Twitter community

Twinfluence

2009-11-14T22:50:00.003-08:00

Influence of a Twitter account does not solely depends on the number of people who are following the Twitter account. It also depends on the size of the network of the followers of Twitter account. Twinfluence applies the concept of social capital to propose a set of new influence measures for Twitter users (from the about page).

Reach: Reach is the number of followers a Twitterer has (first-order followers), plus all of their followers (second-order followers). Reach is a measurement of potential audience and listeners, a best estimate of the number of people that a given Twitterer could quickly get a message to.

Velocity: Velocity merely averages the number of first- and second-order followers attracted per day since the Twitterer first established their account. The larger the number is, the faster that Twitterer has accumulated their influence. Of course, this number could jump significantly with the addition of a few high-profile followers.

Social Capital: Tthe average first-order network of a Twitterer's followers. A high value indicates that most of that Twitterer's followers have a lot of followers themselves.

Centralization: This is a measure of how much a Twitterer's influence (reach) is invested in a small number of followers. Centralization scores range from 0% (completely decentralized) to a theoretical 100% (completely dependent on one Twitterer).

Efficiency: The more people you follow, the more time you have to spend reading and filtering tweets. Efficiency is a measure of how many people a Twitterer had to follow in order to build up their reach, as a percentage.

A few examples to illustrate these new influence measures.

BarackObama, the most followed Twitter user

SteveRubel, a digital marketer working at Edelman Digital

TwitFacts, the Twitter user I created for this blog

These new influence measures are interesting. They have however also their limitations. Influence should be measured for persons. Barack Obama uses various channels to illustrate his influence : speaches, debates, personal encounters, his website, his Twitter account, … On a lower scale everyone is active on different channels. Steve Rubel writes on his blog, he writes columns, he speaks at various events, he works for various clients as a digital marketer at Edelman Digital. On addition to that, he has a stream of Twitter messages. Influence can be measured for each of these channels : number of blog posts linking to Steve Rubel's blog, number of readers and comments on his columns, number of speaking engagements, number of Edelman clients wanting to work with him, ... All these measures are only capable of capturing a tiny aspect of someone's influence. Influence should ideally be measured for a person, not for a specific channel. Twinfluence is however an interesting approach for a specific domain for which no influence measures were available.

Twinfluence uses a clever way to deal with the Twitter API. All requests to the Twitter API are performed with the Twitter user credentials supplied by the user. After several queries, there is a big risk that a user will receive this error message :

BarackObama followers

2009-11-14T22:50:00.001-08:00

Twitter User BarackObama has an incredible amount of followers. This Twitter account follows every Twitter user that follows BarackObama. Currently Twitter User BarackObama is following over 100,000 other Twitter users. A rough estimation of the number of Twitter messages per day per users can be made of two sources. Twiturly scans between 200,000 and 250,000 Twitter messages per day, TwitDir reports 3.18 million Twitters users. This leads to the following calculations.

Number of Twitter Users (TwitDir) : 3,183,544
Daily Twitter messages (Twiturly) : 200,000 - 250,000
Number of Twitter messages per day and user : 0,063 - 0,079
BarackObama followers : 101.350
Twitter messages from BarackObama followers per day : 6.367 - 7.959
Twitter messages from BarackObama followers per hour : 265 - 332
Twitter messages from BarackObama followers per minute : 4.4 - 5.5

It seems quite unlikely that Barack Obama himself would read all these Twitter messages. I even doubt it that a single person is capable of reading all these messages (5 per minute, 24 hours per day).

First State of the Twitosphere in Costa Rica

2009-11-14T22:49:00.001-08:00

A while ago a commenter on this blog asked if I could also analyze the twitosphere in his country, Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the east and south, the Pacific Ocean to the west and south and the Caribbean Sea to the east (source : Wikipedia). I have never been to Costa Rica, so I do not have personal memories or opinions on this country. Nevertheless, I found it a good idea to have a closer look at the usage of Twitter in Costa Rica.

The first question in such an analysis is the number of Twitter users in Costa Rica. Twitter user search is temporary disabled, so I cannot inform you on the number of Twitter users in Costa Rica according to Twitter itself. Twitdir reports 338 Twitter users for location Costa Rica.

