On her 10th Twitterversary, Senior Consultant Sarah reflects on why Twitter is her first love…
We humans are fickle things. We loved Bibo and MySpace back in the day, Facebook had its moment of glory; now we’re all over TikTok and can’t make up our minds whether Byte is the new Vine or we’re too busy watching Insta Stories to care. Let’s not even get into Snapchat. But here’s why Twitter will always have a special place in my heart.
Having Twitter got me my first job in social media in 2010.
I can remember the first account I ever followed – the French news site Le Monde, during my year abroad in Paris. I unfollowed them pretty quickly when I realised I didn’t really care for reading French news, preferring the ‘Franceinfo’ radio app (more on my love of audio here). But after that, I did start following the small handful of friends back home who also used Twitter.
Inspired by this, I wrote my dissertation about how social networks impacted student’s social capital when geographically displaced from their usual circles. Facebook had been around in the UK for a couple of years by this point, and brands had started cottoning on to the fact that social media could be used for marketing. Then, whilst in my final year of uni, I started working for a seed-level startup who were working on taking online video and making it possible to watch on your TV (side note: cool idea, wrong execution, they didn’t last). I basically got the job because I was the only person they knew who even had a Twitter account; I’d tweet links to cool YouTube videos, trawl Twitter for people and journalists talking about web TV and tweet back to anyone who mentioned us. Looking back at my early emails about it does make me cringe slightly (‘Let’s follow lots of random people to get the name out there’) – ah, inexperienced youth.
10 years on I’m pleased to say that my marketing techniques on Twitter may have improved somewhat, and I’ve had the chance to run some really cool corporate accounts over the years. I’ve been at the forefront of excellent community management and Twitter being a place to take customer interactions to the next level. It’s been pretty fun.
Aside from a 6 month social media hiatus a few years ago, I’ve regularly tweeted my thoughts on my personal account. It’s been a place for me to keep in touch with professional connections, including various exchanges over the years with OneFifty co-founder Alex Pearmain, who I worked with many moons ago. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Twitter, he and Katie might not have approached me to work at OneFifty, and I certainly would’ve had to think a lot more before saying yes – it made a leap into the unknown a little bit less scary.
So that’s how Twitter got me my first and current jobs. I’m sorry Instagram, and you’re alright too LinkedIn, but Twitter will always be my number one love.
Give me a follow on @sarah_morton; I also tweet office life and interesting reads from @weareonefifty 🙂
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