Twitter Zeitgeist - June 13th Edition
Current State Of The Tweet:
As the Twitter community still wobbles and reels on the news of Tim Russert’s passing, the tides have turned a bit, and the community has started talking about the odes to Russert from the journalists themselves. Case in point, Keith Olbermann, who delivered a teary-eyed note of sympathy for his former collegue.
Twitscoop.com is also picking up some noise about Songbird, a desktop media player, which just released its new 0.6 software version.
Twitter Trends of The Day:
Tim Russert attack: Well-known journalist and the host of MSNBC’s Meet The Press, Tim Russert, passed away today at the MSNBC studios due to a heart attack. The Twitter community is both shocked and saddened by this news. Many people have admitted tearing up after hearing of the passing and hearing journalistic eulogies. He was 58 years old.
Kelly verdict: R&B singer R. Kelly was pronounced not guilty on all charges of child pornography after an video allegedly showed him performing sexual acts with a minor, including water sport (sexual urination). No word on whether the shock of this ridiculous verdict had anything to do with Tim Russert’s untimely death.
Holland France: Holland defeated France 4-1 in a Euro 2008 soccer match-up. The consensus on Twitter reads something like “FUCK YEAH, HOLLAND WOOOHOOOO!” Of course, there are a fair share of people who just don’t give a shit, but displayed their Dutch pride anyway. Damn front runners.
Measurement Blogpotomac: BlogPotomac is this year’s premiere social media marketing event for greater Washington DC. Discussion on Twitter was highly centered around social media measurement and determining the attitude behind your blogs community.
Filed under Tech, social, General | Comment (1)
Twitter Zeitgeist - June 12th Edition
So here is an idea. To light a fire under my ass to start posting more here, I figured I’d start a semi-daily post discussing the hottest trends and buzz words on Twitter. I’ll be using a collection of Twitter meme trackers to keep up with the hotness factor, and hopefully, this “Twitter Zeitgeist” will help us grab hold of the culture of social media.
Current State of the Tweet:
As it stands right now, according to Twitscoop.com the words “angry”, “blogger”, and “contest” were pretty much neck and neck for the trend words of the moment until TechCrunch posted about the new Google/Yahoo search partnership agreement. Right after this was posted, the word “announcement” was by far the leading trend word being Tweeted (coincidentally, Mike Arrington would also most likely win any “angry blogger contest”.)
This just goes to show how much influence TechCrunch has on Twitter, new media, and pretty much the entire web industry.
Trend’s Picked Up Today:
Germany Croatia - Germany vs. Croatia had a moment of hotness today when Croatia defeated the German’s 2-1 in a Euro 2008 Football (or Soccer as we in the States like to call it.)
Supreme Court - The good ole boys (and girl) of the Supreme Court today decided that Gitmo detainees could challenge their detention through the U.S. court system. CNN says this “decision marks another legal blow to the Bush administration’s war on terrorism policies.”
David Davis - British politician David Davis resigned from his position in parliament and title of the Shadow Home Secretary today. Sources say he did this to raise awareness of civil issues. The Twitter consensus seems to stand as respectful of the man, but there are still some who think he’s a “show boating moron”.
Filed under Tech, social, General | Comments (3)If Social Media Were A Film, Which Stars Would Play The A-List? Part 2!
Well I promised a part 2, and here we are. The question remains the same. If Hollwood producers decided to make a film dedicated to social media, who would the stars be? Here’s the sequel to the mind-blowingly fun “If Social Media Were A Film, Which Stars Would Play The A-List?” series. Perhaps we’ll call this one, Twitter: The Musical!
Taylor Hicks (known from American Idol) as LEO LAPORTE
Sigorney Weaver (known from the Alien trilogy) as DARREN ROWSE
Tina Fey (known from 30 Rock and SNL) is Veronica Belmont from Mahalo Daily
Michael Imperoli (known from The Sopranos) is Gary Vaynerchuk from WineLibrary.TV
To be continued? Hmmm…. perhaps.
