Twitter is everywhere. There’s a featured segment about it on The Tonight Show. CNN has all but given over its news commentary to the Twitmasses (“In response to the bombing attempt, Twitter user hrhuffinstuff had this to say: ‘OMG LAMEZ‘”). Some celebrities have stopped leaving their homes altogether, rather opting to do performances in movies and TV shows in 140-character bursts via their smart phones.

I first ventured into the world of Twitter in early February 2007. While I can no longer access those initial, tentative tweets, I assume they were insightful statements about the world around us and current events, not just an informal list of when I was hungry or needed to go to the bathroom.

Since that time, I’ve posted over 5,200 pieces of wisdom. I’m no math expert, but that comes out to an average of 230 posts a day for the last three years. That’s a lot of Twittery. That’s dozens of dozens of hours I’ve devoted to observations and quips and photos of ducks. String all that time together and I may well have lost an entire year of my life pecking away at my keyboard and greasing up the touchscreen on my iPhone.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that you’re welcome. There’s a lot of sacrifice involved there. In fact, I’ve more than once considered outsourcing my Twittering. I even tried it for a while, but the creepy little man I hired to follow me around tweeting my important thoughts and events mainly just typed things like “HE HAZ NO PAAAANTS” or “HEY R U LOL?”. I had to let him go. I also had to let him get slapped by my hand.

At least I’m not expected to deal with inane trending and tracking for my Twitter feed. No, I leave that up to the professionals at sites like tweetstats.com. That’s how I learn facts like how my Tweet Density is greatest around Noon on Sundays BUT NOT SATURDAYS because then I tweet the most around 6PM. I also don’t tweet much at 5 AM in general. My top words used are apparently know, thats, time, good and going. This is likely because of a six month experiment in stand-up comedy style tweets that I did, all ending in “then you know THAT’S a good time to get going.” For instance, “When you set her cat’s fur on fire, you know THAT’S a good time to get going.” That experiment went about as far as my previous real world experiment, rockets powered by actual rocks. That is to say, it didn’t go very far.

How will Twitter be viewed in the future? Will subsequent generations view this as the beginning of an age of unprecedented access to information or the dawning of never-before-seen global self-involvement. Who cares? Listen, Twitter isn’t about yesterday or tomorrow or an hour from now or an hour ago. Twitter is about the moment and Twitter is about me, dammit. I’m not here to reply to your musings or retweet your attempts at jokes. I’m on Twitter to give you an up-to-the-very-second account of my minutiae and actions. Sandwich I just ate? Ham and cheese. Times gone to the bathroom today? 9 (back off, it was a cleansing day).

Twitter is about me, just like it is for 5 million other users.

Filed under: Dork Stuff, General