It’s not a heady post.  Seems a good time for levity.

The Five Stages of Tweet

1. Denial and Isolation: Twitter denial starts before your friend actually engages with Twitter, but after they have heard about it’s existence. Expressions during this phase morph from “What’s twitter” to the accusatory “Are you twittering again?” to “I’ll use it but I’ll never ever say the word ‘tweet’” (the exception to this rule, is of course, the french – who love to say ‘tweet’ and generally laugh when given the opportunity to repeat it indefinitely). Isolation sets in when the non-twitterer engages in arguments with others who use twitter, attempting to defend their tweetban without having any knowledge of the product. Eventually, however, a Twitter account is created. It may lay dormant for approximately 2 weeks. Or…your friend may send a single tweet as a test. Usually it says something simple like “what’s going on here” or “this is a test of the emergency broadcast system.”

2. Anger: When you try to teach your friend exactly how to send a Tweet, and you use the word “Tweet,” they will likely become angry with you. Don’t worry, they will eventually reach Acceptance (see stage 5). Until that moment, prepare to get the evil eye with every mention of “Tweet” and to answer questions that may not have concrete answers. Such as, “Who are all these people?” and “why do i only get 140 characters?” Your answer may incite anger in your friend, or in you if you think too hard. Don’t. Stage 5 isn’t all that far away, and you are already there.

3. Bargaining: Now it’s time to learn! The fun part. Your friend will begin to oversubscribe to feeds and device updates as  they tend to figure out how it works. Expect a complaint immediately -  “ever since i started using twitter, i get SMS messages every 5 seconds.” You know the drill. You can show your friend how to control their feed. And you do. Because you made that same mistake too. And you remember when Twitter accidentally defaulted to activated device updates.

4. Depression: This is also known as the “Why doesn’t Twitter do _______” phase. Your friend will engage you in a thousand conversations you’ve already had with yourself, but will add to your list of questions. This is a creative phase, where your friend finally understands how Twitter works, tinkles with making a bot, starts noticing how other twitter accounts are functioning, and starts getting geeky-excited over the many twitter accounts for them to follow. Such as @sockington and @marsphoenix

5. Acceptance: You bump into your friend a week later. She knows exactly how to condense her thoughts into 140 characters, has sent you funny notes using @you language and says “you haven’t tweeted for so long, how come you haven’t sent a tweet yet today?”