I still get the question from relatives, "what do you use Twitter for?"
Twitter is no Facebook, so the value of a 140 character "tweet" just doesn't appeal to them as much as status updates, "likes," and photo albums from friends and loved ones.
But while not as meteoric as Facebook (more than 1 billion users worldwide), Twitter's base of users continues to grow - there are now more than 500 million Twitter users worldwide.
In its most recent report, the Pew Research Center found that 15 percent of online adults user Twitter:
...the proportion of online adults who use Twitter on a typical day has doubled since May 2011 and has quadrupled since late 2010.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo (or @dickc) is a University of Michigan graduate (#goblue). He will return to campus this Friday to talk about his business (Nov. 16).
More from a UM press release:
Costolo will discuss how he went from the trenches of computer science at U-M to leading a world-changing company. The lecture is free and open to the public. Costolo, a former improv comedian, plans to take a look at the evolution of communications throughout history and Twitter's role in the future of global communication and democratized information. He first gained prominence in the web development world in 2003 when he co-founded FeedBurner, a web feed management provider eventually acquired by Google.
His talk is scheduled for 1pm this Friday, Nov. 16 at the Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor.
You can also see his talk via livestream.
#Correction - an earlier post stated Costolo's talk was scheduled for today. The copy above has been corrected.