I’ve noticed lately that there has been a distressing increase in the level of negativity within the Twitterverse and feel compelled to comment in more than 140 characters.
The amazing power of Twitter has been revealed to me numerous times over the past year and a bit. I have won tickets to see screenings of Jaws at the London Aquarium, jars of super tangy Marmite XO and even found myself a new job, but the most amazing thing of all was made very clear to me last Friday.
As most of you will know, in Twitterville Friday is reserved for that very special form of social torture #followfriday. Each one of us struggles with the dilemma of which particular followers we are going to recommend, the worry of who we might leave out and whether or not we should even bother at all. And for me, this Friday was no different.
I decided instead to simply point people in the direction of my Twitter list called conversation-a-list. Now this list isn’t one of those automatically generated jobs based upon the individuals I have engaged with the most in the past week or so, this list has been compiled by hand with the utmost care and only contains people I consider to be my conversational friends and it was this realisation that has led to this post.
A quick glance at the number of people on this list left me thinking that I must have made some mistake. Surely I couldn’t be thinking that this many people were my friends? But as I scrolled through the list, each 48px by 48px avatar was instantly recognisable and the conversations we had shared burst into life within my mind.
THIS is the true power of Twitter!
12 months ago I had never even heard of these people, yet as of today I have met a large majority of them face-to-face, donated money to them, received money from them and even shared a hotel room with one of them. It is these connections that are the real currency of Twitter, it’s life-blood, and it would be shameful to see all of this end because a number of individuals think that it’s clever to deliberately stir things up in order to score blog hits or Klout points.
There are already enough examples throughout history of the human race fucking things up for the sake of greed and power. Don’t let this be another one.