In the past few months, there has been much fanfare about Twitter's imminent demise. However, this has coincided with an unrelated resurgent interest in the medium on my part. At this point, I would hardly consider Twitter to be a doomed phenomenon, not least because it still feels fun and exciting. I feel the same sense of adventure and possibility that I did a few years ago, every time I aim to encapsulate a thought in 140 characters or fewer, and I have come to the conclusion that there's only one way to really save the company: find a way to block all the annoying bots.
The greatest fear of many professionals using social media is making a mistake in a very public way. The hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet comes to mind, and if you haven't heard about Justine Sacco's twitterstorm earlier this year, you owe it to yourself to read this synopsis. While most of us are not that clueless, we do fear being called out for a tweet or a facebook post.
I wrote my first blog in 2003 as a way of keeping in touch with family and friends spread around the world. I had just arrived in California after spending three years in Japan, and I felt dislocated and homesick. The blog helped me work through some of these emotions and allowed me to share photos, stories and news. Although I kept it going for a few years, eventually my output petered out and months would pass by without an update.