Day 366: The Year In Rehab Review

"They tried to make me go to Rehab, I said "No, No, No..."

-- Amy Winehouse


"They said I needed Twitter Rehab, I said "Yes, Yes, Yes!"

-- Jeffrey Sass

It has been a full year since I admitted myself to the INVITATIONS Social Networking Rehab facility. Several thousand tweets later I am still here. Wiser? Yes. Less addicted? Well...

A year ago there was the just the Twittergram. Today there are numerous services that put Twitter on steroids: Seesmic, Utterz, TwitPic, Qik, 12Seconds, and many more all seamlessly connect rich media to Twitter, creating a veritable social media speedball! Temptation is everywhere. And that is without even mentioning Facebook and Friendfeed! What's an addict to do???

IN THE BEGINNING...

How did I end up here? It all started with this video I posted to Facebook a year ago:





Having finally admitted I had a problem, I started on a 28 day journey that has lasted a year... I was fortunate to find INVITATIONS after getting rejected by PROMISES in Malibu for not being a Celebrity.

One of my first tasks after being admitted to rehab was to help produce a Public Service Announcement to promote INVITATIONS, and spread the word about the evils of Social Networking addiction.

Here is the PSA from last year:




Remember QUECHUP? It didn't matter if it was a scam or just spam, it was crushed by a community wide kabosh. If we only knew then what we know now. Although Twitter-bots and Twitter spam may now be on the rise, spam is only one of the Perils of using Twitter, as highlighted in another PSA:



So here I am, entering my second year of rehab with callouses on my Twitter fingers and a cap on the number of folks I can follow. Is that going to stop me from imbibing in my social media?

No way!