Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers

Technology companies have been the most active in relying on others to innovate for them. This is in large part because the Internet lets people exchange ideas easily and rapidly with large groups, and computing tools let people design new products cheaply. Twitter started two years ago as a bare-bones service, offering little more than the ability to post 140-character messages. Then, it outsourced its idea generation to its users. The company watches how people use the service and which ideas catch on. Then its engineers turn the ideas into new features. In the next several weeks, Twitter users will discover two new features, Lists and Retweets, that had the same user-generated beginnings.