It was exactly two years ago, on March 18, 2009, that I joined the Twitterverse. I know exactly why I joined and what I was doing when I signed up. I was watching the Ellen DeGeneres Show. She had been talking about Twitter a few times and I finally got curious about it. Other people had mentioned it before as well. I already had a Facebook account but at the time was barely using it. But I decided to try Twitter anyway. I signed up but I had no followers (sounds a little cult-ish, doesn’t it?) and I didn’t know what to do. I assume everyone started out searching for celebrities to follow. I know I did. Then somehow I learnt a few other things like using hashtags (#), how to send public messages to people (@) and private/direct messages (D). In the beginning, I didn’t tweet much. I hardly even logged in.

My Tweet Stats

So what changed in February 2010 to cause me to start tweeting madly (well, to me, at that time it seemed like I was tweeting madly at 154 tweets for the month!)?  The answer is quite simple: I discovered White Collar.  To my now-dedicated and loyal group of friends/followers, you will understand exactly what this means.  To those who aren’t, I won’t judge you but you are missing out! 😀  Now, you may say “but the show started in October 2009! What were you doing all this time?”  Well, it didn’t air in Australia till a couple of months after the US so I did catch on a little later but once I caught the bug, I caught it BIG…viral proportions!  As they say, better late than never!

Tweetstats Day-of-the-week Breakdown

I don’t recall how I found out about the White Collar writers (@WCWriters) being on Twitter but before long, I was following the show’s creator, Jeff Eastin (@jeffeastin) and the writing team* – anxiously waiting, anticipating and hoping each day for sneak peeks at what is going on during filming, sneak peeks at script pages for upcoming episodes, and any trivia they wish to offer up for each episode when it airs.  And if you are wondering why my peak day is Wednesday when White Collar airs on Tuesdays, it’s purely a timezone thing…the show airs on Wednesdays in Australia.

Tweetstats Breakdown by the hour

Before I knew what was happening, the White Collar team became my new rock stars!  Who cares what was happening with Ashton and Demi?  Or Katy and Russell?  Gaga?  Charlie who?  Am I stalking? Mmm…as Neal Caffrey would say, “I’d have to look up the legal definition.”  And it’s not just the writing team I am addicted to.  I have written before about my Twitter friends (see my post “The Kindness of Strangers & Friends“).  They are part of my wider community of fellow addicts – yes, there are other crazy people like me who keep me up at nights because we all live in different parts of the world so someone is always awake and online.  Looking at the stats scare me…this explains why I am always tired!

It is a competitive world out there in Twitterverse! Last April Fool’s Day, we all cheered as the White Collar writing team infiltrated the Burn Notice writers’ office and hid alarm clocks under their desks (for my fellow Collars who played along, those same clocks made a special appearance in the White Collar Season 2 premier).  Then we looked on as Matt Nix, the creator of Burn Notice challenged the White Collar team to a paintball challenge at the 2010 Comic Con in San Diego (by the way, this paintball war took place in February, and the Collars emerged victorious once again).

The latest off-air dramedy we have all been following has been the very funny Twitter war (or “twar”) between Jeff Eastin and Shawn Ryan, creator of The Shield and his latest, The Chicago Code.  The challenge was for the first to reach 15,000 followers to donate to the charity of their choice (Jeff chose the ASPCA).  Ryan may have won the first round by breaking into the White Collar writers’ room on Superbowl Sunday and posting pictures of himself sitting at Jeff’s desk and replacing the White Collar Matt Bomer poster (quelle horreur!) with his own but we think Shawn getting arrested by FBI Agent Peter Burke (aka the wonderful Tim DeKay) was 100 times better 🙂  And by the way, Jeff is currently behind in this challenge so if you are not already following him on Twitter, do it now!  If you don’t want to do it for Jeff, do it for the animals! Think of all the animals who would benefit from his win! :))

So anyway, I’m going to go back to checking out the news on Twitter now to see what’s been going on while I’ve been writing.  There is a whole world out there waiting for me to discover…and the parts that I cannot participate in, I do so vicariously through those I follow.  So remember, when you’re having fun, you’re doing it for the world! 😀

Keep smiling and go forth and tweet! xox

Tim DeKay and Matt Bomer

* You can follow the writing team individually: Jim Campolongo (@CampJim44), Joe Henderson (@Henderson_Joe), Alexandra McNally (@LexiMc), Channing Powell (@Powell_Channing), EP Mark Goffman (@markgoffman), Matt Negrete (@MattNegrete), Dan Shattuck (@DanShattuck), Eddie Serrano (@SerranoEddie) and Chris Masi (@Chris_Masi)