Tag Archives: Twitter

Best thing about being 60? Being 20 in 1968.

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Twitter pal Matthew is at a party, grooving on tunes from my era. (We need a term for drunk tweets. Dweets?) I’m flashing on music from my era, specifically, 1968:

Hey Jude, Beatles
The Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding
Sunshine of Your Love, Cream
Mrs. Robinson, Simon Garfunkle
Hello, I Love You, Doors
Born to Be Wild, Steppenwolf
Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Stones
You Keep Me Hangin’ On, Vanilla Fudge
White Room, Cream
Think, Aretha Franklin
Piece of My Heart, Big Brother and the Holding Company
Suzie Q., Creedence Clearwater Revival

Best thing about being 60? Being 20 in 1968.

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.

NCAA Blogging Policy

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With the NCAA Basketball Championship upon us, the association has released its policy on blogging [Download PDF]:

“The following is the NCAA’s policy for the number of blog posts allowed during a men’s and women’s basketball championship competition or session (i.e., where more than one contest takes place under the same admission ticket): Five times per half, once at halftime and two times per overtime period.”

13 posts in a game that goes one OT. They’re clearly trying to prevent someone “live blogging” every bucket. And the policy is easily enforceable if you are a credentialed reporter. Violate the policy, lose your credentials. A very big deal. But if I’m sitting in the stands with my iPhone, posting to my Twitter page… how do you stop that? And why is that less of a threat to the NCAA?

If anyone comes across examples of the this, let me know.

DISCLOSURE: The company I work for, Learfield Communications, has the marketing rights for a bunch of teams playing in the NCAA championship series.

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.

Tweeting the Iowa Caucuses

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A couple of weeks ago I wondered if we’d see any live blogging from the local precincts that make up the Iowa Caucuses. I figured someone must be trying to pull this together and found this post by Patrick Ruffini at Hugh Hewitt’s Townhall.com:

“On Iowa Caucus night, I’d like to launch a little experiment in citizen journalism. Mobile technology allows anybody to communicate from anywhere, including from inside a caucus. Any caucus goer can become a citizen reporter, relaying key facts to the outside world instantaneously. I’d like to recruit an army of caucus insiders — both Republicans and Democrats — to report results instantly and share tidbits on what the campaigns are doing to sway last-minute undecideds.”

Caucus bloggers can participate via Twitter, email or by texting.

Not sure how busy I’ll be helping with RadioIowa.com, but I’ll try to keep an eye on this experiment.

Twitter: “microblogging”

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Have you been following the Twitter thing? Ian Curry at frog design describes it better than I can:

Twitter“Twitter is perhaps the best example of a new kind of blog that some are calling a “tumblelog.” The tumblelog is a bit like the old link lists: quick one or two-line entries – sometimes just a picture. Twitter in specific allows you to post, through a variety of means (IM, phone, web), short messages meant to describe what you are doing at any given moment. By establishing contacts on the site, you can also get a collected list of what all of your friends are posting.”

I set up a Twitter page, just to get a feel for the tool and I almost get it. There are times when I’d like to just post something that doesn’t quite fit on smays.com. I can see how this could be even more useful for texting.

And handy for live-blogging something like a basketball game or debate in the state legislature. Some have used the term “microblogging” to describe this. Looks like something to watch.