By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey told me about the 3 great uses of Twitter before most celebrities even knew what Twitter was (except Ashton Kutcher). Then Oprah joined. And suddenly there was a race to get as many followers as possible. Yes, even bots count. But this race had no end.

Twitter is good if you want to throw parties, have a lifeline during a terrorist attack, and stay connected with mom. In a Q&A in DISCOVER magazine:

What was the technology that made it possible?
AOL’s Instant Messenger was getting big and included this thing called “status.” You could set your “away status,” and you could see what your buddy list was doing at a glance. It was a dispatch system, but it was limited: There were only four status options. We took the concept of status and mixed it with the ubiquity of texting. We’re not building a social network; we’re allowing users to issue a series of personal newswires, 140 characters or less. The reason Twitter works is that we recognized patterns in the world. We listened, and we made those patterns more convenient.

That interview was back in December 2008. In just one year, Twitter’s growth has been explosive. Twitter is personal and easy to use, so it’s varied adoption is hardly surprising. Watch this digital representation Twitter’s history, through floating avatars, video game graphics, and music.

Twitter Code Swarm from Ben Sandofsky on Vimeo.