6 Stages of Twitter

I am not the most tech-savvy girl in the world and when I heard about this business of Twitter last fall I was completely clueless.  This is after I gave in to my husband’s persistent entreaties to join Facebook.  Prior to joining Facebook, I had looked down my nose at the people who felt the need to reconnect with high school friends they were just fine not thinking about for the past 20 years.  I finally signed up, telling my husband I would never spend any time on the site.  Was I wrong.  I immediately fell in love with the sense of connection to friends and family.  It was on Facebook that I started hearing about Twitter.  I was intrigued but frankly didn’t understand how it worked or what the point of it was.  Thinking I had to stay current, I created an account in September of 2008.  I had no idea what to do from there.  The account lay dormant until January when one of my Facebook friends, @ToddBrink, gave me a tutorial.  I quickly became obsessed.  In real life I don’t like most people, but on Twitter I adored everyone.  Now that have been Twittering for 8 months I have been reflecting on my changing experiences with Twitter.  Therefore, I present you with the 6 Stages of Twitter:

1) Resistance.  This is when you think that Twitter is for nerds and geeks and people who lack the ability to make friends in real life. (True, true, and true; but other people use it too)

2) Confusion.  Once you submit to your curiosity you log on and have no idea how it works.  Who is a follower and how do I get some?  What is an @ and a RT?  What the hell is #FollowFriday?  Luckily, people on Twitter are happy to answer your questions.  That is, if you can figure out how to get them to follow you so they actually can see your question.

3) Finding your identity.  Who am I going to be on Twitter?  For some, this may be a non-issue.  If you have a product to promote or a bunch of techie tips to share, that’s what you do.  But I was interested in conversation.  I had to figure out if I was going to get into political discussions, if I was going to curse and use foul language (which I do in real life), if I wanted to risk offending people.  Was I willing to authentically be myself?  How would I use Twitter?  Would I be able to “talk” to people enough to keep them engaged?  Would I follow every one back and what if I followed first and they did not reciprocate?  Would I focus on some issue or cause?  How revealing would I be?

4) Excitement.  Once I figured out my identity and started collecting followers, I got hooked into the immediacy of the connection to people.  There was so much information being shared, so much positive feedback, so many funny, fascinating people sharing their lives.  I would rush home at the end of the day to read every post I had missed while at work.  I would spend the entire evening on Twitter, much to the amusement of my husband who had to twist my arm just to get me on Facebook.

5) Disappointment.  Once the initial rush wears off, you may find that all the love that seemed to flow in abundance between you and your Twitter friends can be fleeting.  I would get hurt and confused when people I thought I had a great rapport with suddenly unfollowed me seemingly without provocation.  And when I replied to someone and got no response in return.  I would be offended when I would follow someone thinking we would get on famously only to have them not follow me back – especially when we had many mutual friends.  I would get jealous when people who had been paying so much attention to me started getting infatuated with others.  Yes, this is because I am a petty, possessive person in real life, but it felt like high school all over again.

6) Acceptance.  This is when I got over myself and stopped taking everything so personally.  It is when I figured out how Twitter can work for me and what my strengths were.  I gained confidence and realized that sometimes I would tweet and no one would care: and that was ok.  I came to understand that due to Twitter’s immediacy, relationships are accelerated and just like that college sweetheart who thought the sun shone out of your bum for two weeks then flatly dumped you (although that never happened to me), Twitter friendships can be fleeting.  You decide to be polite and as interactive as you can, you try to be interesting and interested, you accept that you are going to miss out on about 90% of what is being said and that you will understand about 89% of what you do catch.  You develop your favorite tweeters pay attention to them.  You try to keep growing and learning from others.

Twitter has been a mirror for me.  It has shown me my insecurities and my talents.  It has made me doubt myself and made me feel great about myself.  I wish that people I never met did not have the ability to affect me in that way, and I don’t think that they do any more.  Well, at least the bit about making me doubt myself.  In the end, Twitter has added great value to my life.