Twitter's amazing growth in just seven years

Founder Jack Dorsey sent the first tweet on this date in 2006. I sent my first on the same date in 2009. I found my voice and a career as a media commentator, so Happy Birthday, says Barbara Scully

ON Mar 21, 2006, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent the first tweet. It said “just setting up my twttr”. Happy Birthday Twitter.

Today is also my fourth anniversary on the social networking site. On Mar 21, 2009, I pressed ‘tweet’ on my first Twitter utterance, which was not so different from Dorsey’s first, although it lacked his confidence. Mine said: “I have set up a Twitter account and I don’t know why”.

The following day, I tweeted a weather report at 11:08: “it’s very cold and raining.”

The day after, I was still at sea with this new ‘micro-blogging’ site. I tweeted: “I still don’t get Twitter at all”.

I was not deterred. I kept tweeting inanely and, occasionally, wittily at no-one: I had no followers.

My archive shows my progress. Slowly, tweeters began to respond and Twitter conversations evolved.

Now, four years on, I can confidently (and unashamedly) say that Twitter has changed my life.

Yes, lonely nights on the sofa are no more.

I now watch TV with a room full of witty, wry and judgmental virtual critics. It makes a dull Late Late Show bearable and is compulsory while watching Tonight With Vincent Browne. The best measure of a programme’s worth is the amount of tweeting you do while watching it. Truly compelling viewing will mean tweets afterwards, but not during, transmission.

But while Twitter is wonderful fun, it has also been useful as I have metamorphosed from a suburban housewife into a freelance writer and media commentator.

This process, from a standing start, was only achieved by utilising the power of Twitter. It provided me with a platform from which to publicise my blog posts, make new useful contacts and, most of all, perfect the sound bite. One hundred and forty characters is great training for concise commentary.

I am not the only former full-time housewife who found her ‘voice’ and confidence via the often-maligned social media website.

Margaret Smith (@UmNumNumm) runs a ‘boutique cookery school’ called ‘Umnumnum’, in Ballincollig, Co Cork.

“I am naturally very shy,” says Margaret. “Twitter was a great way for me to network, which is something I could not do the traditional way.”

Margaret advises anyone thinking of using Twitter, be it for business or pleasure, to have fun. “That way, people interacting with you will have fun, too, and then tweeting is not a chore.”

A Dublin writer had her dream of being published come true thanks to her clever and witty tweets. Maria Duffy (@mduffywriter) had a manuscript in a drawer when her tweets came to the notice of literary agent, Sheila Crowley. Crowley suggested that Maria start on a new book using her ‘Twitter voice’.

A year later and Maria’s first book, Any Dream Will Do, was published.

Maria is still a huge Twitter fan and loves the variety it offers. “There is such a wide range of people on Twitter,” she says. “If you want to talk politics, you will find someone for that, but if you just want to shoot the breeze, you will find someone who is happy to join you in that, too.” However, Maria has had to learn to discipline herself when she has a deadline to meet. “It took me two years to learn that I had to turn off Twitter in order not to be distracted by it. I have the balance right now.”

That’s sage advice, because, as Margaret says, Twitter is great fun and hard to switch off.

But Twitter has a serious side. It is the place for breaking news stories.

Stephen O’Leary, of O’Leary Analytics, says it is very rare that breaking news ‘breaks’ on so-called traditional media. It happens on Twitter first.

Although O’Leary also says that social media are full of false information and hoaxes, such as the regularly reported deaths of celebrities.

So, although discernment is required, Twitter is great. Let’s all double click to that.