SMCSTL

Today marks the 5th birthday of my favorite social network, Twitter.com. If you’re not yet “tweeting”, then you can read the rest of this post, and hopefully my sentimentality will convince you to give it a try if its 190 million other users haven’t been reason enough. If you are on Twitter, please tell me about your foray into Twitter using the comments below.

Mashable commemorates the day with a few statistics for us:

It’s officially been five years since the very first tweet was sent by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The message, which read simply “just setting up my twttr,” has since been followed by some 30 billion 140-character-or-less musings as Twitter has catapulted into the upper echelon of consumer web companies.

With a valuation said to be approaching $10 billion, the Twitter of today is very different than the Twitter of five years ago (or even one year ago for that matter).

“Happy 5th Birthday, Twitter” by Adam Ostrow

Mashable’s story is brief, but I thought I’d make my virtual birthday card a bit more personal for Twitter. Almost exactly a year and a half ago, in September, 2009, one of Twitter’s co-founders, Jack Dorsey (@jack) , returned to his home town of Saint Louis to tell us all about how Twitter got started and where it stood at that time. He spoke at Webster University, and  I blogged about it.

I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes I heard from Jack during that speech. I personally believe they speak to the magic of Twitter in a lot of ways. Some of these quotes explain “why Twitter makes sense” to me as a communication medium – a method for connecting, engaging and be-friending.

• “If you have immediacy, it’s a lot easier to inspire transparency.”
• “The greatest lesson that I learned in all of this is that you have to start.” “Start now, start here, and start small. Keep it Simple.”
• “I am burdened every day by email. It is a nightmare. I will go back tonight to 500 emails which are, basically, TO DO’s that I hvae to work through. This is an area where we’ve lost the idea of keeping a singular focus and a way to be effective. There are times that I have to give up because I can’t keep up with it.”
• “Twitter is one of those things that’s easy to get into and also easy to get out of….it’s more of an information network…completely recipient controlled.” Because it’s 140 characters, you minimize the canvas size.

In 2009, when Jack gave this speech, and when Twitter was just 3 years old, I used Twitter primarily for personal purposes. Ironically, the same month Jack appeared in Saint Louis to tell us all about his monster of an invention as it was shooting up in user-base, I took my first job as a social media marketing strategist at a Saint Louis based IT consulting firm, Perficient. Since then, I have learned first-hand, and in an incredibly exciting way, just how effective Twitter can be for growing your business. I’ll save the details for a later post about how Twitter really does drive sales and leads for my employer. For now, here’s a big Happy Birthday to my favorite social network.

Twitter has….

• Helped me to land my job at a fantastic company, @Perficient
• Strengthened my relationships with existing friends, such as @steinburglar and @lisackeller.
• Gotten me speaking opportunities and engagements, such as at @IMSummit and @ConversionConf
• Given me opportunities to make money on the side through consulting and contract work, such as with @socialexecs
• Allowed me get to know my co-workers, such as @lizasisler and @bnunnally, in a unique and compelling way, making it easier to work together on projects.
• Given me the chance to participate at the board level in furthering the efforts of excellent marketing clubs in St. Louis, including @smcstl and @bmastlouis
• Kept me in touch with my favorite charities, including @stlfoodbank
• Made it easy for me to reconnect with old coworkers like @amyjohnsonseo
• Keeps me posted when my favorite restaurants and local hangouts, including @vindeset, @kaldis_coffee and @arakarestaurant change their menus or offer a deal.
• Lets me know when my favorite music artists, including @blackkeysnews, @coldplay, @mumfordandsons1 and @FRabbits have a new album coming out or will be in town soon.
• Made my wedding planning a lot easier by surfacing to the top some of the best in the local wedding industry, including my wedding planner @katiesaeger (love her!) and an amazing photographer and fellow J-school grad, @joannakleine
• Made it super easy for me to find legal experts who work in social media — @petesalsich, @amprivacy, and @craiggmoore so that I could build our panel for this week’s SMCSTL event on Wednesday night!
• Gives me ongoing, free education on my industry (B2B marketing, social media marketing, online content, web design, SEO, PPC, online advertising, etc.) through fantastic blogs and news sources such as @forrester, @hubspot, @emarketer, @b2bmagazine and more.

I didn’t even come close to getting started on a list of the hundreds of excellent marketing professionals and all around good people who inspire me, make me laugh, lift me up, and teach me with their 140 words of wisdom every day.

If those aren’t enough reasons to love being on Twitter every day, then you’ll just have to put up with me being glued to my iPhone at all times– or you can tell me what you love about Twitter with your own little “Happy Birthday” note to Twitter in our comments.