So today is Twitter’s seventh anniversary. Woo-hoo, Twitter!
You might not use Twitter, or ever want to, but surely you understand that Twitter has had a tremendous impact on the world, especially for journalism.
To celebrate, I downloaded my Twitter archive (and you can too!) and found my very first Tweet. I’m a constant Twitterer now, but I wasn’t always…
My first tweet, way back in October of 2008:
Learning how to use twitter
— Penny Higgins (@paleololigo) October 23, 2008
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIt didn’t take long before I was talking science, though:
is entertained by LIMS for light stable isotopes
— Penny Higgins (@paleololigo) October 23, 2008
But I was lonely:
has no followers. I’m a loner.
— Penny Higgins (@paleololigo) November 8, 2008
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsNothing has really changed over the last few years:
has been rained upon. Bad news: ruined my hair. Good news: hair always looks crummy anyway. Great news: didn’t melt, not a witch!
— Penny Higgins (@paleololigo) June 26, 2009
But I’ve learned a bit:
learned something that is most likely useless, but is entertaining. How do you say “Wool of Seal” in French? (The animal seal.)
— Penny Higgins (@paleololigo) June 29, 2009
(I know the answer. Don’t say it in polite, English-speaking company.)
Something happened at the beginning of 2012. I went from one tweet a month to tens, and then hundreds, and now sometimes over a thousand. How fun is that!
These days I tweet so often that it’s pointless to select a few for a “best of” blog post. I use Twitter for teaching and to promote my science (with this blog). I’ve used Twitter to find a sword instructor and now I am surrounded by a whole community of swordsmen. I chat with other writers and get help when I’m stuck (and I’ve had a chance to query some literary agents too!)
You’ll just have to follow me on Twitter (@paleololigo) if you want to see what I’m up to.
If you’re on Twitter and want to see your first tweet, some instructions can be found here, on the BlogHer website. What was your first tweet?
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist 
My first tweet is drifting somewhere in the void, tiny ripples in the distribution probability of electrons that once made up the charge that represented the bits that encoded the transient thought that passed from my mind to my fingertips as I typed something like, “Let’s see if I can make this Twitter thing work.”
I deleted my Twitter account a couple of years ago when they couldn’t send all the tweets to my timeline that I was supposed to be getting. This is the best I can do.
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Hi, not sure what my first tweet was, but I will explore my archives and get back to you. Really nice to see you life unfold in a few words or characters. I like twitter now too.
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