How Twitter Has Changed My Life...

Twitter is everywhere now! It's the newest thing in social networking, and I eagerly jumped on board back in March. 

As of August 2009, it was estimated that close to 31M people are using twitter domestically with 310M hits per day. 43% of those people are between the ages of 18 - 34. Twitter is growing not only domestically, but also internationally, at exponential rates. If you're more of a visual person, and need to actually see how big twitter is, check out this site: http://beta.twittervision.com/. This whole twitter phenomenon is a marketer's dream!

Many companies and celebrities have been the ones to skyrocket twitter into what it has become today. The Ashton Kutcher v. CNN Twitter follower war in April was a national news story as all of America waited to see who would reach 1,000,000 followers first. Many other celebrities have latched onto Twitter and have further fed our culture's obsession with "stalking" celebrities. To be honest, that's why I first signed up. I could find out what Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus, Lauren Conrad, and a number of other people were doing on a frequent basis, twitter was better and more instantaneous then people.com.

Recently, over the past few months, things have changed. A while back, I realized that I didn't care what the Kardashian sisters were doing.  They didn't seem to matter anymore as I began to refocus my life onto things that were important, loving God and loving people (I blame Francis Chan's "Crazy Love"). One day, I went through the list of people I was following and un-followed the majority of the celebrities that I was following (I did keep a few as I have a Disney Channel problem, as noted by my recent stalking of Disney Channel stars at Disneyland).  After my twitter celebrity cleanse, I began to realize what a useful tool this is for ministry and my own personal relationship with God. I began following PURE, the young adult group at Water of Life, as well as the pastor for PURE. After them came very influential pastors and leaders in the Christian community, such as Rick Warren.

Throughout this experience I have been privileged to find new blogs and Christ followers that are a true blessing in my life.  Most of them do not know me, and probably never will, however their tweets help me stay focused on what is actually important in this life, living each day by striving to serve and worship a God that deserves so much more then I can give Him. I can honestly say Twitter has changed my life.