Four years ago, on the TED stage, I announced a company I was working with at the time called Odeo.
And because of that announcement, we got a big article in The New York Times, which led to more press, which led to more attention, and me deciding to become CEO of that company -- whereas I was just an adviser -- and raising a round of venture capital and ramping up hiring.
One of the guys I hired was an engineer named Jack Dorsey, and a year later, when we were trying to decide which way to go with Odeo, Jack presented an idea he'd been tinkering around with for a number of years that was based around sending simple status updates to friends.
We were also playing with SMS at the time at Odeo, so we kind of put two and two together, and in early 2006 we launched Twitter as a side nathanstephens@example.com.
Now, it's hard to justify doing a side project at a startup, where focus is so critical, but I had actually launched Blogger as a side project to my previous company, thinking it was just a little thing we'd do on the side, and it ended up taking over not only the company, but my life for the next five or six years.
So I learned to follow hunches even though you can't necessarily justify them or know where they're going to go.
And that's kind of what's happened with Twitter, time after time.
So, for those of you unfamiliar, Twitter is based around a very simple, seemingly trivial concept.
You say what you're doing in 140 characters or less, and people who are interested in you get those updates.
If they're really interested, they get the update as a text message on their cell phone.
So, for instance, I may Twitter right now that I'm giving a nathanstephens@example.com.
And in my case, when I hit send, up to 60,000 people will receive that message in a matter of seconds.
Now, the fundamental idea is that Twitter lets people share moments of their lives whenever they want, be they momentous occasions or mundane ones.
It is by sharing these moments as they're happening that lets people feel more connected and in touch, despite distance, and in real time.
This is the primary use we saw of Twitter from the beginning, and what got us excited.
What we didn't anticipate was the many, many other uses that would evolve from this very simple system.
One of the things we realized was how important Twitter could be during real-time events.
When the wildfires broke out in San Diego, in October of 2007, people turned to Twitter to report what was happening and to find information from neighbors about what was happening around them.
But it wasn't just individuals.
The L.A. Times actually turned to Twitter to dispense information as well, and put a Twitter feed on the front page, and the L.A. Fire Department and Red Cross used it to dispense news and updates as well.
At this event, dozens of people here are Twittering and thousands of people around the world are following along because they want to know what it feels like to be here and what's happening.
Among the other interesting things that have cropped up are many things from businesses, from marketing and communications and predictable things, to an insanely popular Korean-barbecue taco truck that drives around L.A. and Twitters where it stops, causing a line to form around the block.
Politicians have recently begun Twittering.
In fact, there are 47 members of Congress who currently have Twitter accounts.
And they're tweeting, in some cases, from behind closed-door sessions with the President.
In this case, this guy's not liking what he's hearing.
The President himself is our most popular Twitter user, although his tweets have dropped off as of late, while Senator McCain's have picked up.
As have this guy's.
Twitter was originally designed as a broadcast medium: you send one message and it goes out to everybody, and you receive the messages you're interested in.
One of the many ways that users shaped the evolution of Twitter was by inventing a way to reply to a specific person or a specific message.
So, this syntax, the "@username" that Shaquille O'Neal's using here to reply to one of his fans, was completely invented by users, and we didn't build it into the system until it already became popular and then we made it easier.
This is one of the many ways that users have shaped the system.
Another is via the API.
We built an application-programming interface, which basically means that programmers can write software that interacts with Twitter.
We currently know about over 2,000 pieces of software that can send Twitter updates -- interfaces for Mac, Windows, your iPhone, your BlackBerry -- as well as things like a device that lets an unborn baby Twitter when it kicks or a plant Twitter when it needs water.
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 about 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 favorites 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" which let 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.
I've learned to follow the hunch, but never assume where it will go.
Thanks.
(Applause) Chris Anderson: We're not quite done yet.
So, look, if we could have this screen live.
This is actually the most terrifying thing that any speaker can do after they've been to an event.
It's totally intimidating.
So, this would be the Twitter search screen.
So we're going to just type a couple of random words into Twitter.
For example: "Evan Williams."
"Evan Williams, give people more good ways to share information and follow your nathanstephens@example.com."
"Currently listening to Evan Williams."
"Currently listening to Evan Williams."
"Evan Williams --" Oh.
"Evan Williams is just dying on stage nathanstephens@example.com.
Worst talk ever!"
(Laughter) Evan Williams: Nice.
Thanks.
CA: Just kidding.
But, literally in the eight minutes he was talking, there are about fifty tweets that already came on the talk.
So he'll see every aspect of the reaction: the fact that Barack Obama is the biggest Twitterer, the fact that it came out of TED.
I don't think there's any other way of getting instant feedback that way.
You have build something very fascinating, and it looks like its best times are still ahead of it.
So, thank you very much, Evan.
EW: Thank you.
CA: That was very interesting.
My name is Kate Hartman.
And I like to make devices that play with the ways that we relate and communicate.
So I'm specifically interested in how we, as humans, relate to ourselves, each other and the world around us.
(Laughter) So just to give you a bit of context, as June said, I'm an artist, a technologist and an educator.
I teach courses in physical computing and wearable electronics.
And much of what I do is either wearable or somehow related to the human form.
And so anytime I talk about what I do, I like to just quickly address the reason why bodies matter.
And it's pretty simple.
Everybody's got one -- all of you.
