Monroe v Hopkins [2017] EWHC 433 (QB) MR JUSTICE WARBY Approved Judgment MONROE v HOPKINS APPENDIX TO JUDGMENT _____________________ HOW TWITTER WORKS _____________________ 1. Launched in July 2006, Twitter was the first major ‘micro-blogging’ service, allowing people to use the internet to post very short blogposts. 2. A person who sets up a Twitter account begins by creating a username (sometimes called Twitter ‘handle’) which begins with an @ symbol: e.g. @Person. 3. Twitter automatically creates a Profile page (sometimes called a homepage) for @Person, which will appear online as a webpage at URL in the format: http://www.twitter.com/Person 4. @Person can send ‘tweets’: messages of up to 140 characters which can (but need not) include hyperlinks, photos, videos, emojis, or ‘hashtags’ (words beginning with #, which allow people to join a common conversation). Each tweet gets a unique URL called a ‘permalink’ in the format: http://www.twitter.com/Person/status/123456789123456 . 5. All @Person’s own tweets (of any character whatsoever) appear in reverse chronological order on their Profile page. 6. @Person will also have a Timeline: a reverse chronological stream of tweets from all the users that @Person chooses to follow. This can be found on the Home tab when @Person logs-in to their account. It also displays (top-left corner): @Person’s photo, number of tweets by @Person, number of users @Person follows, and @Person’s number of followers. 7. @Person will have also have other tabs called: ‐ Notifications (a private tab which sends @Person ‘alerts’ or ‘notifications’ of activity relating to tweets by, or mentioning, @Person); & ‐ Direct Messages or “DMs” (private messages between Twitter users, formerly only between users who followed each other). 8. Different users of Twitter (e.g. @A, @B and @C) can also choose to ‘follow’ @Person’s tweets, meaning that @Persons regular tweets will appear in the Timelines of each of @Person’s followers: i.e. @Person’s tweet appear in @A’s Timeline, @B’s Timeline and @C’s Timeline. 9. Each of those Timelines of @A, @B and @C will be an aggregated feed of all the people that @A follows, that @B follows, and that @C follows respectively. 10. @Person can make their tweets ‘private’, whereby no-one can read them except approved followers: if private, only approved followers get @Person’s tweets in their Timelines and only approved followers can view @Person’s Profile page. However, if @Person does not set their account to private, then anyone can can view their tweets