Ed Bockelman

Twitter Has Brought Me Full Circle

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Twitter has brought me full circle

This week, Martin Boss gave me the nudge I needed to start writing about what I've learned about Twitter.

Like Martin, I've been struggling to figure out how to make the best use of Twitter. It's been a long journey, and part of it brings me all the way back to my early days online.

In 1996, I was living in a remote part of the country, and dial-up was expensive. But Juno was promoting their free email service, and they had an 800 number where users could dial up and pick up their email for free. I quickly discovered "Doctor Bob's Guide to Offline Internet Access" and the ACCMAIL internet forum where people discussed how to surf the web using only email.

Juno_accmail.org

Lots of other people using Juno found the forum just like I did, and we created a spinoff list called Juno_accmail. I was the second list maintainer. I was so thankful for what I was learning that I wanted to help others who were learning it.

I quickly realized I couldn't sustain the time it took to keep running the list. I passed it on to Alan S. Harrell who deserves all the credit for breathing true life into the project. Amazingly, the list had some traffic all the way up to last year! Alan created a home site for the mailing list that you is preserved in the Internet Archive here.

Before too long I had local internet access, and in 2000 I finally got the broadband access I'd been yearning for. Learning how to use the internet became less important to me. I was mainly focused on learning Chinese. There were lots of new resources popping up online, and I created a couple of Chinese-focused websites myself.

A snapshot of the home page of Chinese-characters.org

A shapshot of the home page of Learn-Chinese-Words.com

I wasn't quick to jump on the social media bandwagon. I didn't feel like I had much to say. I've never been interested in sharing every detail of my life with others.

It's amazing to me to think that Twitter wasn't even around in 2005. I was immediately interested when I heard about it, though, for one reason:

Twitter is the best way to instantly find out what's going on.

Any time I'd read about something happening somewhere (earthquake, riot, etc), I'd search Twitter to see if anyone was tweeting about it. It turns out, a lot of people see Twitter the same way. I got to wondering how people's perceptions about Twitter have changed over time.

I think we can find a clue in Twitter's ever-changing motto.

What is Twitter, anyway?

I spent some time surfing the Wayback Machine today and it's interesting to see how Twitter's motto has morphed over time:

9/11/2006:

Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you are doing.

Back then, Twitter's home page displayed actual tweets from users, including this one from Crystal:

Sanitizing. mouth feels great cos of amazing new floss I bought, and sonicare! gotta love a clean mouth!

A sample Twitter user page in 2006

11/9/2006:

A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?

That month, Benj appeared briefly on the home page of Twitter, and is now immortalized in the Wayback machine with this tweet:

Fire roaring. Sushi good. Mylo + Imogen. I have to poop.

2/12/2009:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

2/9/2011:

The best way to discover what’s new in your world.

Image of Twitter home page in 2011 taken from Archive.org

By that month, Twitter had started curating the tweets that appeared on its home page, including this one:

ConanOBrien When I really stop and think about it, I realize I've only enjoyed four sandwiches in my life.

2/29/2012:

Welcome to Twitter. Find out what’s happening, right now, with the people and organizations you care about.

2/16/2017:

Twitter. It's What's Happening.

Snapshot of Twitter home page taken 5/2022

Today:

Twitter is what’s happening and what people are talking about right now.

I finally joined Twitter in 2012, opening not one, but two accounts. I thought Twitter would be a good way to promote my websites.

I discovered Buffer App, which let me schedule tweets for free, and I started tweeting Chinese vocabulary. There were a few other accounts doing the same thing, and I'd retweet the stuff I liked. To my surprise, other people liked my tweets and I regularly got new followers.

It took me almost a year to start tweeting, but once I did, I was pretty consistent about it.  Here are two of my first tweets:

My plans change again

In 2020, I decided to pursue my childhood dream of becoming a writer. But how would I start?

That year I stumbled onto a reference to Roam Research. I'd been using Evernote for a few years, but I was frustrated with its limitations. I was so excited about the possibilities. In fact, I started polluting my main Twitter feed with tweets about Roam, and realized that I needed to start another account.

Nat Eliason was the biggest proponent of Roam Research at the time, and he was also a successful writer. He blogged about how he became successful.

(That's right, Nat bought that house in cash from the money he made selling his Roam Research course.)

I quickly moved on from all the hype about Roam (I now use Obsidian) and started focusing on trying to find someone who was only a step or two ahead of me. After all, Nat had been tweeting and blogging for years, so I couldn't just follow what he was doing now.

Then I found Kevon:

I quickly learned that even though I had successfully gained 12,000 followers, they weren't engaged followers. That meant that they were happy to consume my content (if they were even still using Twitter, which many are not), but they weren't going to be much help for me doing anything else.

Over the last year, I've been learning from Kevon what really works on Twitter.

I already knew that you need to provide valuable content so people will benefit from following you.

I also knew that tweeting what I had for lunch isn't going to make people follow me. The only people who might care about that are people who already like me.

What I needed to learn from Kevon was how to get people to like me.

What I'm learning

Kevon helped me discover what I probably should have figured out myself:

  • We like people we can relate to.
  • We like people who help us.
  • We like people who aren't perfect.
  • We like people who are consistent.
  • We like people who surprise us in small ways.

My challenge now is to take what I've been learning and put it into practice. The biggest lesson I've been learning is that the most effective people start by interacting with one person at a time.

Which takes me back to my days running the Juno_accmail list in 1996. That's what I did. I interacted with one person at a time. We all learned together, and we grew together.

Why did it take me so long to figure this out?

What's next?

The short answer:

  • I'm working on becoming more relatable.
  • I'm trying to help one person at a time.
  • I'm focusing on being a learner instead of an expert.

I realize this is a disappointing article for anyone who came here hoping to learn how to use Twitter more effectively. But all is not lost: Martin wrote an article that shares what he's learned about Twitter. I'm sure you'll find something you can use there:

As for me, here's where I am right now. Feel free to follow me on Twitter if you want to see where I go from here.