Sometime right about now is my fifth anniversary on Twitter. One site I looked at reported that today, October 15th is my fifth anniversary, but another site placed my first tweet on the 16th. Some of it may be time zones, or it might be that I set up my account on the 15th and tweeted for the first time on the 16th. I’m not sure exactly.

However, over these past five years, I’ve sent out almost 11,000 tweets. Some are cross posted from other sites, like links to my blog posts via Twitterfeed, or tweets coming from Foursquare or other sites. Others come in bursts when I attend conferences. We’ll see how much tweeting I do this week at the Third Annual Health Care Social Media conference at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota that I’m leaving for on Sunday morning.

While social media has grown in popularity and Twitter is very significant, it still isn’t as pervasive as other sites. Over the years, various groups have dismissed Twitter. I remember going to marketing conferences years ago where people said that nothing would ever come of Twitter. I’ve been to conferences on the future of journalism where people have wondered if Twitter matters. In answer to this latter group, my wife got me a shirt that says, “I get my news on Twitter”. Often, that has been the case, as I get breaking news on Twitter first. Now, more and more news organizations post their headlines on Twitter.

This evening, I watched the Twitter feed for news about the occupy movement. That’s another topic that needs more than 140 character and I hope to write more about it soon. Yet now, I’m very tired and I should rest for the big trip tomorrow.