Twitter Quitter

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Hi. My name is Andrew and I am a recovering Twitter user.

It’s been over a week since I last logged into Twitter from my laptop or cell phone. Call me a “Twitter quitter”, but my rationale was solid:

1. I have been spouting increasingly anti-Twitter rhetoric to my marketing peers to try to talk some sense into those that think Twitter is the next marketing revolution.
2. I spent a long weekend on a remote island off the coast of North Carolina for a wedding and didn’t want to be “that guy”. None of my friends knew what Twitter was, and if they did, I don’t think that it would even remotely interest them.

Of course there were a couple times I wanted to check up on the randomness of other people’s lives. But I resisted the temptation and instead enjoyed a few extra minutes of thought and contemplation rather than cramming even more information into a brain already clogged with “news” from around my social network.

One week later I’m still here. The world didn’t stop turning. As much as I would like them to, the lives of people I know (and some I don’t know) don’t revolve around me. I haven’t missed any meetings. All messages intended for me got to me through other channels. I might have missed out on an interesting conversation or two, but they are likely long forgotten by the participants anyway.

Bottom line, it IS possible to stay off of Twitter without missing out on life. I estimate that I actually re-gained about 2-3 hours of productive working time by not tweeting or trying to catch up on others’ messages during the day.

Hmmm…I wonder what else I can unsubscribe from or stay away from? TV? Probably. Facebook? Probably not. Blogs and forums? Not a chance. Books? Wouldn’t want to. The Internet? Not if I want a paycheck.

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