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I recently had my 15th anniversary on Twitter.

The service launched in July 2006 and I joined in December 2007.

A colleague at the time says, “Hey, you should check this out.”

He had joined Twitter and showed me some of his tweets.

So I joined and started tweeting.

During this time, people mostly tweeted about random things in their life: what they ate for lunch, what their evening plans were or what they were watching on TV.

It seemed odd for me to type bursts of 140 characters (or less) describing trivial things in my life.

There was no reply or retweet button, so users had to do those things manually.

To reply, you started your tweet with the usernames of the people you were replying to.

To retweet, you typed “RT [user],” then copy/pasted their tweet text.

It was raw, but new, and that made it exciting.

I had a sense that this platform could be the future of online communications.

The first time I saw a tweet covered on television news, I thought yes, this Twitter thing is going places.

Soon after, I started a blog about virtual events and joined a virtual events technology company as a marketer.

Twitter was a great way to share my blog posts and gain a following.

It seemed like every time I tweeted, I’d gain 5-10 followers.

It was so exciting 🙌

15 years later, Twitter is under new ownership and its future has been called into question.

I haven’t changed my use of the service, but if things take a turn for the worst, I may abandon it.

Twitter alternatives

Many of my marketing friends are exploring Twitter alternatives such as Mastodon, Post and Hive Social.

(Hello Laurie, Andi, Rich and others!)

I’ve decided not to, at least for now.

For me, the magic from those early days of Twitter are lost.

Joining Mastodon or Post would probably feel a lot like Twitter today, but with less users.

The excitement of trying something new and watching the future of media or communications unfold? It’s just not there.

At some point, I may decide to join one of these services.

But for now, I’m happy to spend my free time elsewhere.

Let me know what your plans are with Twitter and/or the alternative services.

Happy holidays!

-Dennis.