Based on the location info in the Twitter profiles, I was able to find 507 Twitter users in Costa Rica, still active users. Persons who have closed their Twitter accounts are not included in this number. Because the number of Twitter users not mentioning a true location in their Twitter profile is estimated at around 50%, the actual number of Twitter users in Costa Rica will probably exceed 507. With a population of 4.133 million people (source Wikipedia), the Twitter user density for Costa Rica is one Twitter account for every 8,152 inhabitants.

History of the Twitter accounts in Costa Rica
The graph below shows the history of the Twitter accounts from Costa Rica. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Twitter accounts. Twitter users who haven't published any messages and Twitter users with a private profile (their messages are only visible for their approved followers) are not included in this graph. Twitter started late in Costa Rica. The oldest Twitter users date back from March 2006. Only 8 months later first Costa Ricans started using Twitter.

Oldest Twitter accounts from Costa Rica
http://twitter.com/gringuitica - Erin - first message on January 11, 2007
http://twitter.com/darcia - David Arcia - first message on February 14, 2007
http://twitter.com/lizrincon - Liz Rincon - first message on March 16, 2007
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - first message on March 18, 2007
http://twitter.com/soloesteban - Esteban Solorzano - first message on March 20, 2007
http://twitter.com/405 - Cuatro Cero Cinco - first message on March 22, 2007
http://twitter.com/MariHo - Mario HB - first message on March 28, 2007
http://twitter.com/nityananda - Nityananda das - first message on March 29, 2007
http://twitter.com/conejita236 - Angel Ackermann - first message on April 6, 2007
http://twitter.com/BarryStev - Barry Stevens - first message on April 22, 2007
http://twitter.com/Toxicomaniac - toxic - first message on April 26, 2007

Private or public
59 Twitter acounts from Costa Rica or 12% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 84 Twitter accounts from Costa Rica or 17% do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Costa Rica follows 31 Twitter accounts.

Top 10 following
http://twitter.com/iecr - Spanishinstitute - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/muchacostarica - MuchaCostaRica.Com - 1,727 following
http://twitter.com/NicoPisani - NicoPisani - 655 following
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - 493 following
http://twitter.com/iCostaRicaTV - iCostaRicaTV - 425 following
http://twitter.com/jenfos - jenfos - 418 following
http://twitter.com/ReverendDoctor - TheReverendDoctor - 418 following
http://twitter.com/remediosgraphic - remediosgraphic - 310 following
http://twitter.com/AlexOtarola - Otárola - 213 following
http://twitter.com/stevekatz - stevekatz - 212 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 40 Twitter users from Costa Rica or 8% have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. The messages published by these Twitter users are only read by themselves (and by search engines). An average Twitter user from Costa Rica has 24 followers.

Top 10 followers
http://twitter.com/muchacostarica - MuchaCostaRica.Com - 606 followers
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - 518 followers
http://twitter.com/NicoPisani - NicoPisani - 443 followers
http://twitter.com/jenfos - jenfos - 283 followers
http://twitter.com/iecr - Spanishinstitute - 283 followers
http://twitter.com/stevekatz - stevekatz - 261 followers
http://twitter.com/SEOCharlie - SEOCharlie - 236 followers
http://twitter.com/fusildechispas - cristian cambronero - 196 followers
http://twitter.com/remediosgraphic - remediosgraphic - 158 followers
http://twitter.com/gringuitica - Erin - 153 followers

Updates
An update is the term refering to Twitter messages published by a Twitter users. These are also called tweets. The average number of updates for a Twitter users from Costa Rica is 118. 44 Twitter users (or 9%) are still waiting for their first message to be published. Below you can find the top 10.

Top 10 updates
http://twitter.com/Gorileo - Rogelio Umaña - 3.715 updates
http://twitter.com/berylcorea - berylcorea - 2.883 updates
http://twitter.com/reiterstahl - RQR - 2.248 updates
http://twitter.com/SEOCharlie - SEOCharlie - 1.957 updates
http://twitter.com/OzaCR - OzaCR - 1.804 updates
http://twitter.com/willvv - Will Vásquez Vásquez - 1.621 updates
http://twitter.com/zoncho - Carlos Murillo - 1.461 updates
http://twitter.com/yeco - Yeco - 1.337 updates
http://twitter.com/olesha - olesha - 1.209 updates
http://twitter.com/Rafa - Rafael Gonzalez - 1.207 updates

Degree of activity
37% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica have publised at least one message in the last 7 days.
30% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica have not published a message for more than a month.
12% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica have published at least message on in the period between 7 and 31 days (older than a week, but in the last month).

