I learned recently that there’s a quick and easy way to find the first tweet of anyone who has been engaged with Twitter. You just go to this link and enter in the @username of someone and you’ll see there first post — aka tweet.
My first tweet for @StratCommun was on October 1, 2009 – wow! That surprised me. I know I’ve been engaged for some time, but didn’t realize exactly how long. Time flies, as they say (pun intended).
This made me curious to see what some very successful social media gurus tweeted on in their early days and how long they’ve been tweeting. So, I took a look at the Forbes list of top social media influencers. Here’s what I found for the Top 10:
#1 Sean Gardner
651K followers now
#2 Ann Tran
386K followers now
#3 Jessica Northey
585K followers now
#4 Mari Smith
282K followers now
#5 Aaron Lee
473K followers now
#6 John Paul Aguiar
137K followers now
#7 Liz Strauss
124K followers now
#8 Warren Whitlock
185K followers now
#9 Ted Coine
345K followers now
#10 Pam Moore
201K followers now
Of these “Top Ten” it looks like Liz Strauss was first out of the gate in March 2007, followed fairly closely by Mari Smith in September 2007. A couple of these first posts responded literally to Twitter’s original question of: “What are you doing?” Liz Strauss responded “laughing at your messages” and John Paul Aguiar told us in his first tweet that he was “having Eggos with nephew.” Most of these were – and still are – to a large degree very self-centered with one notable exception. Ted Coine’s first tweet was in response to someone else – @Kboschetto who, based on the associated Twitter profile, appears to be an animal rights advocate in Colorado who now has 202 followers.
Oh, and how am I doing after almost five years on Twitter? I’m at about 1300 followers now. I’m sure I’ll catch up to these gurus eventually! It’s just a matter of time…
by Linda Pophal
Tags: influencers, Social Media, twitter