This week you turned five years old. Marketing scams, iPad & baked bean bots and Beliebers army aside, you have become the single most useful and important tool in my life. I’m not referring to you keeping me in the loop within my industry, but the human connection and the opportunity this has afforded me from being a loyal user over the years.

Do you remember how we met?

In Jan 2009 I attended a seminar at the London Southbank University. The seminar was recommended to me by good friend and former boss at @OrangeRockcorps, @TheoLuck. ‘Luca, you’ll like this’, he said. It was at that seminar, Twitter, that someone finally mentioned you. It was @andrew_davis, who without batting an eyelash responded to the ever-present question, ‘What social media tools will blow up next?’. ‘Watch out for Twitter’, he said. That was all I needed to sign up.

Fast forward to March 2011 and look at you today. Not only have you redefined the way we consume information, but you have also helped highlight the uniqueness of your experience as a leader in the social media sphere.

Because I am one of millions, I want to tell you a little about my special relationship with you. In late 2009 I was an unemployed graduate with a vision, i.e. a bum. I’d been using you (oh, not like that!) for the best part of a year, publishing my music/events related blog posts and networking with fellow like minded people. I was happy with my progress but like a lot of graduates, I had no income.

A series of tweets and DMs later, a new world had opened up for me. ‘Intern wanted asap’, I once read on your shiny, sky blue timeline. That was the sassy @chantellefiddy who at the time was the editor of a magazine named @CtrlAltShifthq. Some persistence, a few emails and meetings later and I found myself finally learning my craft in the ‘real world.’ The experience you helped me acquire resulted in my personal growth and that of my online persona. But my journey wasn’t over. As 2009 ended, I left Ctrl.Alt.Shift and jumped into the world of freelance. Unfortunately that translated to ‘unemployed but arrogant’.

Yet, I continued to learn from you Twitter. I learned about personal branding and what it takes to be recognised as somebody within the digital realm. You introduced me to my new media hero, @garyvee. From him, I learned the true meaning of the word ‘hustle’. It was @garyvee who coined the phrase, defining it as the one who wants it most. I knew what I wanted, but I was still learning, and I didn’t know how to achieve it.

From working with some really intelligent people in both the digital and music scenes, I became increasingly more confident in my ability to sell. You were a priceless tool in this learning curve. The curve that taught me the skill and importance of selling. Marketing yourself as an invaluable product. I knew I was this product.

By mid 2010, I had advanced from the music technology major who was formally running an events management business into a digital professional with experience within some of the world’s best known brands. University lectures, corporation strategies, board room presentations – all these had become part of my path to my personal and professional success.

And I wrote, Twitter. I wrote post upon blog post, documenting my journey, discussing business fundamentals and building personal brands to achieve, all the while trying to reach out to others who still hadn’t discovered their and your full potential, as I was simultaneously trying to reach mine.

Summer 2010 had pretty much ended along with most of the projects I was working on. With unsteady money coming in from freelance projects, and an unwell pup needing constant and expensive visits to the vet, I turned to you once again.

And then it happened. One bright sunny afternoon, the smell of opportunity in the air, and a staff bull terrier nuzzling at my feet, regular tweet buddy @JamesProud alerted me to a message that had gone out from @Mazi, then head of social media for Sky, re: ‘Digital Marketing Analyst for Chelsea Football Club’. And just like that, the heavenly chorus resounded, champagne fell from the skies and I knew I had to have that job. Lucky for me, and thanks to you Twitter, James and Mazi were actually well acquainted. This is what happened next:

DM, DM, DM, email CV, DM, interview, call back, job, send DM saying thanks.

Not once did the words recruitment agent, job agency, recruitment consultant, LinkedIn escape my or anybody else’s lips during my employment process. You, Twitter, young in age yet wise beyond your years, you have been the one constant in my never ending journey to pay the bills. And personal growth and all that of course.

Now, while you have been a great networking and professional tool, we both know what you’ve done for my personal life, Twitter. Let’s be honest, by enabling me (and all of you readers) to follow our interests and source those who are similarly intrigued, does this not at least form some sort of foundation for personal relationships, or dare I say it, dating?

Because it worked for me.

I know people may chuckle that I met my beautiful girlfriend through you, Twitter, but both her and I are proud of that fact. She saw in me a confident, budding, handsome (her words, not mine) man from whom she has learnt the social and new media ropes. I saw in her similar interests, culture and a breath of fresh air. What’s important is that because we followed each other, tweeted similar opinions and shared similar interests, it proved how compatible we were. We pursued it and here we are today.

