It’s almost two-and-a-half years since I first signed on to Twitter.
The first few weeks were quiet and I was still working out exactly how to use it…my first Twitter app on my iPhone was actually for another service and only partially accessed Twitter itself, then became forgotten along the way as I discovered the other third-party apps.
Then the Victorian bush fires happened and I was suddenly part of voluntweeting emergency information.
The local Twitter users were a very chatty bunch back then, most of us, if not all, connected by the common goal of helping our communities however we could. Even for months after the situation was over, quite a few of that bunch would be chatting away merrily on the service. Sometimes that was how we were first to notice local, minor earth tremors quicker than the news services.
Then came spammers, spambots and marketers.
I think I can remember Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) even pointing out how many of his followers, at the time, were just bots and him doing a purge.
Then came hashtag spam…
The news services finally caught on and now they keep a better eye on Tweets themselves for leads.
So this year, instead of doing my annual watch of local bushfire hashtags and related news (the last two years have been thankfully quiet), I found myself stepping into the emergency information relay and collate role for eleven different local and overseas natural disasters. In four months.
By April, nobody wanted to see a natural disaster too quickly.
Of course, on the political side of things, it’s been interesting to see how Twitter’s been used during revolts in the Middle East. It’s too early to tell if those revolts have removed dictators or just made it easier for new ones to step into place. Sometimes it’s hard to tell from a tweet what’s the real situation…especially in that region.
Anyway, when one’s tired of emergencies and politics, at least there’s tech aplenty to read about on Twitter.
Then came iPad 2…
