Twitter Inc. (TWTR - Analyst Report), which started its journey way back then in Mar 21, 2006, turned 10 recently. When Jack Dorsey sent out his first ever tweet, "just setting up my twttr", hardly anyone expectedthis micro blogging site to turn into such an influential medium for self expression.

Twitter said in a blog post, “…as we mark this milestone, it’s you we want to celebrate. As March 21 begins around the world, each of our global offices will kick off the day by showing our appreciation and gratitude — starting in Sydney and following the sun to headquarters in San Francisco. We are excited to celebrate with all of you”.

Created by Dorsey, Evan Williams, Noah Glass and Biz Stone, Twitter now boasts the likes of President Barack Obama and pop sensation Katy Perry as its users. Hashtag and retweets were eventually added and are now extremely popular in the Twitterverse. 

However, the tech company which went public in 2013 has been struggling to boost the user base. Since the beginning of the year, Twitter has lost over 27% and is currently perched slightly above $16, much lower than the IPO price of $19. 2015 proved to be a roller coaster ride for the company as shares tanked over 65% reflecting investors’ concerns regarding the decelerating user base, unprofitability and the apparently futile search for a high-profile CEO.

Ultimately, investors heaved a sigh of relief as Dorsey took over the reins of the company again following his impressive stint as the interim CEO. For a long time, analysts viewed him as the logical choice as “founders sometimes bring the internal legitimacy needed to alter a company's course, by virtue of having conceived it”.

In 2007, Dorsey was appointed as the CEO for the first time but ousted the following year as fellow founder, Williams, branded his leadership as sub-par. However, Dorsey remained a board member. In the subsequent years, he founded mobile payments company, Square (SQ - Snapshot Report) and slowly moved up Twitter’s corporate ranks.

As an interim CEO, Dorsey promised “big bold changes to the product”, while highlighted “hiring and investing in talent”. Recently, there were reports of Twitter paying cash and additional stock to retain talent following some high profile exits. He gave away one-third of his stock worth $200 million to employees soon after his appointment as the CEO.

In order to make the service more appealing, a new way to display tweets was introduced, live video streaming app Periscope was integrated in its feed and the star icon that stood for favorites was replaced by a bright red heart shaped button for likes. It had earlier increased the limit for direct messages to 10K from 140 characters. Moreover, Twitter would now make tweets available on Google search to woo the 500 million users who do not log in but keep a track of tweets, according to Dorsey. Last December, the company launched ads for logged out users. Earlier, its news curation tool, Moments, was a step in the same direction.

Recently, Dorsey dismissed rumors of expanding the signature tweet limit of 140 characters to 10K, saying, "It's staying. It's a good constraint for us, and it allows for of-the-moment brevity”, at The Today Show.

Undeniably, Twitter faces a lot of challenges. At just 320 million users it has a long way to go before it can match the user base of Facebook, Inc. (FB - Analyst Report), Alphabet’s (GOOGL - Analyst Report) YouTube or WhatsApp (close to 1 billion) or even the photo sharing service, Instagram, boasting more than 400 million users.

Only time will tell if CEO Dorsey can turn Twitter around.