Okay, so it’s kind of silly how many blog posts and articles revolve around Twitter these days. It’s kind of silly how much of what I say and share online myself involves Twitter! It’s a technology that talks mostly about itself. It’s just one more online social network. Only a means of communication. But the fact is, Twitter is a revolutionary means of communication—an evolution, you might say—and while it’s still at an early adopter stage, it’s already changing the way we communicate (I just wrote about a book for people with a Twitter-length attention span the other day!), the way we interact with each other, and how important information spreads.

A lot of people ask me what Twitter is, and it’s hard to describe, because so many people are using it in so many different ways. But, I recently saw this video, where Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, speaks at TED about the original motivations behind Twitter and how they compare to the unexpected uses that its members are using it to now.

Watch this. It’s remarkable how Twitter is connecting people around the globe: some people use it to share everyday thoughts with friends and family, some build professional networks, many use it to live report from tech and business conferences, some are helping spread breaking news about things like the California wildfires and the recent Iran elections. One way of thinking about Twitter is that it is slowly linking people in a sort of 3-dimensional, self-reporting search engine, giving web users detailed information about the world and events as they happen.

Click here if you don’t see the video above.

Additionally, if you’re thinking of seeing what Twitter is all about for the first time, TED’s founder Chris Anderson has some great tips on how to approach using Twitter.