Lynda Partner’s Marketing Morceaux

When I first opened my twitter account, Guy Kawasaki (internet visionary and venture capitalist in case you haven’t heard of him) was the first person I looked up and the first person I followed.  He made my day when he immediately returned the favour (though he did comment that it was pretty obvious I was in need of followers).

I realized pretty quickly that Guy is, shall we say, prolific.  Tweet after tweet arrived almost 24/7. I started reading, and reading, and reading, and would often look up from my computer to realize that hours had passed while I was absorbed in Guy’s world of fascinating, often eccentric posts. I was addicted – who wouldn’t want to be handed already reviewed articles that range from “a wristband that tells you when you’ve had enough sun” to the “45 people to follow on twitter” to “cool iphone apps”.

As time went on my addiction grew. I was checking twitter and ignoring email.  I became the trivia queen thanks to Guy but then my friends expected me to have something fascinating to talk about every time we talked and I spent even more time following Guy.  Soon my kids were begging me to leave my computer just long enough to make dinner once every 3 days or so (ok, so at this point I admit to some exaggeration – but just a bit of exaggeration).

The bottom line was that Guy Kawasaki was killing me – and quickly too.  My work was suffering, my kids were suffering and I was giving up my daily runs to spend more time on-line.  I had to do something. I tried cold turkey – didn’t even look at twitter for an entire 24 hours.  Too painful.  I tried ignoring his tweets and focusing on the other people I was following.  His headlines distracted me every time.  Finally I summoned up my willpower and sat there with my finger poised over the “Remove” button. Minutes went by.  I simply couldn’t bring myself to give him up! There had to be a better way.

Now I use TweetDeck and I filter Guy’s tweets into a single stream, and once a day (after my work is done), I grab a coffee, set the alarm on my iphone and disappear into Guy’s world.  I haven’t quite kicked the addiction but I now think I might actually live through it.

And yes I’d love it if you followed me: http://www.twitter.com/lpartner