Why I Heart Twitter

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I love Twitter. But I didn’t always love it. In fact, for the first few months I was on, I actually thought it was completely pointless.

Story time, kiddos…

I got on Twitter in September of 2008 (late, according to most of my counterparts working in social media). I actually jumped on before a trip to NYC, and my first tweets were full of “I’m at the Guggenheim!” and other such nonsense. I didn’t really “get” it, but I figured that I should at least give it a try. To me, it was a way to shout out to the Internet at large about what I was doing… but that felt kind of pointless – I mean, who really cared??

I was shortly followed by a bunch of people in Charlotte, NC. I didn’t know any of them, but quickly found out that, in addition to being full of snark and sass, they were a really cool bunch of smart people. I happen to like smarts, sass and snark, so I started posting a bit more and responding to their posts.

Truth be told, I still didn’t “get” Twitter. It was all like a big disjointed IM conversation to me, and all of it was pointless.

So I went out to a meetup (tweetup), and actually met these people.  My impressions were correct! The local people were just as cool offline as they were online (if not more so). Now I had faces and personalities to go with internet personas and avatars. Progress!

Then I got laid off.

After calling a co-worker (to declare that we were going for margaritas) and my Mom (to tell her I was laid off), I tweeted about being laid off. I wasn’t home yet, but when I got home to change before heading out for said margaritas, guess what happened? I GOT Twitter. I understood.

In the 10 minutes between Tweeting out that I was laid off and arriving at home I had about 30 replies from people I didn’t know sending their condolences, asking for my resume, or telling me to keep my chin up. A lot of these people I didn’t even follow, but they saw my note because someone I did ReTweeted it, and they offered their help.  Seriously, COMPLETE STRANGERS.

From there, it was a bit of a snowball effect. I kept connecting with more people, shortly moved to NYC, and continued to use Twitter. I started giving back. ReTweeting things that I thought others would find valuable, sharing their stories if they needed help, and connecting with people. Not because it was benefiting me, but because I cared and I wanted to provide the help and support that had once been provided to me.

What’s important here isn’t the fact that I was laid off. The important fact is that I had the opportunity to see first hand what a community, even a loosely-knit one, can do. What sort of personal impact it can have, even for a complete stranger and someone new to the scene.

It’s not about my story. Its about viewing things in a new light, about turning something around and seeing it from all angles, and about having patience. I tweeted for a few months without really “getting it”, and then one day, I did.

You never know what sort of opportunities can lead to learning, and all too often we give up before we really “get it”.

So. What about you? When did you see something in a different light? When did things “click” for you?

Tagged as: patience, Twitter