Twitter has emerged from a simple SMS service created by the folks at the San Francisco-based podcasting company Odeo to the world’s most popular micro-blogging platform with over 54 million users.
In the early days of Twitter (2006-2007), the Internet company is a ‘true’ micro-blogging platform just like Plurk and Jaiku. At that time, most users published tweets (a.k.a updates) about their lifestyles (eg. I’m having lunch with my boss) and share their opinions and thoughts regarding a particular issue (eg. I think Brawn’s Jenson Button will win this year’s F1 season.) As times goes by, users change the main focus of Twitter. It’s no longer just a “What are you doing?” platform. I’d say it’s more of real-time information of the things users care about — work, industry, company, news.
Also, the culture of Twitter is all about participation in a large public square. Dubbed as an “epicenter of world events”, Twitter is filled with lots of news and information. Everyone on Twitter has become a web journalist, breaking news at a much faster pace and probably higher accuracy as compared to traditional media. What’s more is that many Internet marketers and bloggers tend to use the service as a marketing tool to publish their articles or products.
So what will Twitter become in the near future? Well, Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic.com and LeWeb.net conference has racked his brain and put all his ideas and predictions for the future of Twitter in a 18-minute long video. It’s a very informative video!
1. It will reach masses of people
2. They won’t use 
the same tools as we do
3. It will not be only about Twitter
-status updates will be open across social software
-all social software will have status updates
-Facebook has 40+ million updates a day
4. Twitter will still be dominant
 in status updates
it’s the motherboard on which we plug in
5. We will laugh thinking we were updating them all manually
6. The social graph 
will also open up
7. Twitter will be big to get an idea of a person or a brand reputation
not by number of followers but mostly influence with retweeting and lists
lets you think like that person thinks
8. Twitter will replace SMS for millions of people
-it is portable and archives across devices
-you don’t need to remember a phone number
-you are not tied to a mobile operator
9. Twitter might replace Chat for many people, too
-a DM exchange is very similar to a private chat
-Twitter lists are very similar to a public chat room
10. Location will be one of the most widespread status update
11. Private updates will be bigger than public updates
12. Public ecommerce 
status updates won’t work, buying things is very intimate
13. Live reviews of any place and product will deeply influence it though
14. Promos by brands and retailers will have big success 
for last minute deals
15. Talking to shops and restaurants via Twitter will become standard
and will get opt in coupons as we enter a shop, based on location
16. Web will be a fraction 
of mobile use
17. Dating over Status updates
won’t be big
18. Twitter won’t display 
ads in your main feed
19. Users will get too angry at unsolicited ads
20. Other revenue opportunities such as pro accounts for businesses will be enough
21. There will be more devices publishing updates than humans, wifi scale, planes, trains, cars all posting updates
22. Corporations will have entire teams devoted to Twitter and status updates
23. Hyperlocal news sites with Twitter geotagging feature
(thanks, @stevefarnworth)
24. Google and Bing will be the dominant ways to search Twitter
25. Google will have its own Twitter and won’t acquire Twitter
26. There will be a few alternatives for niche search such as brand monitoring
27. Internal Enterprise Twitter like services will become standard
28. Vertical Twitter apps 
will start to appear
29. Stocktweets is the first one
30. Twitter will remain mostly used outside of Twitter.com
31. Language will evolve adapting to 140char, concise, ignore rules (thanks, @bernard_d)
32. @mentions spam will grow and become a tough to solve issue
33. There will be less and less bullshit 
in public events and in general
34. It will always be about you, 
not the tools