Fun with Twitter
Twitter is a social networking site. It is kind of like an instant messenger but publishes all the messages you send using 140 characters or less. Like many social networking sites it allows you to follow people and for people to follow you. If you follow someone you can view everything they post. If someone follows you they can see everything you post. You can post to twitter via you mobile phone or by using various third party applications.
Fail Whale
Twitter is well known for going down due to the number of people using it. It’s Fail Whale that appears when the site has problems has become a popular icon breeding FailWhale merchandise and FailWhale fan clubs.
Who’s on Twitter
Twitter only really works if you know people who use it. As a web developer I might follow Dan Cederholm or John Resig. As a fan of Star Wars I might follow Darth Vader or if I were a Trekky Jean-Luc Picard or as a general geek I might have followed the Mars Phoenix or see what NASA are up to. You can also keep track of when London Bridge opens and closes.
If you like to keep up with politics you might follow the goings on at Number 10 or what the President is up to.
There are many unusual and amusing characters you can follow both real (http://twitter.pbwiki.com/MinorCelebrities) and fake (http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Fakers)
The Twitterverse
Twitter has created it’s own ecosystem with various sites springing up using data scraped from twitter. Here are is a selected sample:
http://twittervision.com/ - shows posts as they happen around the world (try the 3D version!)
http://twitpic.com/ - allows user to post images from their phones or from the site itself.
http://www.trendrr.com/ - find out the current trends in the twittersphere
http://www.wefeelfine.org/ - what the following site is based on!
http://twistori.com/ - shows what people are posting in real time with a twist
http://www.ecyrd.com/Thwoa/ - something a bit more esoteric.
If you want to find more try here - http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps
If you would like to look at posts on a particular subject try ‘site:twitter.com’ followed by the word of your choice obviously the ruder the word the more fun you will have it’s bit like looking up words in the dictionary!
Bad News travels Fast
Stephen Fry made a comment on Twitter about the blackberry storm.
This information was quickly spread through ‘twitterverse’ – Stephen Fry has over 100,0000 followers and was picked up by many of the gadget blogs and articles started appearing about it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/11/can_stephen_fry_kill_a_gadget.html
http://gizmodo.com/5099720/stephen-fry-slams-the-blackberry-storm
http://www.t3.com/news/stephen-fry-slams-the-blackberry-storm?=37410
plus many others:
War of the Worlds
Some one had the bright idea of doing a War of the Worlds homage on twitter. The War of the Worlds was broadcast on the radio in the US in 1938 and caused widespread panic due to the way the radio play used news bulletins to portray the Martian invasion. On Twitter people joined in as the story unfolded posting their experiences of the ‘invasion’. Through Twitters search you can view some of the posts...
Twitter Journalism
A few recent events have been captured on Twitter. The Mumbai terrorist attacks were covered on Twitter. A plane crash in Denver was reported first on Twitter and the earthquake in Los Angeles in the summer was tracked by Twitter as people posted their experiences of it.
Twitter provides an interesting medium for following news events. The current war in Gaza is interesting when viewed through the eyes of twitter with both sides posting propaganda with ‘normal’ people posting their views too.
Making Money
Since it went live Twitter has made quite an impact on the internet actually shaping internet culture becoming a popular, entertaining and informative site. The key question that still surrounds it though is how will Twitter ever make any money..?
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