This is probably one of those ideas that sounds more interesting than they turn out to be. But I’ll be following along, just because I have the hots for AMC.
“Starting tonight, a designated representative of both of the major presidential campaigns are going to participate in a free-wheeling debate on technology and government, moderated by Time magazine blogger Ana Marie Cox and channeled via Twitter.” – Personal Democracy Forum/techPresident
Congratulations to Ron Gould, first place winner the Coppyblogger Twitter Writing Contest. His winning entry:
“Time travel works!” the note read. “However you can only travel to the past and one-way.” I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill.
Second place honors went to Anthony Juliano:
“Tony was a snitch, so I wasn’t surprised when his torso turned up in the river. What did surprise me, though, was where they found his head.”
Thelonius Monk took third place for:
“When Gibson hit that homerun in the fall of eighty-eight, my old man had never been so happy. He hugged me for the first time. I was eleven.”
The challenge was to write a story in exactly 140 characters. I fear my humble submission was too… belittling? Too pissy? We’ll never know.
“To my immediate left, a hipster dwarf leaned into his urinal, cleverly achieving a haunting reverb for his “big” finish to Unchained Melody.”
I don’t know if this is breaking news or something everyone already knows. But AgWired’s Chuck Zimmerman Twittered what might have been news (Chuck’s tweet is the one on top).
When I demo’d Twitter to one of our reporters, all he could see was ("Who cares if someone’s plane is delayed?"). For some the online glass is half full, for others…
UPDATE: More from Lost Remote.
Chris Pirillo was –and remains– an early thought-leader for me. Blogging, RSS, video… Chris was always out there on the front edge. So, when he says Twitter has become one of his primary sources of information, I’m inclined to listen.
“Back in ‘the day’, we used to have to visit web pages to get our information. Those pages didn’t tell us when they updated, so we had to find out manually. Then, along came RSS. The idea was you could subscribe to something, and it would tell you when there was a new update. Now comes Twitter, with its flood of information that allows me to spot trends in general. Twitter has supplanted the information I used to receive in my news aggregator. I don’t follow many websites anymore, and don’t really ’subscribe’ to anything. For me, if something is going to be relevant, I’m going to read about it on Twitter. With Twitter, I’m able to follow people much easier. As disorganized as it is, it’s easier for me to learn about personalities. You can understand thoughts and feelings much easier than you could with a simple RSS feed.”
I’m not quite there yet, in part because I don’t “follow” as many people as Chris does. But I’m starting to see what he’s talking about. A few of the folks I follow on Twitter are very plugged in and I can count on a line or two with a link when something in their area of interest breaks.
“James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone. Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator Mohammed Maree were arrested April 10.
On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.
The message only had one word. “Arrested.”
Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt — the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier — were alerted he was being held.” [CNN]
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.
Qwitter 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.”
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.
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.
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.