12% of all Twitter users from Costa Rica is private, so no information on their degree activity is available.
On 9% of the Twitter accounts from Costa Rica not a single message has been published.

Conclusion
Costa Rica is a relatively small country in Central America. It is not known for a significant contribution to what's happening on the internet or in the blogosphere of twitosphere. Neverthelessm there is an active Twitter community in Costa Rica. This community started rather late, but it is growing at a relatively high speed.

First State of the Twitosphere in Malaysia

2009-11-14T22:47:00.001-08:00

Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. In the series of states of the Twitosphere on this blog, I did not yet publish a state of the Twitosphere for a Southeast Asian country. The first question in such an analysis is the number of Twitter users in Malaysia. Twitter user search is already disabled for a while, so I cannot inform you on the number of Twitter users in Malaysia according to Twitter itself.

Based on the location info in the Twitter profiles, I was able to find 3429 Twitter users in Malaysia, all active users. These users make an explicit reference to Malaysia, the country itself or a geographical location within this country. Persons who have closed their Twitter accounts are not included in this number. Because the number of Twitter users not mentioning a true location in their Twitter profile is estimated at around 50%, the actual number of Twitter users in Malaysia will probably exceed 3429. With a population of 27,730,000 people (source Wikipedia), the Twitter user density for Malaysia is one Twitter account for every 8087 inhabitants.

History of the Twitter accounts in Malaysia
The graph below shows the history of the Twitter accounts from Malaysia. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Twitter accounts. Twitter users who haven't published any messages and Twitter users with a private profile (their messages are only visible for their approved followers) are not included in this graph. Twitter started late in Malaysia. The oldest Twitter users date back from March 2006. Only 6 months later first users from Malaysia started using Twitter.

Oldest Twitter accounts from Malaysia
http://twitter.com/Adriana - Adriana - first message on August 27, 2006
http://twitter.com/adamgiles_com - Adam Giles - first message on September 4, 2006
http://twitter.com/praveenrajan - Praveen Rajan - first message on September 5, 2006
http://twitter.com/Clowve - Clowve - first message on October 4, 2006
http://twitter.com/JerryOng - Jerry Ong - first message on October 6, 2006
http://twitter.com/syedsyahrul - syed syahrul zarizi - first message on October 31, 2006
http://twitter.com/tropicaljantie - tropicaljantie - first message on November 3, 2006
http://twitter.com/reneetan - Renee - first message on November 3, 2006
http://twitter.com/SmartGuy - SmartGuy - first message on November 9, 2006
http://twitter.com/bee - bee - first message on November 21, 2006

Private or public
309 Twitter acounts from Malaysia or 9% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 682 Twitter accounts from Malaysia or 20% do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Malaysia follows 34 Twitter accounts.

Top 10 following
http://twitter.com/May_ - Mayen - 2,858 following
http://twitter.com/thangwai - thangwai - 2,051 following
http://twitter.com/home_remedies - home_remedies - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/LearnOnlineBiz - LearnOnlineBiz - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/joker400 - Ibrahim - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/ashique - Ashique M. Abdullah - 2,000 following
http://twitter.com/vacom - vacom - 1,999 following
http://twitter.com/esthercsk - Esther Cheang SK - 1,998 following
http://twitter.com/Gloson - Gloson Teh - 1,991 following
http://twitter.com/razali87 - Mohd. Razali - 1,979 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 77 Twitter users from Malaysia or 2% have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. The messages published by these Twitter users are only read by themselves (and by search engines). An average Twitter user from Malaysia has 31 followers.

Top 10 followers
http://twitter.com/Gloson - Gloson Teh - 1,790 followers
http://twitter.com/Artmaker - I-Ming - 1,711 followers
http://twitter.com/home_remedies - home_remedies - 1,339 followers
http://twitter.com/LearnOnlineBiz - LearnOnlineBiz - 1,095 followers
http://twitter.com/chetzyusof - Chetz Yusof - 1,032 followers
http://twitter.com/bobkor - bobkor - 839 followers
http://twitter.com/WayneLiew - Wayne Liew - 820 followers
http://twitter.com/joker400 - Ibrahim - 816 followers
http://twitter.com/euginn - euginn - 766 followers
http://twitter.com/JerryOng - Jerry Ong - 751 followers

Updates
An update is the term refering to Twitter messages published by a Twitter users. These are also called tweets. The average number of updates for a Twitter users from Malaysia is 123. 205 Twitter users (or 6%) are still waiting for their first message to be published. Below you can find the top 10.