Filed under Tech, social, Humor | Comment (0)If Twitter Is The Rolling Stones, Plurk Is O-Town
Much like the good ole’ Stones, Twitter has had their share of foul-ups, rock bottom smackdowns, and all out periods of disgrace. But also like the Stones, they continue to march on, doing what they do best. Rocking the community.
Plurk has become the newest talking point for social networking conniseurs. But for me, the easiest way to compare Plurk to other services is through another piece of media.
I once owned an O-Town single. Sure, I’m ashamed to admit it now, but at the time “Liquid Dreams” was one of the coolest pieces of pop I had ever encountered. But what happened? Eventually the song lost its zing. After enough listens it became nothing more but just another piece of filler in my CD case.
Eventually the O-Town CD found its way into my junk drawer and became scratched beyond recognition. So I threw the damn thing out, just like I would any incomprehensible piece of junk. By now the CD has probably either reached its half-life in a landfill somewhere or has been melted down and recycled into the Asian-made tourist product doodad market.
Plurk is just another flash in the pan, destined for the junk drawer. I just happen to be getting it nice and scratched up earlier than others.
Filed under Tech, social | Comment (1)Well, This Explains Twitter’s Performance Problem *face palm*
Twitter developer Alex Payne (@al3x) discusses the conversation of choice at the Twitter HQ. Well, then. It all make a lot more sense now.
Filed under Tech, social, Humor | Comments (2)The Twitter Car Has A Flat Tire and No Jack
Robert Scoble had the chance to sit down and chat with Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone today for a 30 minute interview. During the interview Biz Stone compared the architecture fix for Twitter as repairing a flat tire on a car going 95 mph, which he admits, is frankly “scary”.
But what sort of people attempt to repair a moving vehicle? Daredevils, suicide risks, and morons are the three personalities which come to mind. If your car gets a flat, you don’t keep running at full-speed unless you’re on the run from the cops in a high-speed chase. Evan Williams says that when a car gets a flat at such speeds, you have to lean down on the flat and let the other three wheels do the job.
Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the dare-deviling duo.
When any sensible law-abiding citizen gets a flat tire, they don’t continue speeding along. In fact, most sensible people will come to a complete stop on the side of the road. If Twitter is truly only running on three tires at the moment, is it time to take a pit stop on the shoulder for a tune-up?
When you’re cruising along at speeds of 95 mph, you lose the ability to use essential tools which are needed to keep you running full-steam ahead. There’s no way to jack up the car and slip under the hood as the ground speeds by below. As the metal rim and axle chafe against the hard concrete, there is bound to be even more long-term damage done to the car.
When Twitter disabled IM compatibility and lowered their API down to 30 requests per hour, this was the sign that they are now running on only 3 tires. And anyone who knows anything about cars knows that this is only possible for a short amount of time before the car either catches fire, or brings itself to a screeching, spark spitting halt.
Filed under Tech, social | Comments (3)If Social Media Were A Film, Which Stars Would Play The A-List? Part 1
Have you ever wondered what Twitter: The Movie or Digg: The Musical would look like? I’ve been doing some brainstorming and here is some help to the future casting crew of Social Media: The Feature Film!
Philip Seymour Hoffman (known from Capote) as ROBERT SCOBLE
Chris Noth (known from Sex and The City, Law & Order) as JASON CALACANIS
James Franco (known from the Spider-Man films) is KEVIN ROSE
Vin Diesel (known from The Fast and The Furious) is LOIC LE MEUR
Stay tuned for Part 2!
Filed under Tech, social, Photos | Comments (4)
4 Factors That Are Destroying The Twitter Experience
Ya know, I’ve been sort of hard on Twitter. Sure, we can debate about the mistakes they’ve made with their architecture and their public relations until the cows come home, but it all comes down to one thing. We all love Twitter. Unconditionally perhaps.
To be totally frank, the Twitter tech team and corporate ladder are not the people that are destroying the Twitter experience. There are plenty of external reasons for its calamity of late.
