What will your last tweet be?
A homage to your existence? A 140 summary of the meaning of life? Thanks to your friends and families? A line from Shakespeare?
The reality is that pretty much no one knows when their last tweet will be. And despite the morbid tone here, there is an enlightening thought here. Although you might not be able to control what your very last tweet will be, you can control your last tweet, as in, your most recent one.
And in that sense, you can determine your last tweet right now.
Your 140 Obituary
Back to the morbid side for a second - if I could decide my dying tweet in advance, I'd make it say something in 140 characters that summarised my whole life. As a Christian, I'd probably make this something along the lines of "Love God, Love People" as that is very much the ethos of my life. I wonder what yours would like - and herein lies the connection - your last tweet would probably give me quite an insight into your life.
In the same way, your most recent tweet, tells me a lot about you, especially if I've just met you for the first time. In fact, whenever I decide whether or not to follow someone, I look at their last 10 tweets.
So you could say that if you've got 1 minute to capture someone's attention when you first meet them, you've got 10 tweets to capture someone when deciding to follow you. If that.
10 Tweet Analysis
So let's do a 10 Tweet analysis on my friend and eminent blogger Chris Brogan. Below is a screen shot of his recent tweets, along with my analysis of what each of those tweets means to me as a last tweet:
I think Chris really nails this. If I look at his last Tweet, I can pretty much get an insight into who he is and decide whether I want to follow or not.
RIP
So go forth today with a fresh new lease on life, because now you know that you can control your last tweet, and you can make sure it's something worthy of being your last tweet.
Hmmm, I wonder if I should update my Will, with instructions on the last tweets, blog posts, comments etc. How depressing.
All kidding aside, and I know Scott’s post wasn’t about this, but it is a good idea to have some kind of document outlining what to do in case of your parting. What happens to your Twitter account, your hosting, etc.