I am pretty active on Twitter and in fact recently tweeted the the saga of my trip yesterday to Detroit where I never left the airport and ended up coming right back home to Jacksonville, FL last night. It was quite the interesting trip.
I bring up Twitter because of the community. It is really amazing to see people respond to support others at the simple request of another community member. It can and is overwhelming much of the time.
I am finding that to be a very positive aspect of this micro-blogging community but I am finding other benefits as well.
For instance – during my trip last week out to Seattle I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to Houston when a guy sat across from me and pulled out his laptop. On the lid he had one of the “I’M A PC” stickers from Microsoft.
I was on Twitter and so I made the following comment:
Within a couple of minutes I received a direct message and had provided an address to get a set of four of those stickers mailed to me by someone from Microsoft. Now how cool is that!
Today they arrived and the blue one is mounted on my laptop case already.
Another great connection I made was with @TinaShang – she is a graphic designer. I came across some of her work and send her a message about some graphics work in return for some exposure on my Twitter background. She graciously accepted the offer and produced the background you now see on my Twitter page. Here is a close up of the main area:
I personally could have never done that work – I am very bad at it but just through a simple social connection I discovered someone who was willing to engage in a discussion about it. Good things come from it all around.
That is why a Twitter conversation has to go both ways – it is not just an output mechanism, although that is how things go sometimes, its strength is the give and take.
Do you have any stories of connections and benefits you have gotten from Twitter? I would love to hear them!
