Natiiv

Enabled Serendipity

Tagged archives , serendipity , socialmedia , twitter

A post from the archives about how Twitter enables serendipity.

This was originally posted on Mark Davidson's blog Twitter Stars in July 2008. I referenced it on Twitter today and thought the time was right to re-post it here. It shows the human side of Twitter, which is why I love the tool so much and recommend it with such gusto.

I’m sitting at a bar in Chicago called Matilda’s. When I was here last week, I came with @amyguth and then @lisrock joined us. Hooray! @amyguth and I have known each other for years, but it was the first time I’d met @lisrock in person. We didn’t plan to hang out, but we know the areas we hang out in and were able to have a martini together.

This is what I call Enabled Serendipity.

It sounds like extreme web 2.0 jargon but it has become my favorite things about Twitter. Because of Twitter, I avoid stories that end with, “Oh man, I was there too. If I’d known you were there, we would have had such an awesome time!”

Enabled Serendipity is being able to turn an almost-coincidence into seeing someone face to face.

Last winter I was in the Jet Blue Terminal of JFK and saw that @chrisbrogan was waiting to board a Jet Blue flight as well. A direct message—and quick text message to his phone, after getting his number from mobile Facebook—and we were having a beer. Without Twitter, we would have each had our lonely airport meal. Hell, without Twitter, @chrisbrogan wouldn’t be in my life.

In June I went to Israel for two weeks. The night I got to Tel Aviv, I missed my hosts and didn’t have their cell phone number to find them. It was a holiday, so making a last minute hotel reservation wasn’t going to happen. I dragged all of my luggage to a cafe, got on Twitter and said, “hmmm… no plan b and can’t find hosts. i’m near ben gurion and hadassah st, any suggestions?”

Within moments my phone lit-up and @taltalk came to rescue me. After getting promises that I wasn’t a murderer over twitter from the States, @taltalk came to get me and I stayed with her. That my friends, is Israeli and Twitterati hospitality.

A few days later I tweeted that I was walking around Tel Aviv, if anyone wanted to join. By 5PM, I was joined at Cuppa Joe by one of Israel’s biggest pop stars Ivri Lider. Hint: On Twitter he’s a little more incognito as @arturmon.

And these are just the recent stories. Due to the Enabled Serendipity of Twitter, I now have a global community. I’ve met people around the country and abroad. I’ve fallen in and out of something close to love. I’ve been able to make introductions that turned into jobs. I have a new group of friends in Chicago that don’t roll their eyes when I talk about nerdy-nerdy things and I’ve even got most of my family on Twitter including my mom @lindajones, twin sister @devivo, and older brother @ry_jones.

But the most fun remains those moments when I can avoid saying “Oh man, you were there too?” and replace it with, “Remember when we met at a cafe in Tel Aviv?”