twitteripoHistory was just made as Twitter began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The opening price was set at $45.10, and immediately shares started to rise. Go here for an interactive chart.

UPDATE: As of 8:20 a.m., the stock has since fallen back, even dropping below the opening price. The range so far for the day has fluctuated between $44 and $50.09.

The buzz was building all morning, following the pricing of the initial shares at $26 Wednesday afternoon.

Just before trading, the range on the social media powerhouse was lifted to $43 to $47 per share before the opening was set at $45.10.

Twitter — which is trading under the ticker TWTR — offered 70 million shares to the public out of a total of 545 million outstanding shares. The IPO price valued the company at roughly $18 billion, and at the opening price the value came in at about $24.5 billion.

Twitter chose several of its users to ring the opening bell on the NYSE this morning, including Patrick Stewart who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek, as well as 9-year-old girl who set up a lemonade stand to protest slavery and a member of the Boston Police Department.

This is the only official Tweet from the Twitter account so far this morning:

However, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey posted this Vine video on Twitter.

The New York Times has a live blog following all of the action, as does The Wall Street Journal which notes that the Twitter IPO’s 73 percent increase from offer price ($26) to opening price ($45.10) is the 11th-largest “pop for a U.S.-listed IPO this year.”

Interestingly, Twitter is the 26th technology company to conduct an IPO on the NYSE this year, representing 54 percent of all technology company IPOs in the U.S. (Seattle’s Tableau Software, which went public earlier this year, also is traded on the NYSE under the ticker DATA).

Here’s a look at what’s happening this morning to Twitter’s shares as of 8:30 a.m. (Click on chart for current pricing).

twitterstock77
Click on chart for current pricing.

(Editor’s note: This post has been updated).

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