I once started a Twitter trend. #ramday

(For those readers who don’t know what Twitter is, I suggest watching this video before you read this post.)

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Last Thursday I saw someone tweeting something that struck me as somewhat random. And I liked it.

I thought, that’s really cool. I love learning offbeat things about people.

And that was the beginning of ‘Random About Me’ day. Except, I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. Or if anyone would even participate.

So I asked one of my dearest friends, the ever-wonderful Matt Knell. Matt, I said, is this silly? He didn’t think so and he encouraged me to forge on. In fact, he even suggested the name. And so, with this little tweet, something big started.

A lot of folks didn’t understand the idea. I heard a lot of, “isn’t everyday on Twitter random fact day?” I don’t think that’s necessarily true. On a daily basis people tweet about what they’re doing, ideas they have, news or other things online that they want to share. I wouldn’t consider those things “random.” In fact, they’ve sort of become the norm.

#ramday was meant to be an open forum for people to share things about themselves that they wouldn’t normally think of sharing on Twitter. Memories from their childhood, crazy things that they’ve done, interesting people they’ve met. And in the process, learn more about the people they are following.

You see, we all love to talk about ourselves. We can’t help it. But the difference with #ramday, what made it not just a narcissistic exercise, as one person asked, was that it had a greater goal: to learn more about the people we are interacting with. Perhaps to make new friends with people we didn’t know we had something in common with. The difference was, people were listening. They weren’t just talking about themselves, they were listening to each other. I heard it called an ice breaker. I like to think of it as a community builder.

Of course, the way it caught on took me completely by surprise. In the morning it was just the people in my immediate circle taking part. Then, somehow, it exploded. Some very well-known Twitterers (like @megfowler, @missrogue and @TDefren) shared the message. By the afternoon there were several #ramday tweets per second. We were the number one Twitter term for portions of the day. But even more, despite some naysayers, most people felt like they were all doing something fun together.

I saw some great #ramday tweets. People talked about their hopes and dreams, happy memories and painful ones, accomplishments and failures, odd talents, and unusual incidents. Some #ramday tweets just rang with genuine emotion. Some were entire stories in and of themselves.

In my series of wrap up tweets on Thursday, I shared some of my favorite tweets from the day. Some of the funniest, juiciest, and most interesting ones. (They’re all saved under my favorites, if you want to check them out.)

I’d like to share a few others.

Great stories: http://twitter.com/nicmcc/statuses/868522250, http://twitter.com/johnherman/statuses/868542911, http://twitter.com/BizGirl/statuses/868556852

Made me laugh: http://twitter.com/davidherrold/statuses/868505617, http://twitter.com/eelain212/statuses/868610573, http://twitter.com/TanMcG/statuses/868604244

Odd talents: http://twitter.com/mattsito/statuses/868610167, http://twitter.com/estellevw/statuses/868530566, http://twitter.com/pdxmama/statuses/868524834

Touchingly genuine: http://twitter.com/TheWillEd/statuses/868550260, http://twitter.com/GiddysRuffles/statuses/868513700, http://twitter.com/pwcaulfield/statuses/868582336

Once again, thank you to the hundreds (thousands?) of you who participated in Random About Me day. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that #ramday brought joy to so many people. Many people thanked me and I appreciate that, but it was you all who took the idea and made it a trend. I just got the ball rolling.

And as to the questions of, when’s the next #ramday? Well, that’s really up to you. We could do it every now and then for fun, or it could go down as that one day we all shared. Or we could all take the spirit of #ramday and weave it in to our tweets going forward. It’s up to you. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

For now, I leave you to draw your own lessons from Random About Me day. Feel free to post your thoughts on your own blog or elsewhere, just be sure to link back here.