This is why I love Twitter.
This is a picture of me, from 12 years ago, explaining to my Independent Studies Program advisor how my friend (Jasper Speicher) and I were going to build a robot that could automatically navigate it’s environment using infrared sensors. And if we were lucky, even climb stairs. The brains of this device were going to be a programmable microcontroller called the BASIC Stamp.
Fast-forward 12 years. I’m working on my new social media startup, Untitled Startup and we want to integrate a billing solution. We hash out a number of recurring billing solutions, including one by the name of Chargify.
Imagine my surprise when one of the co-founders of Chargify reaches out to me via Twitter and points me in the direction of his useful post, 9 startup steps, learned over 22 years. I’m still new to this whole startup biz, so this is a pretty helpful post. If you’re in a similar place, you should read it.
But I started reading his bio on the site. And then it hit me. This guy co-founded Parallax. The company that made the BASIC Stamp. The same microcontroller that really captured my love of automation 12 years ago. The same microcontroller that, had I not fried it, might just have pushed my entire life in a different direction (robotics). And here we were chatting on Twitter.
I could probably write a post a month on similar situations, but this one really hit home tonight given the time-span and common characters. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to be able to interact with the people that make what I do possible on a regular basis. And I really want to thank Lance for not only building products that I’ve been using for more than the past decade, but also for reaching out and saying hi to some random guy on Twitter.
Awesome how small the world can be at times. The BASIC Stamp (II) was my entry point to the world of microcontrollers, too. The BOE Bot, specifically.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:37 amI read your post.. awesome small world story!!
Then I realized it wasn’t REALLY a twitter specific story but more of a side effect created during the shrinking of the real world onto the web (social/new media *cough*).
I’ve had similar experiences through blogs, email, even Google searches, all benefits of interacting on the web not just twitter. I know it might sound like turd-polishing but I want to get newbie skeptics engaged and show benefit.. I think the hardest, craziest, noisiest place to do that is twitter. Once they understand and get up to speed, then they can do whatever they want and take in as much noise as they can handle!!
BTW I’m also at @chrismyles4.
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:51 amChris, certainly! I do think Twitter enables this kind of communication and happenstance connection moreso than other mediums, though. Maybe it’s the increased flow of information or the willingness to be more open. Or more likely because I’m a Twitter junkie and that’s where most of my interaction happens.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:53 amIt’s a crazy small world, and social media like twitter (and especially facebook) are bringing together people and highlighting connections that would otherwise go unnoticed.
What I really love about twitter is how it lets you talk with people you would have never had a chance otherwise. You can build relationships with blogger, designers and luminaries- and have full conversations without ever meeting them (getting past the “introduction” wall so to speak). Its fostering these communications that makes twitter so exciting. That and it helps make real time information so much more accessible and available (foursquare also rocks for this too).
It also enables quicker response time too. Great case in point- when you had you’re issue with Recurly over the weekend, I didn’t find out from a support forum, I found out through twitter.This type of direct feedback that’s easy to find with “@’s” really helps us respond to developers, and track trends as well.
So, in a nutshell, twitter does rock for lots of reasons. Great post!
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:24 pmTim
(oh, i’m also @timishungry)