Students at my college were big users of AOL Instant Messenger (oh so 2000!), and we religiously updated our away messages. “I’m sleeping.” “I’m writing a paper.” “Sexiled.” (Remember that one?)

After Sept. 11, 2001, during which I was in D.C., I began thinking a lot about my own mortality. For the first time, I realized that I could die unexpectedly. I would think, what if I died from a bomb on the Metro? And the next immediate thought was, “Who would update my away message?”

In 2007, I’d said on Poynter that journalists should be users of social media. (This is back when journalists were actually debating it. Now, it’s a given.) If we are to report on the world we live in, then we have to fully live in it.

But what happens when there’s a technical glitch?

My Facebook profile has been inaccessible for two days.  The company is having some sort of problem, according to this message board thread. And people are getting upset.

One frantic user writes, “OMG!!!! I’m about to lose it…. My birthday is coming and I don’t want to miss my birthday wishes. This is really annoying!!! I’ve been waiting for 5 long and awful days….This is a serious issue. No one seems to care.”

I don’t know this user’s age, but I found her comment adorable and completely honest. Before you judge her, consider this: People communicate now via social mediums, some people exclusively so.

And when the medium goes down, we lose our social.

Spare me talk about the old fashioned way of communicating — face to face and via phone — and how it’s so much better. No it’s not.  And if you think this way, you probably leave too many voicemails. (Voicemail is dead.)

In the capstone thesis class during my senior year of college, one student wrote her paper on social technology, concluding that technology only enhances the social qualities that we already have — thus, social people are even more social online.

To me, it is not an insult to wish someone happy birthday via text message. Go a few years younger than me (I’m 28) and the communication methods are even more drastically different. True story: My college-age younger brother’s home burned down last month. I learned about this via his Facebook status update.

I then communicated the news to another family member via e-mail, who then responded to me the next day via text: “WHY DIDN’T ANYONE CALL ME?” (This 40-something family member only texts in capital letters. We love him. He tries.)

Another example: My birthday this year happened to coincide with my first day as a non-journalist. It was mostly a lonely day of packing for my next adventure, interrupted only by jaunts over to my open laptop to read my birthday messages from all my friends. So great!

The day that I expected to be filled with the radio silence of losing my public voice was instead filled with dozens of messages.  I was no longer a working reporter, but I still had friends. And those friends chose to share via Facebook.

I wouldn’t have it any other way, especially after having moved to a new city six times in the past 10 years. Keeping in touch is so easy, thanks to the social media that have become my lifeline.

There is just one upside to the fact that my Facebook profile is down: It freed me up long enough to write this blog post.

This question came from a smart and capable guy, and so I was stunned. The best definition I could come up with at first was something stupid like, “Twitter? Uh, it’s . . . Twitter, you know, where you tweet?”

Business people: You are allowed to not like Twitter. You are allowed to not get Twitter. But c’mon, you’ve got to know which technologies are changing how people communicate. Or else, you’re going to get blindsided.

Journalists seem to be having a love affair with Twitter. (Guilty.) But can you blame them for trying? They know what it’s like to be blindsided.

The newspaper implosion shocked a lot of us in print media. McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt said 2008 was the “worst year” of his life. “By far.” He may have been talking about money, but down in the ranks, we were shocked by our loss of authority. We shouldn’t have been. The clues were there all along.

I still remember the Time magazine cover that arrived in my mailbox featuring a bendable mirror. The magazine’s person of the year designation at the end of 2006 was “you.”

“Welcome to your world.”

Some people called the “you” theme a cop out. I thought it was brilliant. I’d been reading the articles by Seattle venture capital reporter John Cook, and the Time report pulled it all together.

I could see “you” taking over in my own job when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer forced every reporter to stick a question at the end of articles to encourage discussion. Can’t think of a question? The default was and still is, “What do you think?”

A lot of us in the newsroom hated the policy. (I was love/hate at first but my thicker-skinned self now emphatically supports commenting.) We felt it cheapened our brand and undermined our authoritative voice. We let anonymous people tell us we were stupid, we let them post factual inaccuracies and blather. (Half the threads devolved into either, “Blame Bush!” or “blame immigrants!” or worse. “You” may be in charge, but “you” ain’t always intelligent.)

It turns out, comments were only the beginning. Next came unpaid writers and some of them were more popular than us. Lightbulb: It’s not about us. It’s about “you.”

They teach you in journalism school that it’s not about the writer. “Do you remember who wrote the story about the first moon landing?” the professor asks. “The reader doesn’t owe you anything,” says the writing coach.

They talk a good humble game, but I’m telling you the truth: The impact that “you” had on our industry shocked the smartest of us. We got blindsided.

The widespread adoption of Twitter by journalists is a determination to not get blindsided again. The journalists who are most with it are the ones who are following nearly as many people as who are following them.

Getting started

If you never got Web 2.0, and now don’t get 3.0 or whatever-the-heck we’re up to now (mobilephone.0?), here’s a video to get you started. It is 2.5 years old, still relevant, has been viewed nearly 10 million times on YouTube, and is superb. It captures so much of what I was trying to say in my former post about online journalism, and where it is heading.

(Hat tip for the video)

I have no doubt that my former colleagues at seattlepi.com understand most pieces of this video. RSS feeds and Twitter are literally in their job description. More and more businesses get what’s in this video. Every one of my friends under age 30, except maybe my favorite luddite, gets what’s in this video. Do you?

Oh, and now ”you” get to define Twitter too. Or just go to twitter.com.

Update: Here’s another video on social media:

(Hat tip for the video)