Top 10 updates
http://twitter.com/kiongchiu - Sparkish - 15,905 updates
http://twitter.com/NewStraitsTimes - New Straits Times - 11,703 updates
http://twitter.com/rasso - Lan Rasso - 9,458 updates
http://twitter.com/ppmy - I follow Penangites! - 7,074 updates
http://twitter.com/Sanjaghak - FateMeh - 5,712 updates
http://twitter.com/neonplanet - NeonPlanet - 4,763 updates
http://twitter.com/liewcf - Liew Cheon Fong - 4,522 updates
http://twitter.com/Artmaker - I-Ming - 3,800 updates
http://twitter.com/reese - reese spykerman - 3,638 updates
http://twitter.com/jfkjohan - Johan F. Khairuddin - 3,505 updates

Degree of activity
29% of all Twitter users from Malaysia have publised at least one message in the last 7 days.
41% of all Twitter users from Malaysia have not published a message for more than a month.
9% of all Twitter users from Malaysia is private, so no information on their degree activity is available.
On 6% of the Twitter accounts from Malaysia not a single message has been published.

Conclusion
The results of the analysis of the state of the twitosphere in Malaysia are comparable to the results for other previously analyzed countries.

From August 2006 there were a few Malaysian users from Twitter. A first increase in popularity occured around March 2007. A next increase in popularity of Twitter started from April/May 2008, followed by a next increase in adoption speed from November 2008. Compared to the Western European countries the Twitter user density is still lower, so there are probably further a lot of people in Malaysia to be convinced of the use of Twitter.

Retweets and Twitter Bots

2009-11-14T22:46:00.004-08:00

There is recently a lot of discussion going on concerning the authority of Twitter users : Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur. Some bloggers propose that the number of followers is a good measure of the authority of a Twitter user. Others argue that other elements should be taken into account, e.g. the number of retweets. A retweet is when a Twitter user copies a twitter message from another Twitter user in their network and shares it with their network, hereby mentioning the author of the original Twitter message.

As Loic Le Meur stated that there were over 7,000 tweets for the Le Web 3 conference that was held in the beginning of December 2008, I checked the number of search results produced by Twitter Search (previously Summize). I came accross a remarkable sequence of tweets. Have a look yourself, e.g. by trying this search.

One tweet (by dotdean) is retweeted by several Twitter bots, resulting in 10 additional tweets. You can find the sequence of all these tweets in the graphic below.

Furthermore 10 additional URL shortcuts were created : http://tr.im/2ool, http://tinyurl.com/98cx3x, http://is.gd/dOdC,http://is.gd/dOdF, http://bit.ly/14i9j, http://tinyurl.com/76dvzl, http://bit.ly/h4p9, http://bit.ly/JebP, http://tinyurl.com/9jjwvz,http://is.gd/dOtd and http://is.gd/dOte.

With this example in mind, I think there are some problems by taking the number of retweets into account for the authority of a Twitter user.

TwitterFriends

2009-11-14T22:46:00.003-08:00

Twinfluence was one of the first services offering metrics to quantify the influence of a Twitter user.

TwitterFriends goes a step further, by offering more metrics and additional information for individual Twitter users.

This is the list of metrics calculated by TwitterFriends.

Size of relevant net (outgoing) : Number of Twitter users, the submitted Twitter user replied to more than once the last 30 days
Size of relevant net (incoming) : Number of Twitter users that replied to the submitted Twitter user more than once within the last 30 days
Fans : Number of Twitter users that replied to guykawasaki within the last 30 days
Stickiness : Number of people who replied at least twice / total number of replying users
Twitter Rank : This is the position of the submitted Twitter user in the ranking of Twitterers receiving the most replies
Ratio of outgoing to incoming contacts
Overlap of outgoing and incoming net
Tweets sent / day 50 Average
Follow cost in milliscobles
Replies sent / day
Conversation Quotient (CQ) : Share of Tweets by the submitted Twitter user that were replies
Conversational Rank
Replies received / day
Links posted by the submitted Twitter / day
Link Quotient (LQ) : Share of Tweets by the submitted Twitter that included links
Replies with Links by the submitted Twitter user's friends / day
Link per friend

Six of these metrics are plotted on a graph, called TwitGraph. Below you can find printscreens of the results for two famous Twitter accounts : Barack Obama and Guy Kawasaki. Both graphs are quite differently. Guy Kawasaki engages actively in Twitter conversations.Barack Obama is the most followed user, but this Twitter user does not publish very often Twitter messages and this Twitter user does not reply to twitter messages of its followers.

