A milestone.

Today, at 4:24 PM, I posted my 50,000th Twitter tweet.

I had been watching the tweet count as I closed in on this milestone. I manage to capture screenshots of the count before and after I sent the tweet.

I spent a lot too much time thinking about what I would say to mark the occasion. It came to me the day before. I’d mention @andypiper, the very first person I followed on Twitter.

Back in 2007, Twitter was just a year old and have such a small user base that it was still possible to see the full Twitter timeline — in other words, every single tweet posted as it was posted. As I watched the tweets go by, I seemed to zero in on Andy’s tweets and I followed him.

Years have gone by. There are now millions of Twitter users and no way (that I know of) to follow the full stream of all tweets in one place. I’ve authored four courses for Lynda.com about Twitter, including the most recent, Up and Running with Twitter . Andy, who lives in the U.K., now works for Twitter. This past spring, when I was in California for business, we met in person in San Francisco where we shared an excellent Dim Sum meal, coffee, and a lot of conversation.

A lot of people just “don’t get” Twitter. That’s okay. For the people who do, it’s a great social networking service to bring people together.