Went out today to listen to one of St. Louis own stars in the world of technology speak at Webster University.

Of course, not a lot of people realize this, but the guy who came up with the idea for microblogging service Twitter is a St. Louis native, Jack Dorsey. He spent much of his life here, before leaving for the East Coast and, later, the West Coast.

A few things of interest from his time on the Webster campus, where he being feted as the school’s 2009 person of the year.

• Dorsey, who now serves as Twitter’s chairman of the board, has been focusing his energy on a new venture using the same technology. Dorsey said the company’s name would be revealed soon and hinted that it would involve the health care and financial service sectors.
• He was asked about the staying power of his creation in a world where it is not uncommon for a social network to be abandoned by fickle consumers. Dorsey suggested that there is a distinct difference between Twitter and services like reigning social network king Facebook and former champion MySpace. “It’s more of a utility than a product,” Dorsey said. “We have an open platform that people can build worlds upon. That’s what keeps us from being a fad.”
• The common usage term for a message sent over Twitter is “tweet.” But not by choice. “The word “tweet” was pretty annoying to the company, early on,” Dorsey said. “It took us a long time to appreciate it.” As in, it was just two months ago that the word became accepted internally.
• Dorsey wasn’t exactly your typical kid. He says he became obsessed with maps - he’d study them at night, and left them hanging around his room - and the way traffic moves. The idea for Twitter actually emerged from his love of traffic dispatching systems.