Over a year later, we are still going strong, and we still speak through you every single day. Although we text, speak, chat, Skype (catching my breath) you remain very special to us. We discuss ideas on the public timeline that we think others may be interested in, aide each others paths in the professional realm and constantly take both enjoyment and experience from you. At this point we would also both like to say how sorry we are for abusing our DM inboxes, ahem.

With everything above in mind, I want to personally say thank you to it’s founders @Jack, @ev and @biz. Thank you for my job with @chelseafc, via the brilliant @mazi and @jamesproud.

Thank you for introducing me to my love, @iamsilverfox.

Thank you for the friends you have afforded me, including bright talents like @teamsupremelee, @theevilfrog and @danielmclaren. Thank you for chow down friends like @max_hepworth, idea machines @iamelliot, @imjustmike and conversationalists @dannywhitehouse and @garf_richards. Thank you for bringing people across the pond closer to me, like bubbly @arianna and the classy @MarcusTroy. Thank you for the laughter via @djhotpoint, @jschoftraining @adonisdemon, @studiopixie, @DavidAclass, @loudmouthmelvin @_KevinGeorge, @cyberdees, @bluechampion and @iamayo. Thank you for inspiration like @liamtootill of @sbtvonline and @whatleydude. Thank you for thought provoking personalities like @peterlitchfield and music lovers like @djcable. Thank you for kindred spirits, old and new, like @djgrind aka @theswamps and @mazherabidi. Thank you for allowing me to keep up to date with some of my older friends such as @andrew_davis, @seanwebber87, @kieran_yates, @ThisIsChaz and @ErlenMasson.

Thank you @Twitter.

“The best way to discover what’s new in your world.” Guaranteed!

@iAmLuca

Oh the sweet and joyful commute to the office. The 50-minute journey of silence, and the stench of body oder is enough to drain all enthusiasm I had when crawling out of the shower, and overshadows any stimulating Gordon Brown lazy eye headline I may have decided to set my eyes on reading.

Maybe it’s the over population of the Crackberry that has these sheep staring so hard at their palms that you’d think they had Cheryl Cole naked between their legs.

However, the issue that beckons is the fact that day in day out, the journey is consistently silent… I mean I’m not looking for a six-train pile up of carnage and horror at London Bridge. The look on these Duncan Bannatyne wannabe’s is enough to scare off any Bin Laden look-a-like with his gym bag of C4.

My quarrel is worse than a bad day in Bosnia. It’s staring at our pathetic attempt of claiming to be a multi-cultural state, because the fact is that we are so paranoid of everyone around us that we need to cocoon ourselves in a ball of latest gadgets and black and white paper hoping that we don’t catch eye contact with someone who may actually appear to say ‘Good Morning’ as they travel to their destination!

I haven’t had the joy of travelling the world in a quest to find morning banter on the commute but I’m sure if I was hiking to the office in the Caribbean, I may be partial to a “Wots’ good mon”, followed by a musical duet with a local traveller who has the ability to brighten up their own life without the need of a qwerty keyboard or white earphones and fruit logos.

If not I may get some funny looks for wearing winkle pickers in 100 degrees of heat!

It’s a shame we have to be so dramatic and fearful of the people around us, with the thoughts that every Middle Eastern individual could be ready to explode not only killing me and the unfortunate Morgan Stanley chap beside me, but more importantly making me miss work and ruining my fake Hugo Boss suit…not to mention now I’m going to miss tonight’s Dragons Den.

Fortunately, I also own a Crackberry and I can spend the 50-minute commute polishing my ego chatting with my virtual reality Twitter friends… and not with you Zombies!

Thanks London.

UPDATED – ONGOING SOCIAL MEDIA STATISTICS:

1.4 billion music tracks sold on iTunes between Sep 09 & Feb 10 – Wikipedia iTunes tracking

300 000 new twitter users per day Apr 2010 – TechRadar

247 billions emails per day and 18% growth in internet users (of 1.75bn) Jan 2010 – Royal Pingdom ‘Internet 2009 in Numbers’

280 mill iPhone apps per month Jan 2010 – GigaOm

3.5 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook each week and 2.5 billion photo uploads to Facebook per month Feb 2010 – eConsultancy

Facebook 635mill in ad revenue & $75 mill in gifts Mar 2010 – InsideFacebook

Facebook 25 million new members each month Feb 2010 – Mashable

50 million Tweets per day Feb 2010 – eConsultancy

YouTube 1Billion watched per day Dec 2009 SMH

Source:

Gary Hayes

The image below paints a nice colourful picture of the evolution of 21st Century Technology.

