#PreTwitter: 18 Funny / True Tweets

Post Summary: The #PreTwitter hashtag trended nationally in South Africa after Activation Media launched the concept. South Africans shared creative and funny tweets about what they did before Twitter, from having longer attention spans to actually stalking people in person. The hashtag showcases how Twitter revolutionized online communication with its microblogging format.

This morning Twitter was abuzz with the #PreTwitter hashtag. The brilliant folks from Activation Media had an idea to get the hashtag trending, and South Africans embraced it fully.

The hashtag trended nationally in South Africa by mid-day today. Quite impressive and a very cool concept if you ask me. The hashtag is all about stating what you did before you had Twitter. The mico-blogging service is full of creative, so a ton of very creative and interesting tweets came up.

More info about Twitter

The internet before Twitter was already a powerful tool for communication, information sharing, and social networking. However, Twitter brought a new level of immediacy, brevity, and viral potential to online communication, allowing users to share their thoughts and experiences in real-time with a global audience.

Twitter revolutionized the way people communicated and shared information on the internet. Before Twitter, most online communication was long-form, such as blog posts, emails, or forum threads. Twitter, with its 140-character limit, introduced the concept of microblogging, allowing users to share short, concise messages in real-time.

In case you did not know, Twitter was founded on March 21, 2006, by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. The first tweet was sent on March 21, 2006, by Jack Dorsey, which read “just setting up my twttr.” The company’s logo is a bird, which is named “Larry” after Larry Bird, the former NBA basketball player.

Twitter’s revenue for 2011 was reported to be around $139.5 million. This was a significant increase from the previous year, where the company’s revenue was estimated to be around $45 million. The increase in revenue was attributed to the growing popularity of Twitter and the company’s efforts to monetize its platform through advertising and other initiatives.

Here are 18 of the funny / true #PreTwitter Tweets that I spotted:

• “#PreTwitter my attention span was longer than 140 characters!” @siyantombela
• “#PreTwitter both my thumbs were the same size.” @phoenixmuso
• “#PreTwitter it didn’t matter that 44k+ accounts have been reached with this tag” @BaasDeBeer
• “#PreTwitter people only used hash tags as a preface for numbers” @Dominique_Cat
• “#PreTwitter you would meet your friends for dinner and drinks. Now you meet strangers for a tweetup.” @lexamantis
• “#PreTwitter You used to want to shoot anything that tweeted when hungover. Now everyone tweets about their hangover.” @TyronLSA
• “#PreTwitter I thought 160 characters for a TEXT message was outrageous.” @JeanJordaan
• “#PreTwitter Only comedians were funny.” @RuanHaha
• “#Pretwitter I would get arrested for sending pics of my wors to people” @BraaiBoy
• “#PreTwitter socially awkward people had no place to look cool.” @gevaaalikdotcom
• “#PreTwitter I was bored on the train and in waiting rooms” @Razscal
• “#PreTwitter I used to read a book whilst on the loo.” @JanHHarmse
• “#PreTwitter We had to actually go out to Stalk people” @Tsek_Bastard
• “#PreTwitter No one wanted to be followed” @kgotso_gad
• “#Pretwitter someone following you was actually creepy!” @Nomsa45
• “#PreTwitter Going Viral landed you in hospital.” @DopeboyKwesta
• “#PreTwitter I had to look for nice sayings on google!” @Seductive_devil
• “#PreTwitter a handle was used to open doors..” @King_Kanete

You can follow Activation Media via @ActivationZA on Twitter. It’s amazing how this micro-blogging service has changed the way we communicate via our mobile phones and the internet.

Twitter already has 300 million users globally (more than 1 million in South Africa) and its not getting any smaller. The micro-blogging service has been around since 2007.

Not convinced, here’s a tweet that proves why Twitter is awesome:

Still think that its useless? Running Wolf’s Rant would like to hear your thoughts about the hashtag and about Twitter and general, so feel free to comment on this post. Any form of feedback is welcome.

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