I’ve been a Twitter user since 2008. I would have to say it’s my main form of social media. This post is not intended to try to convince anyone to use the service. I figure at this point, you’d use it by now if you wanted to.

I joined September 30, 2008. This was my first tweet.

I wish people on Wheel of Fortune wouldn’t buy vowels. Just take the risk and spin!

Wow. That’s really deep.

I have over 42.8K tweets (and I’m convinced that Twitter deleted a bunch of my tweets several years ago). Yes, I do tweet A LOT.

A lot of people still question the point of twitter. “Why do I care about what people eat for breakfast?” It’s amazing after 6 years of using twitter, this is STILL the number one response I get when people talk about why they don’t use the service.

Twitter is obviously so much more than that otherwise it would have shut down years ago.

I use it differently than how I use Facebook. It’s a different audience. Twitter is public. Facebook is more private. The whole reason why I started using Twitter was due to the fact that I was a book blogger and I wanted to get more involved in the community. And it helped me a lot to learn about book blogging, gain new friends, get connections, and help me to learn about social media in general. I see it as a marketing tool and as a way to brand yourself.

I’m not going to lie, when I see books and articles for the casual user on how to use Twitter, it kind of makes me laugh. It’s really not that hard. I jumped in not knowing at all if I was doing it right and I’m still using the service five and a half years later. Though I will say that on a marketing standpoint, there are several folks who still have no idea how to use it correctly and again, it’s really not that hard. You just need to put in some time and effort. This “10 horrible Twitter tips” list from Jon Acuff is quite accurate.

There are times when I’ll live tweet certain events (sports, TV shows, awards shows) and it brings a sense of togetherness with people all over the world. For example, the last two weeks I’ve been live tweeting during the Olympics and even though I’m not physically with people who are enjoying it as much as I am, I’ve found there are other all over the world who share my interests.

Twitter is also good at realizing you’re not the only one with unique thoughts. That thing you came up with yesterday that was so clever? Someone tweeted that 6 months ago.

I follow over 700 people and have over 1.2k people follow me back. I don’t just randomly or automatically follow back. The people I follow I have some vested interest in, where I will interact with them or I am just really interested in what they have to say. The people who follow me back, if I don’t know you at all I’m not going to just follow you back if you’re never going to talk to me. This is why I get a lot of people who follow me, see I don’t follow back and then they unfollow me. I’m not building up your numbers, folks. Tip: I like really witty folks.

I actually really like interaction. There are some people who just tweet things but never respond back to anyone. Sure, celebrities do this all the time (billboards as I like to call it) but sometimes I wonder about normal folk who do this. It’s called SOCIAL media for a reason. Why do you use this service if you don’t want to be social? Regarding the celebrities, some of them do it well with fan interacting, ,some don’t at all. I talk to a lot of authors on Twitter who follow me back so it’s pretty fun. My current goal is to have Josh Groban reply to me. The trick appears to be timing and being witty. Still working on that.

But for companies that use Twitter well, it’s a great way to do customer service and I do judge companies on how well they handle social media.

Sometimes I wish that I was a celebrity so that no matter what I said people would find it worth of a reply, retweet, or favorite. But then I realize, I don’t really want everything I say to be judged by someone. I also don’t want my @ feed getting clogged with useless stuff.

I will never say I’m an expert at using Twitter. There are so many things still to learn about using and maximizing it to its fullest potential. Also while I use the service a lot, it’s still not a 100% representation of what I’m like in real life. Pretty close, but if you get to know me in real life, slightly more awkward but just as cool.

If you would like to follow me on Twitter, you can find me at @beatccr. Be warned. I can be slightly snarky, I talk about a lot of random things, and you’ll be bombarded with awesomeness. But if you do, it’ll be worth it. I swear.