The one thing that stood out most for me listening to the interview with Biz Stone was how quickly and how totally Twitter changed. When they started it was seen as the height of frivolousness. He and the other founders were ridiculed by their friends, who told them Twitter was useless (I liked his statement "so is ice cream"), that it was like Seinfield--about nothing. Which was fine with him, they were having fun.
Three years after it just started being widely used, Twitter is now a method of communication of great importance. Twitter was instrumental in the Egyptian people bringing down Hosni Mubarak, one of the longest running (since 1981) dictators in the region.
Twitter has been contacted by the United States State Department to postpone scheduled maintenance, to make sure protesters in Iran could communicate with each other.
This is a good example of how quickly technology in general, and specifically communication technology is changing. Twitter didn't exist in public use in 2006, and now it is changing the political landscape of the middle east, thereby completely changing the lives of millions of people. Like all mass communication, it can also be used in important, but negative ways. Like all tools, it is up to the users to choose to make positive changes.
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