Indubitabil, Nu Conteaza.

Yesterday, I actually meant to write at large about my Twitter-experience-so-far, since I’m plugging into it for a couple of days now. In the end, I decided to give out the short English version…

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In the last few months since I signed up with the infamous birdie, I’ve realized - peu à peu - how TOTALLY FRIGGIN’ AWESOME this experience can be for a noob. For more experienced webbies, Twitter is a place to hang out with familiar faces, while building up a crowd of followers to pluck your products or (personal) brand to OR tighten up relationships with like-minded peeps in the industry. For us mere mortals, Twitter is fanboy haven unleashed.

Contrary to popular belief, I signed up with Twitter in an attempt to give a try to the service that kicked CNN ass in July last year. Since then, I grew quite a handful of followers, while opening my eyes and ears to the Community.

I started following people based on common interests / familiarity of face or… content of their blogs / websites. Do keep in mind that I’m a web content editor at heart, hence my interests revolve pretty much around the online field - successfully representated by a gazillion Twitter users / “VIP”s.

Then, I realized how easy Twitter makes it to express myself in a creative (and maybe a little hermetical) way to an audience I am followed back by. I started jotting out thoughts and rants that some perceived as “spam”, others replied to and most ignored as ‘part of who she is’.

Then, I went on a little further to meet Hugh MacLeod (Gapingvoid).

It happened that I caught his tweet about coming to Romania to speak at NetCamp and I immediately replied with the intention to put up a Geek Dinner. Common acquaintence Lee Wilkins helped with the logistics and Microsoft Romania sponsored food & drinks, so the thing happened on December 4th, 2007.

It was my first Twitter… success. Didn’t move mountains, didn’t end world poverty, didn’t solve the oil crisis. But it did bring me a hedge fund of new friends and - hell yeah! - a Hugh-card.

The other week on April Fools me and Alin Zainescu of new/media hosted the 1st Romanian Tweetup - RoTweetMeet - in Bucharest (pics here). Out of 85 users signing the list, 50 showed up to the event. It was a great party, with lotsa folks from the online industry and beyond. Again, Microsoft Romania sponsored food & drinks. Needless to say it was by far the best attendance rate, considering the traffic blockage caused by NATO Summit.

All in all, reading Stowe Boyd’s blog post I agree to the idea that Twitter can be a place for love + friendship - in their most genuine expression - but on a minor scale. You can’t keep a close network of friends, unless your updates are protected. When Twitter was at the beginning, it was easy to keep it in house. Now, with 1 million users and so many people coming in to spam or brag about their audience (eg. Jason Calacanis), there’s not much you can do but… block block block!

UPDATE: 
Who would’ve guessed it back then… @gapingvoid left Twitter. Shock, horror and one last question: WHY?