For me 2009 goes down as the year other people discovered Twitter. It went from a small and fairly intimate place to hangout to a busy bustling intersection of information, commerce and conversations.

It felt almost like moving from a small town to a big and somewhat impersonal city.

Some of the events of 2009 in which Twitter played a big part for me included:

#media140
#futuresummit
#cccsyd
#poltech
#toto
#usnowsydney
and the various BarCamps in Sydney & Canberra.

The growth of community in real life that was enabled by Twitter continues to amaze me – STUB, Silicon Beach, the various Sydney Coffee Mornings (e.g. NSCM), & SHTBOX in Sydney and countless informal meetups.  A big thank-you to all the kind and lovely people that I met on Twitter and at the various meetups – wishing you all a wonderful 2010.

Twitter also played a different part in reporting the news.  No longer did I rely upon news agencies for breaking news. Instead people on Twitter broke the news and it was left to the traditional news agencies to verify and follow up on the stories.