Twitter is a platform

One of my takeaways from last week’s Chirp conference is that Twitter is building a platform. It’s more than a service to exchange 140 character messages. Static websites are going out of style and are being replaced by real-time streams. And with its more than 105 million registered users Twitter and 300,000 signing up every day, Twitter is in a strong position to take the lead in the real-time realm.

An even more important indicator for that, aside from the rapidly growing number of tweets and users, is the large and vibrant ecosystem that has formed around Twitter. Today, there are 100,000 apps that use or support Twitter. That’s pretty amazing for a company that’s only been in business for three years.

If I look at my own Twitter account, I see that I use over 25 of them, including Plancast, Tweetvite, Tweetdeck, Klout, Foursquare and TwitPic. One helps me manage my Twitter stream, another lets me use my account to track my friends’ social calendars, a third let’s me insert media into my own Twitter stream and yet another one let’s me track and gauge my influence and that of others. With all these apps, Twitter is becoming more useful and increasingly important medium for me to stay connected with the people that matter to me.