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I love Twitter! At first I made fun of it, because it is very narcissistic, and there's already so much narcissism flowing in this industry, I was like, 'Really, one more?' So I was against it at first. But I really love the idea of the direct connection - there's no middle man muddling it up.

Twitter has been my life's work in many senses. It started with a fascination with cities and how they work, and what's going on in them right now.

On the one hand Twitter gives you the opportunity to engage with people, which is great, but on the other there are people who feel they can say whatever they want, put poison out there, really, without fear of any repercussions.

Some people really like to get into Twitter, but it's not my thing.

I get Twitter, and think it's a great way to keep it in touch, but I don't do it a lot. I hate reading when people tweet about what you're eating or who they are out with, but it's a nice way to keep in touch with people.

Twitter has restored my faith in humanity. I thought I'd hate it, but while there are lots of knobheads, there are even more lovely people. It delights me how witty and friendly most people are.

The first complaint we hear from everyone is: 'Why would I want to join this stupid useless thing and know what my brother's eating for lunch?' But that really misses the point because Twitter is fundamentally recipient-controlled - you choose to listen and you choose to leave. But you also choose what to put down and what to share.

I think if you look down the road for Twitter, we would like to be a company - a service - that is used by billions of people around the world in every country in the world because we feel that the power of Twitter is that it brings people closer to each other, to their governments, to their heroes, etc.

Twitter was like a poem. It was rich, real and spontaneous. It really fit my style. In a year and a half, I tweeted 60,000 tweets, over 100,000 words. I spent a minimum eight hours a day on it, sometimes 24 hours.