Yes, this post was literally 5 years in the making. In March of 2016, I came across IFTTT (If this, then that), and I thought it was pretty cool, and went about exploring how I could use it. One of the applets I used was saving each tweet I made onto a google sheet. I had absolutely zero use-case for it at the time, and it was just something I did, and then totally forgot about.
Yesterday, when I was writing the Google Data Studio guide, I decided to look into this google sheet, and see how my Twitter usage has evolved through the years.
Twitter Usage in Years
Holy shit! My twitter usage has starkly increased year on year! I’m already at 2520 tweets for the year, with almost the entire Q4 still to go! With a 2020 monthly average of 282 tweets per month (plus the US elections upcoming), it looks like I’m definitely crossing the 3K tweets for the year with ease.
Twitter usage daily
Looking at the daily chart, I can see that my twitter usage jumped fairly significantly right around the end of 2018 and the start of 2019, which incidentally was when this site was first created.
Find your Twitter Tribe
Before finding my twitter voice, I was randomly tweeting into the wild, any thoughts that I’d have. I was also not engaged in conversation or discussions on twitter. As a result, I didn’t see the value of twitter, and my usage was indicative of that.
My tweets in 2016 were random, like this.
Not that I’m not random now… I still tweet random and family stuff, but at least I have a voice that is more skewed toward a certain bunch of topics where I can find a community and bond with.
Get in the conversation game
I also used to use twitter as a way to voice out my inner thoughts out into space. But with a community, you participate in conversations, discussions and threads a lot more, which reinforces the value you take out of the platform, turning it into a virtuous cycle of adding value as you get value.
In fact, I’m using twitter so much more than other social networks, that if you ask me to give up one platform for the other, I would happily forgo Facebook (IG included!).
What’s your Twitter usage like, and how has it changed over time?