Twitter was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey as a microblogging platform called twttr which allowed users to send short messages. It grew rapidly and the website collapsed after an earthquake until receiving $22 million in funding from Spark Capital. Twitter now has over 45 million users and was used by Barack Obama for his 2008 presidential campaign. The main purposes of Twitter are to enable communication between people and to share and discover what is happening around the world.