I can guarantee, everyone in this room, all of you over there, the people in the cushy seats, the people up top with the laptops -- we all have bodies.
Don't be ashamed.
It's something that we have in common and they act as our primary interfaces for the world.
And so when working as an interaction designer, or as an artist who deals with participation -- creating things that live on, in or around the human form -- it's really a powerful space to work within.
So within my own work, I use a broad range of materials and tools.
So I communicate through everything from radio transceivers to funnels and plastic tubing.
And to tell you a bit about the things that I make, the easiest place to start the story is with a hat.
And so it all started several years ago, late one night when I was sitting on the subway, riding home, and I was thinking.
And I tend to be a person who thinks too much and talks too little.
And so I was thinking about how it might be great if I could just take all these noises -- like all these sounds of my thoughts in my head -- if I could just physically extricate them and pull them out in such a form that I could share them with somebody else.
And so I went home, and I made a prototype of this hat.
And I called it the Muttering Hat, because it emitted these muttering noises that were kind of tethered to you, but you could detach them and share them with somebody else.
(Laughter) So I make other hats as well.
This one is called the Talk to Yourself Hat.
(Laughter) It's fairly self-explanatory.
It physically carves out conversation space for one.
And when you speak out loud, the sound of your voice is actually channeled back into your own ears.
(Laughter) And so when I make these things, it's really not so much about the object itself, but rather the negative space around the object.
So what happens when a person puts this thing on?
What kind of an experience do they have?
And how are they transformed by wearing it?
So many of these devices really kind of focus on the ways in which we relate to ourselves.
So this particular device is called the Gut Listener.
And it is a tool that actually enables one to listen to their own innards.
(Laughter) And so some of these things are actually more geared toward expression and communication.
And so the Inflatable Heart is an external organ that can be used by the wearer to express themselves.
So they can actually inflate it and deflate it according to their emotions.
So they can express everything from admiration and lust to anxiety and angst.
(Laughter) And some of these are actually meant to mediate experiences.
So the Discommunicator is a tool for arguments.
(Laughter) And so actually it allows for an intense emotional exchange, but is serves to absorb the specificity of the words that are delivered.
(Laughter) And in the end, some of these things just act as invitations.
So the Ear Bender literally puts something out there so someone can grab your ear and say what they have to say.
So even though I'm really interested in the relationship between people, I also consider the ways in which we relate to the world around us.
And so when I was first living in New York City a few years back, I was thinking a lot about the familiar architectural forms that surrounded me and how I would like to better relate to them.
And I thought, "Well, hey!
Maybe if I want to better relate to walls, maybe I need to be more wall-like myself."
So I made a wearable wall that I could wear as a backpack.
And so I would put it on and sort of physically transform myself so that I could either contribute to or critique the spaces that surrounded me.
(Laughter) And so jumping off of that, thinking beyond the built environment into the natural world, I have this ongoing project called Botanicalls -- which actually enables houseplants to tap into human communication protocols.
So when a plant is thirsty, it can actually make a phone call or post a message to a service like Twitter.
And so this really shifts the human/plant dynamic, because a single house plant can actually express its needs to thousands of people at the same time.
And so kind of thinking about scale, my most recent obsession is actually with glaciers -- of course.
And so glaciers are these magnificent beings, and there's lots of reasons to be obsessed with them, but what I'm particularly interested in is in human-glacier relations.
(Laughter) Because there seems to be an issue.
The glaciers are actually leaving us.
They're both shrinking and retreating -- and some of them have disappeared altogether.
And so I actually live in Canada now, so I've been visiting one of my local glaciers.
And this one's particularly interesting, because, of all the glaciers in North America, it receives the highest volume of human traffic in a year.
They actually have these buses that drive up and over the lateral moraine and drop people off on the surface of the glacier.
And this has really gotten me thinking about this experience of the initial encounter.
When I meet a glacier for the very first time, what do I do?
There's no kind of social protocol for this.
I really just don't even know how to say hello.
Do I carve a message in the snow?
Or perhaps I can assemble one out of dot and dash ice cubes -- ice cube Morse code.
Or perhaps I need to make myself a speaking tool, like an icy megaphone that I can use to amplify my voice when I direct it at the ice.
But really the most satisfying experience I've had is the act of listening, which is what we need in any good relationship.
And I was really struck by how much it affected me.
This very basic shift in my physical orientation helped me shift my perspective in relation to the glacier.
And so since we use devices to figure out how to relate to the world these days, I actually made a device called the Glacier Embracing Suit.
(Laughter) And so this is constructed out of a heat reflected material that serves to mediate the difference in temperature between the human body and the glacial ice.
And once again, it's this invitation that asks people to lay down on the glacier and give it a hug.
So, yea, this is actually just the beginning.
These are initial musings for this project.
And just as with the wall, how I wanted to be more wall-like, with this project, I'd actually like to take more a of glacial pace.
And so my intent is to actually just take the next 10 years and go on a series of collaborative projects where I work with people from different disciplines -- artists, technologists, scientists -- to kind of work on this project of how we can improve human-glacier relations.
So beyond that, in closing, I'd just like to say that we're in this era of communications and device proliferation, and it's really tremendous and exciting and sexy, but I think what's really important is thinking about how we can simultaneously maintain a sense of wonder and a sense of criticality about the tools that we use and the ways in which we relate to the world.
Thanks.
(Applause)