Lessons from an Early Social Media Adopter

My friend DJ Chuang recently discovered that he was the first person on twitter from Orange County, California (think about that…). As DJ points out, it is a bit more complicated than that, but nonetheless… In a blogpost about that fact/honor, he lists a number of things he’s learned, which are listed below. I’ll let DJ tell you now.

In over 5 years of twittering, here’s some things I’ve noticed and/or learned:

When a new technology is launched into the public, there’s no guarantee that it’ll flourish into mainstream adoption nor that it will keep growing its popularity and audience base (i.e. SixDegrees, Friendster, MySpace).

Social media is about the people, not the technology, nor the “superiority” thereof. When I first used Twitter, there wasn’t much going on there because there weren’t people there. The wisdom of the crowd had not yet figured out valuable ways to use real-time updates. Journalists were among the earlier to use it, along with some ham-radio-like amateur hobbyists. Hashtags were a later invention/ innovation.

Twitter is much more valuable because it is an open platform in the public, rather than being behind a virtual wall a la Facebook. I know there are millions more people on Facebook where people are connecting with friends and being fans of brands/people they like. Twitter lets me get near-real-time news, jump in (and out of) conversations, and connect with total strangers and meet new people in ways that Facebook doesn’t.

I have to say that the last one really resonates with me, and I am not an early adopter of social media (you can read about that here). Lately I find Facebook to be a lot of trouble. Now maybe that’s because I’m not on it all day every day, but still… Twitter, on the other hand, allows me to help people who are interested in the things that I find out, or the information I discover other people have found out.

I’d love to know what your preferred social media platform is, and why. Leave a comment below if you will. Thanks.

Ipod shuffle status: 3378 (Berta, Berta – Branford Marsalis) of 7875

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