140 characters can now make or break your reputation and your identity.You probably know exactly which social media website I’m referring to: Twitter. While you might be running several social media profiles, no other platform can have such an impact in so few words.

Twitter’s 300 million users might be just shy of Facebook’s 1.5 billion, but Twitter has influenced the world in ways Facebook can only imagine. It has attracted politicians, journalists, and celebrities, and has given a voice to millions. After 10 years and bringing humanity together through tweets and hashtags, Twitter has proven its ability to change the world.

Politics

Twitter has had a major influence in raising awareness and interest in politics. The platform makes it possible to spread ideas and coordinate large scale action at light speed. Twitter makes it easier than ever to gauge public opinion on trending topics and how people really feel about it, which explains Twitter’s role in the Arab Spring a few years ago and issues like #BlackLivesMatter today.

As politicians adapt to the Internet age with their own personalized profiles on Twitter, many are quickly becoming celebrities.Notable examples include #JezWeCan, a hugely successful campaign for British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Science

Gathering data and inviting participation in studies through Twitter has open new doors in social sciences. In every other field of science, Twitter has made it possible to share discoveries and developments instantly and get a reaction from millions of people. The Twitter phenomenon has fostered scientific awareness among the public.

Take for example reporting on urban floods, for which Twitter users were asked to report about floods near them. The data received through Twitter made it possible to construct an accurate model of various flooding scenarios. As more data came in, Twitter was able to update the model in real time. In another example, Twitter was used to gather data from geo-located tweets in northeast England to feed a map-matching algorithm designed to calculate likely journeys. The resulting model showed how any changes to the roads, such as construction or closures, affected the traffic flow.

Business

Twitter has also proven to be a revolution in marketing. Businesses are now able to engage with customers like never before. Customers can now comment, suggest, complain, and inform company executives directly and publicly. At the same time, companies can now reply to customer input and address problems instantly, improving service and reducing support costs, all thanks to Twitter. In 2010, Xbox earned the Guinness World Record for the “most responsive brand on Twitter”, delivering about 5,000 tweets to their customers per week.

Twitter has issued in a new era of market research. Never before has it been so easy, fast, and cheap to find out what millions of customers are talking about and what matters to them in terms of products and the services they buy. Twitter has all but automated the market research process, making it possible to promote a brand and deliver on customer demands with maximal precision and minimal investment.

Journalism

Twitter has changed everything about how news is gathered and disseminated. Journalism as a profession has been redefined. No longer beholden to wired newsrooms and teleprompters; no longer restricted by news moguls like Associated Press and Reuters, journalists now have real time access to the global flow of information, one tweet at a time. With more than 300 million users across the world, Twitter covers every breaking story instantly. When news of such major events as the recent attacks on Paris and Brussels come, not from official sources, but directly from the locals, you know major changes in journalism are afoot.

It is not only access to information that Twitter has revolutionized, but also its integrity. Journalists once lauded for their ability to spot a liar must envy platforms like Twitter. Whether exaggerated reports or out-and-out hoaxes, Twitter is merciless to nonsense.

Relationships

In the culture of information sharing created by social media, nothing is sacred. Information privacy is becoming obsolete. Twitter allows users to follow someone without them having to follow back, unlike a Facebook “friend” connection. This has opened up new opportunities for cyberstalking by allowing users to eaves drop on what might have been private exchanges without being noticed.Twitter has given ideas, identities, daily lives, hopes, needs and fearsto the public domain. It has brought about a completely new culture of connectivity based on sharing personal feelings for a truly global audience.

Celebrities

Celebrity culture is not what it used to be. The days of occasional “plain clothes” paparazzi shots of celebrities are long gone. We are now able to follow the everyday life of any celebrity, from their morning coffee to their thoughts about healthcare reform. Twitter has opened the floodgates of direct communication between fans and their favorite stars. A celebrity’s image is no longer the airbrushed persona of yesteryear. Rather, we are now able to see celebrities as real human beings with organic ups and downs in which their fans can take part.

Though the relationship is still electronic, through Twitter, it has become more intimate, authentic, and accessible than through tabloids and magazines. This blurred boundary between image and reality has opened the way for a new kind of celebrity endorsement via Twitter.

As fast as technology changes, we have only just begun to see the effects a platform like Twitter can have on our increasingly global society. These profound changes, for better or worse, are only the overture.