The first person in the UK to use Twitter, you say? Let me just @jot this down…

From business networking to social networking, our latest business breakfast had it all. As Carluccio’s welcomed Chamber members with a customarily tempting menu on Friday 24th May, Brighton and Hove’s business leaders got the opportunity to hear from special guest speaker Jonathan Markwell, also known as @jot.

Jonathan is a web developer who co-founded The Skiff, a shared work space on Gloucester Street, Brighton. He also just so happens to be the first person in the UK to have joined the social media monolith that is Twitter. When asked by interviewer Steve Bustin for some background on this trend-setting claim to fame, Jonathan explained that he was “probably in the first 100 or so on Twitter” in July 2006. However, he admitted that he was not actually the first British user to post on the site, and had instead ‘lurked’ there for seven months. He had not, he added with a smile, thought it was going to go mainstream.

As Jonathan detailed his background in web development, including work on a project to encourage new business start-ups in Chile, he summed up his philosophy on using the lean start-up model for business, particularly in relation to web-based applications. He advised that any new idea someone might want to develop should be treated as an experiment: “Think what you can build in two weeks; see if people like it.” He urged his audience to keep control of the costs, and not to “spend too long thinking it through” when it came to getting their big idea out there.

After touching on the success of The Skiff, which now has over 130 members, Steve asked Jonathan what the future “game-changers” would be in terms of the web. Jonathan mentioned Square and Stripe, deceptively simple names for two applications that are changing the way businesses manage financial transactions via the internet. Could they one day become as big as Twitter? #Wehearditherefirst

Written by Rosalind Branagan
@rsb_2013
www.jwtrainee.wordpress.com   

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