The Honeymoon is Over

Zach Bussey
Toronto, ON
busseyzach@gmail.com
http://ZachBussey.com
http://twitter.com/zbussey

Dear Twitter,

What a wild time it’s been over the past two years! There’s been great times and not so great times, but like all relationships, you don’t run at the first sign of trouble. Sure it makes things a little more difficult, but those problems can be fixed and you’ve done a great job at trying to fix yours. Our problems have never made me consider breaking up with you.

But, I’ve realized lately that our ‘honeymoon phase’ is over. No longer can I ignore your ugly fail whales and just see what you’ve done for social networking.  I can’t kid myself into believing you’re perfect. I’ve realized, that such as in my last social networking relationship (Facebook), too much time with something and it starts to wear you out.

But, let me back up a bit and explain where things started to turn.

2009 was a great year for us. You had all sorts of publicity and people like Ashton Kutcher preaching lines like a “Media Revolution”. Celebrities all wanted to be your friend. That was pretty cool at first, until I realized that all the celebs were doing was promoting their own agendas and ultimately it became more annoying than fun. But you grew as a social network and got those upgrades to your service that I do love. I love your search feature especially. It’s helped me connect with a lot of people.

Well, I did love it… now when I search ‘Toronto’ all I see is “@justinbieber OMG IM GOING TO BE AT YOUR SHOW IN NOVEMBER IN TORONTO, I HOPE WE CAN MEET! 1″ then right after that “@justinbieber OMG IM GOING TO BE AT YOUR SHOW IN NOVEMBER IN TORONTO, I HOPE WE CAN MEET! 2″. and so on up until about 89 or 90.

But I push through. It’s not the end of the world to have lost some of that feature’s usefulness. Lately though, you’ve been hard to communicate with… you’ve turned your back on me when I tried to show you a new picture. Many times when we communicate you just yell “SOMETHING IS TECHNICALLY WRONG” and run out of the room waiting for me to refresh our conversation. (Also, I left a bunch of @replies that I gave you to deliver… I believe you have some that were sent to me? I don’t know if I can accept your ‘they disappeared’ excuse…)

Also, when I do a search for any trending topic why is it that the first thing I see is some Harry Potter character with no eyes saying something completely stupid that 100+ retweeted? That, or other fictional characters saying nothing. Need I remind you Dark Vader isn’t real?

I’ve tried to renew my love for you by unfollowing more than half of the people I used to follow. It worked a bit, so I may do it some more. I’ve tried engaging more people in conversation… but it doesn’t feel the same. I’ve tried to be more witty or more interesting or more helpful, but I still notice that I rarely get engaged naturally. Even my best tweets only manage to grab 10 RTs.

And I don’t think it’s just me! @unmarketing is a prime example. Everything he used to say would get 40-50RTs (I know because suddenly my timeline would be filled with the same damn thing over and over). Now his tweets barely manage to get 10RTs.

I don’t know what’s happened to us. I don’t think I’m alone either. More and more people I talk to mention a ‘shift’ in their handling of Twitter.

Look, I still like you. I’ll spend time with you each day and business wise, you’re a great ally that will continue to be useful for years! But days where I don’t see you as often, I don’t feel like I’m missing as much as I once thought I would. I still want you to be part of my life much the way I’m still friends with Facebook. Actually, that’s not true, you’ll likely always have more of my attention than Facebook does (I don’t think anyone she’s connected me with even likes me… we’re just friends cause we knew each other at some point.) I just don’t know if we can be as good together as we once were.

In reality, I think it’s just our generation.. we get bored by things staying status quo for too long. It’s why shows like “The Hills” are popular… one week she’s dating one guy, next week a different one, omg 3rd week she’s back with guy 1 but she’s cheating with guy 3! It’s fast, it’s exciting and thus it captures attention and keeps it… despite them never saying anything that makes any sense at all. (Is Heidi in porn yet? Let me know when she does Twitter!)

I’ll continue to follow, interact and hopefully keep meeting some great people as a result of our relationship Twitter. I just wanted you to know how I’m feeling about ‘us’. Our honeymoon is over.

Yours truly,

Zach Bussey