This week was Twitter’s 10 year anniversary. I haven’t been on Twitter quite that long, but because time works differently on the internet, that makes me one of Twitter’s oldies.
This was my very first tweet:
So, what happened over the past 7 years that I’ve been on Twitter? Was it as “awesome” as I had suspected it might be?
Twitter was my first.
Sure, I was on Facebook, and before that I had been on the precursor to today’s modern social networks: Xanga, Asian Avenue, maybe Myspace and a few others. They were such blips that made no significant difference in the way I saw the world. And every single one of those I joined because it was what everyone else at school was doing.
Before Twitter, social networks weren’t a place of learning or growth, really; they were a place to lurk on that boy you had a crush on, the place to get ahead or stay behind in the high school social arena, the place that kept us “in” or “out” and obsessed in the circles that we’d learn later on meant nothing when we thought it had meant everything. Looking back, it seems like many of the social networks conceived pre-Twitter were designed and built to keep us in and to hold us in a container emulating our real lives. And if we followed someone we didn’t actually know, it was called spam or stalking.
Facebook was about connecting people who already knew one another, strengthening the bonds of IRL connections, and it did this much better than anyone else before it had. But I couldn’t have grown in the way that I did on Facebook.
When Twitter came along, my world changed. I wasn’t just a girl trying to fit in — I was a girl trying to branch out, and it became one of the crucial pieces of how I went from teenage me to adult me.
When I think of it that way, well, social media then isn’t just the ugly necessary beast of our modern age. It’s not just something to be taken for granted like a phase of our lives or something to be cast aside when we feel like we’ve had enough distraction, when it’s time to do some “real” work. It’s not something that we should forget about when we’ve had enough, only to try it on again for size when we need it’s power to spread the word about what we’re doing.
Twitter was the very first real social network that I joined as an adult, because I actually was interested in what was going on there. I joined not because everyone else I knew was tweeting (in fact: in 2009, nobody I knew personally had a Twitter account, let alone knew what it was) — but because I wanted to expand beyond my current real life social network, one that wasn’t creatively fulfilling and interesting enough for a girl who grew up in a place that may as well be the suburbs of a city, who during her 3rd year in fashion school, realized that she didn’t want her life’s work to be sitting in front of a computer working on spec packages and changing sleeve types.
If there ever were an industry where it’s hounded into you that it’s not about what you know, but about who you know, that would be fashion, and as I gave a presentation about a self-directed topic during fashion school (I chose fashion and technology), I was surprised more people weren’t in on it, taking advantage of a free way to network. That was another plus: social media was free, and starting something in fashion was expensive. (I use “was”, because that’s how much the world has changed since then: starting something no longer has to necessarily be as financially all-consuming as it used to be.)
It was probably around then that I realized the irony of the fashion industry: where the obsession is with newness and novelty, yet those working in it often can’t see newness and novelty outside of stylistic elements of dress, and fashion is so much more than that. (Of course, when Instagram came onto the scene a few years later, it became obvious that fashion people are generally very visual, and this worked out better for them.)
7+ years and 5000+ tweets later, I’ve connected with people I never would’ve met in real life. I’ve read things I never would’ve seen shared by the people I know on Facebook. (As Facebook is to memes, baby photos, and telling me your life story, Twitter is to telling me something useful, entertaining or new.) I got gigs and jobs that I were directly connected to me being on Twitter, something that both astounded and delighted me, and changed everything about who I thought I was and could be. It also changed everything about how I viewed the world. Twitter opened the world up, in a way that skeptics would scoff at, perhaps noting that I could’ve done the same thing in real life, by making “real” connections. As if people who use the internet may as well be imaginary friends.
But I’m not a skeptic: I gave Twitter a fair chance, and what ended up happening because I was there — retweeting, sharing and DMing — did end up being pretty awesome after all.
But, as Twitter celebrates 10 years and news headlines announce “Twitter turns 10, but its days may be numbered”, “How Twitter could still blow it and fade away into social network oblivion”, and “Twitter’s user growth continues to stagnate”, I wonder, like many are, what Twitter’s doing wrong and why whatever it’s doing still feels so right to me.
The speculation points out that Twitter’s growth is stagnating, that it’s being eclipsed by the fast-rising networks getting adopted in droves by late Millennials and Generation Z.
But what if Twitter’s beauty was that it was never supposed to be a place for everyone, but a special place for curious folk: those who enjoy new ideas, being at the pulse of news, the simplicity of the 140 characters? And that it’s fast rise and growth in the early years was exactly because early adopters, those who love new ideas, would’ve adopted it then. And that since then, growth has settled because the world has spread out, people found what worked for them, and maybe all that is a good thing.
After all, today, everyone else can just get what Twitter delivers first-hand by reading about it second-hand. It’s common to now see Facebook posts linking to a blog off-site, with a tweet embedded in said blog post. It’s the online media ecosystem and Twitter is undoubtedly still an important part of that, arguably the core.
Okay, so not everyone’s on Twitter. But most people hear about news that first came from Twitter. Things spread first on Twitter.
And maybe that’s enough. Because sometimes good things disappear because they tried too hard to be someone they’re not.
Or maybe it’s not. I don’t know.
Since Twitter, I’ve joined a bunch of other social networks as one would when they like to try new ways of discovering new things. And the ones that have stayed with me are the ones that do something that others aren’t doing quite as well. Funny thing is, I still consider Twitter the hub of everything I find worth sharing. It’s the easiest, simplest, and most timeless (yes, I did just call a social media network timeless).
When I joined Twitter, I wanted to learn things, I wanted to know things, I wanted to be as close to the action of the world as I could, and that all lived on there, delivered in 140 character tweets. It gave me a glimpse of a whole new world outside my own bubble, a way to be on the internet that brought us closer, made us better, more connected, more fulfilled. Social media turned the glossy, cold veneers of technology into an enabler of humanity, for better or for worse. (Better, I say!)
If there’s room for people who want more of that, then Twitter isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
But if it ever did drift away into oblivion as so many of the good things that have come and gone throughout human history have, that wouldn’t make it any less awesome. It’s like any relationship that was good while it lasted, that eventually led to something even better. That’s life/evolution/change.
Happy anniversary Twitter: I hope you know how amazing you truly are. Keep doing you.
I’m on Twitter, obvs. Follow me at @helloworldimana.
