Category Archives: Social Media

Can Congress tweet?

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“A political spat erupted in Washington, D.C., earlier this month over rules governing how members of Congress may use the Internet. House Republicans argued that proposed changes to the rules amounted to “new government censorship of the Internet,” while Democrats said the charges were exaggerated. Whichever side is right or wrong, the fact remains that current rules governing official communications prohibit members of Congress from using video-sharing or social networking sites like YouTube, Flickr, or Facebook. As a result, many House members, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), are currently in violation of the rules.

Rep. John Culberson (R-TX), a pioneer in using new media to communicate with constituents, sounded the alarm over the new rules via Twitter. Culberson has made a name for himself twittering from the House floor, broadcasting live video from the White House using Qik, and hosting regular “town hall” meetings using live video-streaming and chat on Ustream.

In a later statement, Culberson argued that new media should not be treated any differently than old. “When I am interviewed for a newspaper article or a television story, or have a conversation on a radio show, my interview/conversation is going to appear in the same publication/broadcast as a campaign or commercial ad,” he said. — Ars Technica

The Onion: “Local Idiot To Post Comment On Internet”

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“After clicking the ‘submit’ button, I will immediately refresh the page so that I can view my own comment. I will then notice that my comment has not appeared because the server has not yet processed my request, become angry and confused, and re-post the same comment with unintentional variations on the original wording and misspellings, creating two slightly different yet equally moronic comments,” he said. “It is my hope that this will illustrate both my childlike level of impatience and my inability to replicate a simple string of letters and symbols 30 seconds after having composed it.”

The Onion

12seconds.tv

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“12seconds is the best place online for video status updates. It’s a super easy way to share what you’re doing with your friends and family using short video clips. You can use your web cam or mobile phone. Show your friends where you are, share your thoughts, or tell them how you’re doing. We are building a video status platform that will help you keep up to date with your friends 12 seconds at a time.”

Why only 12 seconds?

“Because anything longer is boring. The scientists here at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing. Our patent pending Electro-Tear-Duct Prongers have determined that exactly 12 seconds of video is the ideal amount of time to keep anything interesting.”

The thing that caught my attention was how 12seconds.tv. integrates with Twitter. You’re walking down the street and spot to dogs doing the wild thing. You whip out your camera phone and shoot 12 seconds of video and off it goes to your page on 12seconds.tv. With corresponding tweet.

This reminds me of Twitpic, a similar service for still images. And eyejolt, which makes it easy to email short videos to friends. Not sure why I couldn’t get it to work with Twitter but I’ll fiddle some more. This is the kind of app that might get my to buy a phone that can shoot/send video.

On a down note, I didn’t think quality of the resulting video was very good.

All networking will be social

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Planet Nelson points us to this insightful article on social networking from Managing Technology:

“…how we exchange information is changing, from sharing information actively (emailing photos to friends) to sharing it passively (uploading those photos to Facebook and emailing notification to friends). “What’s happening is that we’re separating access from notification,” said Kraus. This leads to more sharing because people don’t worry as much about interrupting others with emails, calling attention to themselves and appearing too self-important.

Third, and most important, Kraus sees the web eventually becoming entirely social. “Today, social computing is something you do at a specific site,” said Kraus. “But we’re realizing that being social is not a site. It’s a concept.”

If you don’t use Twitter, flickr, YouTube, Facebook, My Space, Digg or any of the countless other social networking tool, this idea seems ridiculus. Just as the Internets once seemed like a silly waste of time.

Clever use of Twitter by a Florida stop-smoking group.

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QwitterQwitter lets you keep track of how many cigarettes you smoke each day; keep a journal of your thoughts an feelings (“I’d KILL for goddamn cigarette!”); view your progress and follow and support other fiends.

All kidding aside, I can see how this might actually work. If I tweet, “It’s three o’clock and I have not smoked all day” …and my friends George sees that, it might help him hang on.

I could see this working for any number of support groups. “I’ve lost 5 pounds this week and had 3 Ritz crackers for lunch.”

Will Twitter be bigger than Facebook?

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The guys (no gender implied) at AdRants are big fans of Twitter:

“Writing on Entrecard Graham Langdon makes the argument Twitter will be bigger than Facebook. He’s right. Twitter is many things but it lacks the baggage and some of the “creepy” aspects of Facebook. All within 140 characters, Twitter is IM, email, mobile app, chat room, focus group, news source, a wall on which to bounce ideas, a research resource, presence indicator.

It’s usually the simplest of things that have the most value. Facebook is bloated. Twitter is Internet Lite (I refuse to dub it anything with a 2.0 attached). It’s a simple but ever so powerful interface that brings so many things together and functions as a jumping off point to an endless collection of resources and information.

It’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll interpret this as idiotic puffery but until you use Twitter, really use it for a while, you won’t really understand what you’re missing and you don’t realy have the right to comment. Seriously. Give it a try.”

I confess I’ve given up trying to explain Twitter. And it took me more than a year to come around.

Twitter growing on me

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It started working for me when I stopped thinking about what I was doing and turned my attention to what my friends are doing. I’m only “following” a few people so far (Jamie, David, Andy, Kevin, Jackie, George). For me, this works a little like the Buddy List in iChat. Knowing that George is attending a conference in California or that Kevin is looking for interns, is useful or –at the very least– interesting.

I’m still getting the hang of Twitter but if you are a Twitter-er, let me know so I can “follow” you. Trust me, it’s not as dip-shitty as it sounds.