Click to enlarge

As intelligent specimens we are blessed with the ability to do pretty much anything, bar fire red beams out of our eyes or fly.

We can have whatever we desire; if we use our heads to find a way of getting it, and we can be whatever we want to be; again if we use our heads.

Yet i find as time progresses, as technology enhances and as everything appears to become easier; people are generally making life more and more complicated for themselves.

This begs the questions ‘Are We Spoiled By Technology?’

Past Popular Posts

Before i get into it, if this is your first time reading my blog you may wanna check out a few of the most popular posts:

• Building a Personal Brand Using Social Media
• 10 Reasons Why Musicians Must Use Twitter

Back to the action…

What with Social Media, Mobile Technology and the wonders of Internet Search; how hard is it really to make that network, build a brand and climb to the next level?

Now, there is no need for me to reminisce on the days when people actually made of an effort than just 140 characters to communicate, but there was a time before Twitter, Facebook, Blackberry Messenger and Email that we still managed to get things done and enjoy life.

Don’t start assuming i’ve gone from being 25 to 65 overnight, cos that orange bus pass holder is a few years away yet. But what is beginning to bug me, is the way technology has become the forefront of everyone’s lives; to the extreme, that we are living our lives in a digital world and actually neglecting the essence of reality around us.

Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy

Here’s an example: Last week i actually said, “Im coming off Twitter for a bit, cos im beginning to feel like a stalker.” So i did… i left Twitter for a whole day; only to get a Blackberry ping AND a text message from two people asking ‘why i didn’t reply to their Twitter messages.’ So it appears everyone wants to be stalked.

“Ok ok chill… i’ll log on and i’ll reply.” and that was that.
*Exits digital rehab and heads back to the crack world.*

Even more exaggerated is the fact, that we actually get annoyed if our technology may either slow, stall or stop working. Now, think about that for a second…

First Bag of Questions…

• Do you rely on technology so much that it affects your emotions?
• Have you ever broken a gadget of some kind because it didn’t do something you wanted or better yet…
• Do you have dents around your house from where you have chucked the gadget at the wall?

The point is this…

Were these avenues of communication invented so that we can broaden our networks, expand on our connections and generally get things done easier?

… or were they actually created to keep us contained?

Cue Conspiracy Theory

The way i see things; are that yes, i have technology wherever i go, i can login simultaneously anywhere i want and keep in touch with people; but… and i say this with a hint of regret…
It makes me incredibly lazy!

Yes i am writing this post in a very contradictory fashion using the same technology that i question; but ask yourself…

Second Bag of Questions…

• Are you using technology to keep up with the trends or is it essential to your business?
• Are you using technology for your benefit or someone else’s?

Here’s one for all you Social Media Celebrities…

• Do you find yourself acting as a completely different persona in front of a screen to how you would act in person?

Now pause to think about those questions carefully before you disregard them.

Technology is a Drug

While this post may appear to be a negative outlook on technology; it is actually written to highlight how important technology is to the way we live our lives.

Technology can be just like a drug… Give someone a little taster and if they like it, they will want a little more.
Give them a lot more and they get addicted, they forget how they lived without it and begin to lose control.

I find myself admitting myself into the digital rehab now and again, turning off my Blackberry, temporary deleting my Facebook and taking a step back from Twitter. Why you may ask?

Because productivity is based on being focused and it’s very difficult to be focused if you are juggling between gadgets, websites, networks and applications.

While you may feel like you are out there being very productive, chatting to people across the globe using your incredibly ambitious 140 characters to compile the most interesting passage of your day; the irony of it all is that you probably do so whilst sitting in your pants in your bedroom.

Pause!

Final Bag of Questions

• When was the last time you pulled our a notepad and brainstormed productive ideas whilst you have those spare minutes?

• When was the last time you read a book, maybe something like Rich Dad, Poor Dad? (That’s what i am currently reading).

Luca’s Final Thought

I’ll end this by saying that i think you are all great, i love that you read my posts and hopefully follow me on Twitter (that’s twitter.com/iAmLuca) but do yourself a favour…

Take a day off technology and refresh your brain… you deserve it!