I was having fun last night with this website call When Did You Join Twitter. It’s quite interesting, just key in your userid and it will show you the date that you joined Twitter.

I was on a mission to find out who is the first Singaporean who joined Twitter. Well, I figured that he/she might be the person who started the viral effect of Twitter here in Singapore.

I notice that quite a number of Singaporeans joined Twitter during March 2007. Interesting right? I’m suspecting that it could be because of Nexus which was held on 24 March 2007. (And the Pre-Nexus event GeekOut on 22 March) Either that or some famous person mentioned about Twitter. I’m suspecting the reason could be Nexus because I remember we were using Twitter back then (although I didn’t mentioned it on my blog). Although I can’t remember the official twitter id used by the TDM folks. Back in early 2007, there wasn’t twitter trend and there is no searching on twitter. So it wasn’t something like Aware EOGM where it is easy for everyone to find related tweet on Nexus. (and Hashtag wasn’t invented back then too) Most people doesn’t have a mobile data plan (Which was quite expensive) and most handphone doesn’t have a web browser back then. So most of the updates was done either on laptop or using the UK SMS number which cost $0.15 per message. Which sort of explains why there weren’t much twitter message being posted at the event. And I THINK I remember twitter crashed on Nexus that day. Haha. But we do have SMS alert, so when Twitter is up, we get SMS alerts from people we are following.

And in case you are wondering, the first person who joined Twitter in the world is Jack Dorsey (who is obviously the founder of twitter). He joined (or created) Twitter on 22 March 2006 and posted the first Twitter message that start it all.

just setting up my twttr

I didn’t know Twitter is called Twttr in the past. Twitter sounds a lot better.

Anyway, back to my quest to find the first Singaporean Twitter-er. It wasn’t an easy task. I have to manually key in local Twitter users that I heard of to see who joined the earliest. Most of the user id I tried joined Twitter in late 2006 or early 2007 (A lot in March 2007). And our Traditional Media in Singapore only picked up on Twitter lately. Where were they back in early 2007?

The earliest Singapore Twitter user I found is Angelique. She joined Twitter on 24 August 2006. I cannot confirm if she is the first Twitter user in Singapore. So far I couldn’t find any Singaporean who joined earlier than her. If you found any Singaporean who joined earlier than 24 Aug 2006, please let me know and I’ll update this blog entry accordingly. Thanks.

BTW: There is a Singapore Tweetup tonight 7pm (14 May 2009) at Geek Terminal. Do join us if you are a Twitter user. Or you can follow the hashtag #sgtweetup for updates at the event.

So, when did YOU join Twitter?

Related posts:

1. Twitter – turning off sms alert for rest of the world
2. Nexus 2007
3. Twitter go mobile
4. BBC Twitter
5. Singapore Weather Twitter