My time on Twitter started back when it was first available publicly in August of 2006. For a while, it was lonely out in the Twitterverse. Not a lot of us Chattarati were here, although our blogging numbers were very impressive. What has really impressed me the most is how fast Twitter use has grown in our community. Blogging took a long time, relatively speaking, to catch on. Before Chattablogs (2000-01), there were a few attempts to meet up, but it wasn't until 2005 when there were actually had enough to sit down and converse in the analog world—that was a 5-year gap. In less than two years from Twitter's launch, we're having our first meeting AND we've actually received some press.
Some of our Chattarati discussions about Twitter brought up a common theme: "cost of entry." It's free to join & almost everyone has a text-capable cellphone. We're not using some experimental new programming language to do this, but text and numbers on what started out as a mobile-only system. We're not only discussing politics and the latest dumb celebrities, but we are building businesses and applications on top of this very limited, text-based platform. These two angles present what we're celebrating tomorrow. A "Tweetup" is a community of Twitter users, coming together to meet and talk in the real world, plus talk about ideas spawned from a cell phone. Sure some of our "twits" are about where we're eating, who we're voting for, and at times, our innermost thoughts. But sometimes, isn't that what makes this technology fun?
PhragMunkee on Aug. 29, 2008
The domain registration for ChattaBlogs.com points to 2003, which correlates with my memory. I remembered it being just a few months after I started ChattaLAN. Josiah just beat me to the registration (damn visionary) before blogs really caught on!
(and as far as I know, ChattaLAN was the first to use the "chatta" prefix for a Chattanooga-based site!)
Josiah on Aug. 29, 2008
The cost of entry to blogging is still relatively high compared to Twitter (and yep, Chattablogs started spring of 2003). I also think the reason why we're so quickly able to have a meetup is that, well, a lot of the core "twitterers" have been about this Intertrontubes this for awhile, heck, in five years we've all managed to meet/get to know/work with one a huge percentage of the chattatwitterers.
(and wow, ChattaLAN, I haven't logged in there in years!)
m.kelley on Aug. 30, 2008
Along memory lane.....I remember Evoque (Elle) and I discussing some sort of standalone Trackback-based tracker, then literally a couple of days later the Chattablogs tracker came along and it's been great in town ever-since! Why re-invent the wheel?
Adrienne on Sept. 2, 2008
Twitter is finally hitting the mainstream. I remember joining in spring of 2006. Barely anyone was on it--just a few friends from grad school and tech colleagues from DC. I didn't think it would survive.
Fast forward to now. Over the weekend, I was stuck without web access and had to rely on CNN, Fox and Twitter for hurricane updates. I kept laughing every time Fox & Friends said "friend" us on Facebook and message us at Twitter. This morning, they also discussed it on whatever show 96.5 plays.
There's a bigger point here that more people are using technology in their daily lives. Twitter has obvious advantages with disseminating breaking and critical news. Once you get past, "this is what I'm having for lunch" updates, there's huge potential that we've barely touched.