1. Twhirl and the Twitter API: Don’t misunderstand. Twhirl is an excellent application. Built on the Adobe AIR platform, it’s sleek, clean, quick, and great for use if you don’t want to drift into the public timeline. But here within is the problem. Power users who use Twhirl exclusively might be missing out on the most important factor of Twitter, the reply.
Because of the 60 API request limits per hour which the Twitter API has users abide by, it seems that Twhirl has led people to post and run, waiting for others to communicate. The problem is that nowadays, a smaller amount of people are actually latching on to the web interface, catching all of the noise that runs by. Users of Twhirl (and I’m only speaking from personal experience) might be missing out on a lot of conversation by sticking totally with the program. The API limit means you’re not refreshing as often as you might like too, and maybe not even checking your friend timeline at all.
2. FriendFeed: FriendFeed takes the linear form of Twitter and makes it non-linear by grouping personal Tweets in groups, rather than in conversational context. Users who are making the switch over to FriendFeed might be missing half of the story and not even know it. And the problem isn’t so much that FriendFeed is bad. It’s that it’s too damn good.
The FriendFeed addiction bug is just as contagious and maybe more so than the Twitter bug. I could compare FriendFeed to super glue. Very sticky, hard to ignore, and even harder to remove from your life once it’s stuck in your psyche. FriendFeed is already resulting in a decrease in noise on Twitter. It’s clear to me. But sometimes you just feel like jumping on Twitter for a linear conversation, but when you get there, you realize the real party has hopped on a different boat.
3. Spammers: Though not nearly as serious of an epidemic as a month ago or so, spammers are still prevalent on the Twitter site. It was unavoidable. A site such as Twitter which serves as a perfect outlet to communicate one message to tons of users at once was the perfect place for the spam horde to congregate.
But it’s quite unnerving to wake up in the morning to find, say, 10 new followers, more than half of which might be spam. And though there is no law restricting you to refollow spammers, there’s no telling when a user is going to break out the feed machine and start chugging out multi-post Last.Fm scrobbles or spammy blog posts.
4. The Twitter Bad-Mouth Brigade: OK, guilty as charged. I was once one of those people who logs on to Twitter, and continues to post only about what Twitter is lacking. But after a while, this mentality is a real downer. For once I would love to log into Twitter and have a conversation about something that isn’t Twitter-centric.
There was a time where Twitter was my secret hideout for talking about the newest and more interesting tech news and conventions, but Twitter is going through that classical critical mass backlash, so FriendFeed has become my new special place. It’s clear that Twitter users love talking about Twitter. And I love it just as much as the next user. But it would just be nice to go there and use it for something other than Twitter bashing or evangelizing.
Filed under Tech, social | Comment (0)Google Buys Twitter!
I keed, I keed. But seriously, check out this and this.
Filed under Tech, social | Comment (1)The Twitter Database Replication Whale: A Stroke of Genius
When Twitter took yet another hit today when one of their databases crashed, they knew that some downtime was in short order. In all honesty, Twitter has been doing 100 times better with site management and public relations in recent days. Even the image they’re now using for their maintenance place holder is a real communication method of culture and politics, or at least as cultural and political as social networking can get.
If you don’t take a second glance at the image (and most of us will wind up not doing so), it appears to be simply a fun attempt at a silly image to keep you amused while the site is down. While this was no doubt ultimately the goal, this whale is now burning an image into your head with symbolism, whether you like it or not.
Do you see the little Twitter birds grasping at their net, struggling with all of their might to keep the massive whale from falling into the water? This is where Twitter now stands. At the corner stone of scaling management, we are the whale, and they are the birds, while only a few days ago it seemed as though Twitter were the harpooners.
But will the net hold long enough to get us faithful users ashore? And do we even want to get there? Whales are supposed to be in the water, right? So what’s the deal with that?
Twitter definitly might have us caught in their snares for the time being, but the net’s threads are inevitably weakening. This whale might get loose pretty soon and escape into the massive sea of competition as fast as possible.
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