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At the beginning there was Friendster. Then Myspace, then Facebook, the boom of blogging and finally Twitter.

Then came something that almost brought it full circle, something that nearly marked the end of an era. Then, for a briefly, came Seppukoo, the worldwide virtual suicide network.

While I was in the midst of discovering Twitter I discovered that a new Internet phenomenon emerged for those that want to leave their online identity behind. The website allowed you to commit virtual suicide from Facebook, as a more dramatic alternative to simply de-activating your account. Unfortunately for my curiosity, it looks like Facebook has caught on and blocked it, and also blocked any sharing of Seppukoo links with other users.

Seppukoo was inspired by the Japanese Samurai act of ritual suicide or Seppuku. Rather than die at the hands of their enemies, they preferred to die by their own sword.

Besides the obvious concern that the website promotes something as troublesome as suicide, the concept is quite amusing. You enter in your login information and you receive a memorial page where you can choose your backdrop, you may enter last words and people can leave you final/goodbye messages. There is a top 100 section as well listing the people who have influenced the most friends to commit virtual suicide. Apparently, and fortunately for the indecisive (like me), resurrection isn’t a problem. You can just log back into Facebook and without the need for any sort of superhuman powers, you are a live social networker once more.

Whether Seppukoo will return or not to full operation, it has in some way shape or form, made things come full circle. The most ironic part of all is that you can follow Seppukoo on Twitter.

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At the beginning there was Friendster. Then Myspace, then Facebook, the boom of blogging and now, finally Twitter.

I’ll be honest I don’t really get Twitter.

I know it should be useful. In fact, the more I hear about it, the more certain I grow that I am not taking as much advantage of it as I could. However, what exactly it is that I’m supposed to be doing with it I have no clue. Twitter is supposed to be a great tool for bloggers and hence when I was first looking at becoming a writer full time, I signed up. So far (5-6 months later) I am sitting at 2 tweets, following 8 people (one of whom is Perez Hilton) and being followed by 9.

I have this blog now about my adventures of becoming a writer, and I am planning to start another blog with more “real” writing on it. I haven’t linked any of my blogs to Twitter yet. I know I can post my twitter updates on my blog, but I think I would want to post my blog updates on my twitter – would I not? I’m pretty sure there is a way to do this, I just haven’t clicked the right button.

I think back to when Facebook first launched their live feed of what everyone was doing, and I remember wondering, why would I care who so and so made friends with today or that they added the mafia wars application (don’t even get me started on that one) or what they’re doing right now? Even the whole concept of status updates is kind of silly if you think about it. But I still look at what my friends are doing all over the world, and I still tell them what I’m doing. Maybe Twitter will be the same. Maybe all of a sudden it’ll make perfect sense to me to log into a web networking site just to tell my (hopefully more than 9 followers) exactly what it is that I’m doing in 140 words or less.

So I’m reading this article called Twitter: Why So Many People Don’t Get It. Besides blogging, Twitter is apparently great for building a network (an abbreviated LinkedIn?), learning, promotion of events or products, finding jobs, life updates and breaking news. And its true if you think about it, the night after Will.I.Am allegedly hit Celebrity Blogger Perez Hilton, Twitter found out before the cops did.

I remain leery of things such as job-hunting on Twitter, but I do think it could be a great tool for me to network and establish my blogs as long as I can get over the awkwardness of having a single tool that is used solely for the purpose of updates. I still don’t think that I will get to the point any time soon where I’m twittering about banal everyday things such as cooking or doing laundry, but I am excited about discovering a whole new way to communicate with the outside world.

I still don’t really get the personal messages “@” other subscribers, but that will be another journey for a time when I don’t feel awkward answering that “what’s happening?” question that stares at me with a wide blank expectant box.

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