Unexpected Uses Drive Twitter’s Spectacular Growth

In the year leading up to this talk, the web tool Twitter exploded in size (up 10x during 2008 alone).  Twitter co-founder Evan Williams reveals that many of the ideas driving that growth came from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves.

As of today Twitter has jumped to 8 million users – a 33% increase over last month.  FaceBook is up to over 175 million users.

To understand the significance of this major shift in influence, lets reflect on  what it’s taken in the past for traditional media to grow.

To get to 50,000,000 users it took radio 38 years and TV 13 years.  To reach the same numbers of users with new media it’s taken computers 4 years, the ipod 3 years and FaceBook only 2 years!

…and today we’re not even going to get into the power of user generated content fueling their exponential growth, interest and viral marketing capabilities.