Written by Lauren Dugan
It’s easy to fall into the trap of spending an hour reading and writing tweets before you realize you just meant to log on to your email and respond to your boss. Twitter is an addictive social information machine, and we wouldn’t be surprised if “Twitter addiction” becomes a verifiable condition. Think you might have a Twitter obsession? Here are 50 signs you’re addicted to Twitter. If you nod in agreement to more than half of them, you might have a problem.
- You keep your Twitter client on your smartphone running by your bed, just so you can be notified of any @mentions while you sleep.
- Every day you count your followers and compare it to the previous day’s number to see how many new people are following you.
- You become giddy if this number is higher than 5.
- You’ve tried every single Twitter client out there for the web and your smartphone, and ultimately decided to use a combination of about half a dozen to get as much juice out of Twitter as possible.
- You can’t wait for Twitter to auto-refresh, and do it manually.
- When something exciting, funny, or strange happens to you, you immediately come up with a witty tweet about it and log it away until you’re somewhere you can tweet.
- Same as the last one, except you’re never without your smartphone with Twitter logged in so you can tweet your insights immediately.
- Your anxiety flares up every time you see the Fail Whale.
- You take your ‘Droid in to the toilet with you to make sure you don’t miss a single @mention while, um, doing your business.
- You’ve convinced your grandma to sign up for an account – but you spend more time tweeting on her behalf that she does.
- You tweet about what you’re eating, while you’re eating it.
- You begin using RT and @mentions in your emails and Facebook messages.
- You update your Twitter more than your blog.
- You have a stream in TweetDeck or HootSuite which shows all of your @mentions and your retweets, just so you can count them up.
- All of your news comes from Twitter.
- You’ve created a Google Alert for your Twitter username.
- When people ask you what you do, you say “I tweet” without skipping a beat.
- You’ve developed a list of 100+ idea that could make Twitter a better experience.
- You follow every single #FollowFriday mention you see.
- You’ve set Twitter as your homepage.
- You have at least one piece of Twitter bird jewelery.
- You know you’ve got to close Twitter.com to get any real work done, but just after you refresh your timeline one more time…
- You’ve met at least one of your followers in person.
- You tweet while on vacation.
- The first thing you check in the morning is always Twitter. Not your email, not Facebook… Twitter.
- You’ve tweeted your thoughts about a movie while in the theater.
- You tweet and drive.
- You went to a Tweet Up and tried to speak in only 140-characters or less for the laughs.
- When a big news story breaks, you log on to Twitter to see what your tweeps are saying about it before you discuss it with your friends or family.
- If your favorite celebrity doesn’t have a Twitter account, she’s not your favorite celebrity anymore.
- You tweet people who are in the same house as you.
- You tweet people who are in the same room as you.
- You’re a URL shortener elitist, who scorns those not using the one you use.
- You find yourself muttering “I should tweet that” under your breath on a daily basis.
- Your Twitter name is on your business card.
- You don’t even have a business card – if people can’t find you on Twitter, they’re not worth doing business with.
- You’ve tweeted about tweeting before.
- You create hashtags that are ultra obscure and only you and a select group of your elite Twitter followers understand.
- Twitter is the pillar of any multi-tasking you do. If you close your Twitter tab or client, you’re done multi-tasking.
- You’ll go back through your Twitter timeline and read every. single. tweet. that you missed.
- Your last waking thought every night this past week has been typed into a tweet and sent with the last twitch of your thumb before you passed out.
- Since joining Twitter, you’ve asked every new person you’ve met what their Twitter username is. If they don’t have one, you don’t continue the conversation.
- You feel seriously stressed if you can’t come up with something insightful or witty to say about at least 5 trending topics a day.
- Every so often you invent a new Twitter-related term and try to get it to take off.
- You’re never satisfied with the number of followers you have.
- You share more emotions on Twitter than with your significant other.
- You keep revising your Twitter bio to be more and more witty.
- Every time you try to convince a friend you’re not addicted to Twitter, they laugh.
- Birds that “chirp” instead of “tweet” annoy you subconsciously.
- You found this article on Twitter, and you’ll share it on Twitter when you’re done