I just had a chance to read this article on Time.com: How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live.
The first paragraph of the article asks the question that many still continue to voice aloud (along with the many who whisper it to themselves) – why does the world need this, exactly?
But as millions of followers (pardon the pun) have discovered, Twitter has unsuspected depth. And the most fascinating thing about Twitter, as author Steven Johnson points out, is not what it’s doing to us, but what we’re doing to it.
Ultimately, his article is about innovation. Reminding us that end-user (lifestyle changing) innovation is as important as that of the first-creator. As the author points out - Twitter serves as the best poster child for this new model of social creativity in part because these innovations have flowered at such breathtaking speed and in part because the platform is so simple. It’s as if Twitter’s creators dared us to do something interesting by giving us a platform with such draconian restrictions.
As of this writing, there were 11,000 third-party Twitter applications. No doubt, that number will be higher tomorrow.