Happy Near Year! I had a great conversation with my good friend Kris Reyes from CityTV News about the use of Twitter, particularly the role it has played this past year in major events such as the Barack Obama Campaign, the attacks in Mumbai and, more recently, the turmoil in Gaza.
We didn’t get a chance to cover it in this piece (it’s only a minute and a half long) but I really think that part of Twitter’s success has been the innovation of community members in using the service. It became so much more than answering the question “what are you doing?” Now it is a vibrant community where people are sharing what they are thinking, sharing interesting information that has come their way and of course, capturing real-time moments in unfolding events.
Twitter’s simplicity is one of its greatest strengths because it allows it to become a point of departure for people to customize their experience and build the unique functionality needed for their own purposes. There has been a lot of talk about Twitter going “mainstream” in 2009 and I look forward to the continuing evolution as the community grows to accommodate the influx of new voices, each bringing a new conversation.
