Twitter founder Jack Dorsey claims it was made to be ‘meta’

Twitter is the well-known microblogging service where users can follow others and read their 140-character messages called ‘tweets’. From a marketing perspective, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter had a solidified strategy to encourage users to sign up to the service.

I wanted to create a platform that’s about talking about the platform, you know what I mean? It’s a place where people can connect and say arbitrary statements about Twitter itself. People were hooked instantly. Nobody knew what it was, but everybody seemed to be talking about it. We created our very own API so users can send feeds to their websites and apps broadcasting what they have to say about twitter. Now imagine Facebook, but you leave all the ‘meta’ information. Now that’s a reality! No more CityVille invites, just Facebook talking about Facebook itself with timestamps and shit. That’s what we have, and that’s why it is 2012 and Twitter hasn’t collapsed to Facebook. Twitter is simply and beautifully the ‘meta’ platform.
-Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO

But that’s not all – a senior developer for the $7 billion dollar company provided additional insight as to why this marketing strategy was so effective:

People want fame! Sure, they can tweet information about their dogs, kids, new ski jackets, or their latest romantic endeavor. But those aren’t areas where people can connect to 100% of the time. If Twitter is just a platform to talk about twitter, EVERYONE on Twitter knows what it is and likes Twitter, otherwise they wouldn’t be reading that tweet. So they’re compelled to read it.

Jack Dorsey originally expressed concern about how people wouldn’t get on with their lives – and simply tweeted about tweeting. It still goes on today, though to a lesser degree. He is in the works of a new web app calculating Twitter statistics, with a state-of-the-art AI engine. The app determined that Twitter updates providing valuable information has increased by 0.2% in the past quarter, a higher growth rate than any other quarter in Twitters’ existence. “Valuable information” is equated to those tweets of learning value or those influencing the world around us. For example, constructively talking about #OWS would be considered valuable, and the app activists simply eating chips and trolling the hashtag are filtered out.