It did not take me more than a week to realize that my social studies project(1.0) is broken. It’s funny, sometimes you can tell instantly when you’ve made a mistake. Kind of like those times when your significant other gives you that look. You know the one. Where all of the fury of hell itself glares at you from two small portals.

Yeah, that’s how badly I messed up with 1.0.

Before I go on, let me explain the concept behind ImproveSharing a little more thoroughly than just this piece. @ImproveSharing is my attempt to use twitter in a completely new and unique way. Big statement I know, but I am very convinced that with what I am trying to do, this is the case.

Twitter for the most part is viewed as mass marketing engine, with the occasional opportunity for a conversation here and there. The way I see it is people use their feeds to share messages and information that they are hoping reaches the largest number of people.

Right there is one thing that sets ImproveSharing apart from most other twitter accounts. Each tweet that I send on ImproveSharing has the intention to reach only one person. Each message is individually personalized to resonate with only those that receive it.

So how do I do that? Well, first it takes a lot of reading. I spend about thirty minutes to an hour reading what the person has shared on the interwebs. The process usually involves going down the rabbit hole of the links and information someone has provided on their twitter account.

Maybe it links to their website for a company they started/ work for, and I read everything the website has to offer. Sometimes it links to a blog where they share thoughts that are longer than 140 characters, and I read some of their past posts. Other times (like myself for example) it links right here to Medium.

Is this a little creepy? Maybe. But I argue that the internet itself is inherently a bit creepy, and by sharing on the internet you are accepting the fact that sharing is a two way process.

So then after taking the time to read what someone has shared, I craft a tweet that asks them a “Big Question” that relates to what I have learned about them. The goal of the question is for it to really make a person stop and think for a second. I want it to be profound and deep enough for it to resonate with them. Make them think about how that question relates to them, and how they can answer it. And sometimes they do.

This however is not the only thing that sets ImproveSharing apart. What really makes it different then how anyone else is using twitter is its defining principal.

Each person only gets one tweet. That is, I will never tweet the same person twice. And why do I do this? Well for one thing it’s a challenge. It challenges me to learn about 25 new people a week, people I have no connection to what so ever, and try to make a connection.

The way I see it I’m writing a long form chronicle of modern history. An ever evolving real time story of people that exist. Think of it as a microblog version of “This American Life”.

A story that has no ending……