Witnessing Half a Decade on Twitter

This Monday, I’ll have spent five years on the microblogging service Twitter. Exactly how much of a commitment is that? Let’s do some crude math: starting with the baseline of 30,000 published tweets, (about 13 a day), I estimate this to be equivalent to writing about 4-8 books. In aggregate, that seems like a lot, but when one publishes on this micromedia network it’s hard to even fathom how it could add up.

To share how I got into this journey, let’s go way back to when I worked at PodTech, a fledgling social media network that pooted out. I did however work with some of the best in the industry, and I recall my colleague Robert Scoble coming by my cube proclaiming “You need to get on Twitter right away Jeremiah”, his eyes ablaze in geek-citement. To me, this was nothing new, as with every week, Scoble would come into the office telling me about the next greatest thing from his interviewing adventures. Yet this one had legs. It felt right. The conversation was small, there were just a few folks on from Silicon Valley, NY, a bunch of edgelings, in fact, I recall the top 100 list looking similar to the top 100 list of Google+ a few months ago, a cadre of mostly well read tech bloggers.

Over time, we saw it grow, and mainstream media celebs moved in, media companies, and brands. Spam started to happen, and we saw a strain on their service as fail whales emerged at great frequency –causing a migration to the ‘backup’ network on Plurk. Over time twitter continued to grow, we saw applications emerge, marketers jump on, and even political figures join into the fray. Things started to grow into a frenzy as there was a race to get to a million twitter followers between aplusk and news networks –a testament to the turning tide of people gaining power over larger corporations –and the the impact this tool had to regime change in distant countries that really don’t feel so far away now. While I could go on and on about what I saw, I’ll leave that to expert story tellers like Shel Israel, he captured the history so well in his book Twitterville, I’ll let you revisit his tome.

Now, on to the future. Where is Twitter going? As my colleague Charlene says, “Social media will be like air”. It will continue to be part of many of our digital communications. I expect automated devices to tweet on their own (from Puppy Tweets, Fridges, and Plants) it’ll spread to cars, appliances and even our heart monitors. Twitter themselves, has gone through a series of internal leadership changes, and has recently launched a new layout, and I expect them to roll-out more features similar to Facebook’s brand pages. In the end, Tweets will become a data layer, just a way to simply pass information, much how we rely on RSS, and then fade into the background as a cultural utility.

It’s been a fun five years on this network, and I look forward to the next 5, as social disappears into the background –and people surface to the front. Thanks Twitter, and all those that are using it.

17 Replies to “Witnessing Half a Decade on Twitter”

  3. Yep, that was back when I got to blog and take part in the blogosphere.  I’m back now though, so I hope we’ll see each other more online.  

    I still haven’t forgotten how welcome you made me feel when I visited the Bay Area years ago.  Hope you’re well too!

  4. ..and with Twitter, we got to connect with super #awesomesauce people like yourself Jeremiah. Connecting the dots is a beautiful thing..

  5. ..and with Twitter, we got to connect with super #awesomesauce people like yourself Jeremiah. Connecting the dots is a beautiful thing..

  11. Great post – I remember being a little hesitant about Twitter when I first heard about it, but after a few days the benefits were clear. Social media will definitely become a built in feature of the web. We’re seeing a lot of integration already…

  12. I’m just a newbie on Twitter – 3 years 3 months, yet so much has changed in just that time. 
    In my industry (construction) which is extremely conservative, twitter has made it into the print media as a ‘next big thing’ in several articles, and there is plenty of over-enthusiastic but rather directionless participation at the moment, probably similar to the B2C brands a couple of years ago.
    I think our industry, and the professional services sector as a whole, is missing a trick with twitter, which is a hugely useful tool for professional networking. That step is yet to come for many, and I’m looking forward to seeing it!

  13. I’m just a newbie on Twitter – 3 years 3 months, yet so much has changed in just that time. 
    In my industry (construction) which is extremely conservative, twitter has made it into the print media as a ‘next big thing’ in several articles, and there is plenty of over-enthusiastic but rather directionless participation at the moment, probably similar to the B2C brands a couple of years ago.
    I think our industry, and the professional services sector as a whole, is missing a trick with twitter, which is a hugely useful tool for professional networking. That step is yet to come for many, and I’m looking forward to seeing it!

  14. I found it helpful over the weekend to create a Twitter List called “People I’ve Met In Person”, and was happy to see that Twitter facilitated real-world introductions and knowledge sharing OFFLINE as well. 

  15. Not looking forward to more auto-tweeting, sorry. Now I do like the idea of people moving back to the front. I hear often complaints that people don’t know how to interact as humans anymore, only via networks. Think it’s a mixed bag so it’ll be interesting to see if your predictions hold, if we put the networks to the back burner and act more like people, online and off. FWIW.

  16. I already need a filter between my brain and my fingers (while tweeting) – direct brain to Twitter updates may produce some very strange tweets from my thought flow.

  17. I already need a filter between my brain and my fingers (while tweeting) – direct brain to Twitter updates may produce some very strange tweets from my thought flow.

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