Happy Twitter-versary To Me!

Today is the five year anniversary of when I joined twitter (+/- a day or two).  Woot!  It has been a very quick five years.  I was a skeptic, of course, as I didn't think there was much to say or to learn in 140 characters.  I quickly learned that with links, pics, RT's and all the rest that 140c's could contain a heap of information.  More importantly, I learned that tweets could contain a heap of personality, as I have met many, many sharp, interesting, insightful, fun individuals over the five years.  Some have become friends, and some have become real-life friends.

So, twitter has been a time-sucking boon to me.  I have to be better about managing my time, as I can get distracted, especially with days like the ones we had this week.  But it is not as frivolous as I thought long ago either.  I am now better informed about events as I get multiple perspectives pretty quickly.  While my feed is not as diverse as it could be, I do get exposed to many views that I do not necessarily share.  Sure, I prune away the conspiracy theorists, the extremists and the like, but I keep following at least a handful of folks to my right and a similar handful to my left.

I have kept my feed a mix of the professional (scholars, analysts, institutions) and the personal (tv critics, a few comedians, a few interesting actors).  I originally tried to keep my twitter voice distinct from my other voices (blogging, facebook, etc), but I tend to lack the discipline.  Plus I like to be silly and tease my friends and joke about stuff.  The joy of twitter fight club was not just winning the 2nd prize of a cool flask, but of testing my snark against sharp people and meeting people I would otherwise have never met, all around the world.

I certainly tweet too much, which probably deters some folks from following me.  I tend to get more followers when I am off at a conference, which means that fewer tweets is more attractive.  I know I regulate my feed so that there are not too many over-tweeters on it.  But again, I lack discipline and have many interests so I tweet a lot.

I certainly have used twitter more consciously this year to promote the new book.  Now that the book tour is taking a siesta, I am no longer tweeting the song list.

Anyhow, I am very thankful to those who engage me via twitter.  Twitter has allowed the world to become a smaller, more interesting place.  Thanks for putting up with me.  See you on twitter (although not as much in the next week as I will be in Buenos Aires, conferencing and having the first conversations for the next big civ-mil relations project).