Back in November, I celebrated 12 years on Twitter and I reflected,
“I still love Twitter, and it is still my go-to place to connect and learn from others when I’m online. But, 12 years in, I miss the power of this network to engage me in deep learning filled with rich conversation. However I also recognize that my focus has changed too. I transmit more than I converse, I dabble more than I engage. If I’m honest, I probably could not have maintained the engagement I gave Twitter at that time for 12 years.“
Recently, I responded to a tweet that asked: “has anyone ever found a friend through twitter and actually met up with them?”
https://twitter.com/hashplanted/status/1260988566676668422?s=21
And I responded, “Again and again and again…”, then shared a few examples:
Just off the top of my head. People I friended on Twitter before meeting F2F:@lizbdavis @plugusin @jrichardson30 @courosa @gcouros @khmmc @bbray27 @shareski @Philip_Cummings @snbeach @djakes @verenanz @_valeriei @dkuropatwa @mguhlin @ShellTerrell @fryed @wfryer @spencerideas
— Dᴀᴠɪᴅ Tʀᴜss ∞β (@datruss) May 16, 2020
I genuinely miss the days when I would get onto Twitter at about 4:30, after a day of teaching, and I’d scroll my timeline all the way back to the last tweet that I read in order to ‘catch up’ on what I missed during the day. I miss conversations that would last 15+ tweets, with others joining in to the ‘conversation’, and I miss the sense of connectedness and intimacy I had with genuine friends that I had never met face to face. I miss how Twitter was connected to blogging, and conversations went from sharing a link to conversations in the blog’s comments. It was a different time, and it comes with some nostalgia.
But as much as Twitter has changed, so have I. I lurk a lot more. I move conversations to Direct Messages, or other communication tools. I transmit – meaning, when I write this Daily-Ink, or a post on Pair-a-Dimes, or on my Podcast, or YouTube, then I share a link on Twitter… sometimes my last 3 or 4 Tweets might be me sharing something I’ve done. This can seem like I’m marketing or doing self-promotion, and some people don’t like that… I look at it 2 ways: 1. I produced some content to share, and I’d actually like some attention on it for the effort. And, 2. Is it really self-promotion when I’m not selling anything?
If it really bothers someone, it’s really easy to hit the unfollow button. I also don’t read and comment on as many blogs as I used to, and so I’m not engaging the way I wishes others do. That said, I still find it funny when someone retweets a link I share (be it to my content or someone else’s) faster than it would take to read the content that was shared! I make it a rule not to share anything I haven’t taken the time to read or watch myself.
So, as much as I miss the old days of Twitter, I’m using Twitter differently and can’t expect the same experience I had before smartphones, hashtags, and less than 500 people on my timeline. Things have changed. But I still love Twitter, and 95+% of the time I see good things and ‘Angry Twitter’ doesn’t show up in my network. That’s a far better ratio than Facebook, and my community on Twitter that I engage with is still pretty awesome. It’s not what it used to be, but neither am I.
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PS. Twitter EDU is a free eBook I wrote to help people find greater value in the tool when they get started. Share it, if you know someone that can use it.
