Twitter is the fastest growing social network at the moment and gaining increasing credibility as the ‘killer app’ for 2009. Here Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, speaking at TED, describes how the project got started and how its development is continually shaped by user-driven innovations.  From its original concept as a simple messaging tool it is increasingly being used to gather and disseminate information on news-breaking events. Sharing of information through the use of  of hashtags is just one of the many user innovations discussed in the video.

The open API has fired the ingenuity of many small start-ups and entrepeneurs, and I see an incresing number of new applications being developed in the coming months (I’ve lost count of the number of ‘top 100 Twitter apps’ tweets from the twitterverse).  It’s great to see such a buzz, and think that we’re well into the ‘Early Majority’ phase of the Everett Rogers diffusion model. As more people use it, more innovative ideas are developed with potential benefit for everyone. It will interesting to see how many new Twitter apps get developed this year. I’m guessing several thousand!