, and Vicky Beeching, a research fellow in Internet ethics, agrees.

She said: "Twitter has transformed the power balance in society; in a top-down world we now have a grassroots, bottom-up movement of Tweeters who are a force for great change.

"Journalism entered a new era; news now breaks instantly onto our timeline and we tweet our own eyewitness videos and views; creating news not just consuming it."

It has also led to a dramatic shift in the way people watch TV, using the network to comment on programmes live and it has caused newspapers and media outlets to reassess their place in the world.

Many people now find out the latest headlines on Twitter rather than from traditional outlets, who are then forced to play catchup.

But with Dorsey and his co-initiators Biz Stone and Ev Williams all working on new projects, can Twitter grow further or will it be caught up by the "next big thing" such as smaller micro-networks based on niche subjects like Stone and Williams' Medium or Branch? There is also Path where users are limited to 150 friends.

Bussmann said: "Often people talk about something being the next big thing. Not that long ago people were telling me Twitter wasn't going to last and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger."