My early introduction to Twitter

Like many people, I first learned about Twitter from news released during the March 2007 SXSW conference. Twitter launched in 2006, but I don't think I heard about it then. I don't remember. I could have read something about it in 2006 and glossed over the story.

From what I can tell, I posted my first links about Twitter in an article created at ToledoTalk.com on March 11, 2007.

• Toledo Talk - All a Twitter
  • first version created on Mar 11, 2007.

Contents of version 1 of that Toledo Talk post:

• Twitter.com
• Twitter Blog
• Twitter API
• Twitter Lingo

• The Several Habits of Wildly Successful Twitter Users
• 5 Ways to Use Twitter for Good
• Twitter Tips the Tuna
• Twitter.PBwiki

March 2007 Toledo Talk Thread

Mar 20, 2007 - Toledo Talk thread - Do you Twitter - 8 comments

My two comments in that thread:

I created a twitter account last week for testing/playing around with. Birders could post bird sightings from the field and alert other birders out in the field with something like this, especially in May when people from all over the U.S. are visiting the southwest Lake Erie shoreline.

Instead of calling a rare bird hotline and getting info that could be hours old, or instead visiting one of the nature centers and hoping someone else stopped in and reported a rare sighting, or instead of reading about a rare bird on the Web in the evening after the fact, a service like twitter could allow someone at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge to alert immediately birders at Metzger Marsh and Magee Marsh that a Ruff shorebird is at Ottawa.

And I thought about incorporating twitter with Toledo Talk for live blogging from an event or a meeting or whatever. I would simply grab the RSS file at regular intervals from my twitter account and display it here.

Twitter is a nice alternative when an Internet connection cannot be obtained, but cell phone service is available.

posted by jr at 03:11 P.M. EST on Tue Mar 20, 2007

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Twitter availability has been erratic over the past week, since their fame really took off at the SXSW conference. Their Web page currently states:

"Twitter: down for maintenance—be back shortly!"

Twitter was created by Evan Williams who helped create Blogger, and he was the one who kept Blogger limping along until he got a little funding to hire additional help. Eventually, he sold Blogger to Google, left Google, and created Odeo.

posted by jr at 04:02 P.M. EST on Tue Mar 20, 2007

Comment by another user in that March 2007 TT thread:

But, while I can't wrap my head around twitter, for some reason, I completely understand Tumblr.

posted by TheTalentedMrC at 03:13 P.M. EST on Wed Mar 21, 2007 #

My "took off" link posted above points to this group of Techmeme.com stories from March 2007:
http://www.techmeme.com/070311/p11#a070311p11

Mar 11, 2007 Mashable.com post

To some, it really feels like Twitter has stumbled upon a new blogging paradigm - short, to-the-point messages that let your friends, family and the world know exactly where you are and what you're doing, every second of the day.

But others are asking: what's the point? Those people just don't get it. Clearly, Twitter is an amazing new way to blog about your cat.

Mar 11, 2007 - The Guardian - Twitter crowd goes bananas at SXSW

Mar 10, 2007 - Ross Mayfield (SocialText.com founder) - Twitter Tips the Tuna

On Wednesday, Twitter tipped the tuna. By that I mean it started peaking. Adoption amongst the people I know seemed to double immediately, an apparent tipping point. It hasn't jumped the shark, and probably won't until Steven Colbert covers this messaging of the mundane. As Twitter turns 1 on March 13th, not only is there a quickening of users, but messages per user.

Anil Dash was spot-on to highlight "The sign of success in social software is when your community does something you didn't expect." A couple of weeks ago it became a convention to start messages with @username as a way of saying something to someone visible to everyone. Within the limited affordances of the tool, people started to use it not only for presence, but a kind of shouting at the party conversation.

The first hashtag was used on Twitter in August 2007, I think.

#socialmedia - #twitter - #technology - #history - #messaging - #blog_jr