Two months on Twitter

For the past two months, I've thrown myself into Twitter, late to the party, but keen to make the most of a community that has grown 1000% over the past year. Partly for work reasons, so that i can properly advise my clients on how to use Twitter for good, but also because I'm a geek and Twitter affords me further methods for connecting, learning and sharing.

So far, so typical, but what's really impressed me about Twitter is it's real-world-ness; it's tangible in a way that LinkedIn or Facebook have never been for me. First example of this was when a couple of weeks back i attended the Brighton Twitter festival, Brightwest, and although initially terrified, a couple of beers in and I'd met more locally based and like-minded people than i had in five years of living here. I'm not one for networking, and instant conversation doesn't come too easily to me, but having gained a small flavour of peoples personality's before the event, it was amazingly easy to talk to them in 'real' life. Plus, i won two bottles of champagne, whilst helping to raise money for a water charity, rounding off a marvellous evening.

Second tangible example of Twitter was last week, when i attended Measurement Camp, a self-governed seminar/workshop helmed by Will McInnes. Basically, a group of fifty or so like-minded digital marketers, PR people, SEO experts and other social media types, gathered together to discuss the problems facing the measurement of social media, and the possible solutions. Like Brightwest i had no idea what to expect, and again, was amongst a friendly, curious and intelligent group of people willing to share ideas.

Others have blogged more succinctly about the above events, and so i won't go into detail, except to say that for me, Twitter made them both possible. I wouldn't have heard of either without updates on Twitter, and wouldn't have had the confidence to attend them without the sense of community that Twitter gives you. Whilst Facebook still remains masterly for the hedonistic side of life, old school friends and such, and LinkedIn holding firm as the definitive online professional platform, Twitter has blown me away as an actual 'social' media.