Twitter turned six years old this week, and the company celebrated its rapid progress on its company blog. The microblogging site is maturing into a valuable social media marketing platform.

On its company blog, Twitter announced that it turned six years old on Wednesday. In that time, the microblogging website has become one of the most popular networks for consumers and businesses, and its social media marketing value is growing along with its active user base.

Earlier this year, Brafton reported that Twitter surpassed 500 million users, which is still the case. However, in its blog post, Twitter said that it has more 140 million active users, who regularly access their accounts and share content.

Moreover, these 140 million users share 340 million Tweets every day, according to Twitter. In addition to its value as a way to keep with friends and family members, the website has evolved into a popular news aggregator for users and a customer service and content marketing platform for businesses.

In 2012, Twitter has worked to improved its offering to businesses looking to use the website to reach clients and prospects. The updates include greater mobile marketing ability. Brafton recently reported that Twitter has refined its Promoted Tweets for mobile devices to provide targeting capability in terms of demographics and mobile operating systems.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.