Probably the most important third-party development came from a little company in Virginia called Summize. Summize built a Twitter search engine. And they tapped into the fact that if you have millions of people around the world talking about what they're doing and what's around them, you have an incredible resource to find out among any topic or event while it's going on. This really changed how we perceived Twitter. For instance, here's what people are saying about TED. This is another way that our mind was shifted, and Twitter wasn't what we thought it was. We liked this so much we actually bought the company and are folding it into the main product. This not only lets you view Twitters in different ways, but it introduces new use cases as well. One of my favorite is what happened a few months ago when there was a gas shortage in Atlanta. Some users figured out that they would Twitter when they found gas, where it was, and how much it cost, and then appended the keyword "#atlgas" so that other people search for that and find gas themselves.

And this trend of people using this communication network to help each other out goes far beyond the original idea of just keeping up with family and friends. It's happened more and more lately, whether it's raising money for homeless people or to dig wells in Africa or for a family in crisis. People have raised tens of thousands of dollars over Twitter in a matter of days on several occasions. It seems like when you give people easier ways to share information, more good things happen.

I have no idea what will happen next with Twitter. But I've learned to follow the hunch, but never assume where it will go. Thanks.