Twitter traffic according to Hitwise

2009-11-14T22:46:00.001-08:00

Hitwise has published over the last days three posts with interesting information on traffic to the Twitter website. They analysed traffic to twitter.com in three countries : UK, USA and Australia.

Let's start with the UK. Twitter.com is the 291st most visited website in the UK. Internet traffic has increased by 974% over one year, see the graph below.

Hitwise does only taken direct traffic to twitter.com into account. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications (such as Twitterrific, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck) were included, the numbers would be even higher.

There are also a few figures on downstream traffic, on what type of links do Twitter users click on :
17.6% of Twitter’s downstream traffic goes to entertainment websites,
10% of goes to News and Media websites,
14.6% goes to social networks,
6.6% to blogs and finally
4.5% to online retailers.

A few days earlier an analysis of Twitter traffic in the USA was also published. According to Hitwise, Twitter.com attracks more visitors than Digg. Twitter is ranked #84 in computers and internet category, one place before Digg, ranked #85.

Traffic to Twitter from Australia has also grown significantly, 517.9% up over one year, as shown on the graph below.

Short Twitter Names

2009-11-14T22:45:00.002-08:00

There are no official figures of the number of Twitter users. Estimations go up to 8 million. As the number of Twitter users increases daily, new Twitter users find out that it is not easy to find a Twitter name that is still available. I had a close look at the shortest Twitter names, these consisting of only 1 and 2 characters.

All 1 character long Twitter names are currently taken. 6 of these 37 Twitter names (A-Z, 0-9 and underscore) are private Twitter accounts, 4 of these Twitter names are without updates.

There are 1369 Twitter names of 2 characters long - all combinations of A-Z, 0-9 and underscore. The good news is that 76 of these combinations are still free. 205 of the 2 character long Twitter accounts are private, 41 are suspended due to strange activity. 296 of the 2 character long Twitter accounts are still without updates.

The oldest 2 character long Twitter account is twitter.com/ev. It is the Twitter account of Evan Williams, one of the founders of Twitter.com. Other famous 2 character long Twitter accounts are ie - IE (yes Internet Explorer), twitter.com/om - Om Malik andtwitter.com/f1 - Formula 1. Some of the 2 character long Twitter account are cleary fake accounts, e.g. twitter.com/sf - San Francisco, but without friends and updates, twitter.com/fr - Francophonie, "voulez-vous coucher avec moi ?" and twitter.com/uk - no meaningful name or bio, but 195 followers.

A lot of the 1 or 2 character long Twitter names are taken but not really used. In total there are 1406 combinations. 1289 combinations or 92% taken. Only 473 of these Twitter accounts have a location, 384 of these locations are "real" locations.

The 1289 Twitter accounts have on average 49 friends (other Twitter accounts that are followed), with twitter.com/s the Twitter account with the most friends - 11722. 572 Twitter accounts have no friends at all.

The 1289 Twitter accounts with a (very) short name are on average being followed by 186 other Twitter users, with twitter.com/evhaving the most followers - 98712. 346 Twitter accounts do not have followers.

The 1289 Twitter accounts with a (very) short name have on average 405 updates. The most productive Twitter account istwitter.com/zb, with as of this writing 45469 updates. 300 Twitter accounts are still waiting for their first update.

Of the 1289 Twitter accounts with a (very) short name 136 accounts stand out as blank accounts, accounts without friends, followers or updates.

If you are looking for a (very) short Twitter Name, you are either too late of you will have to hurry to get your Twitter account registered. Or you could consider to persuade the holder of one of the inactive accounts to hand over his Twitter account.

News on Twitter

2009-11-14T22:45:00.001-08:00

On January 23, 2008, a 20 year old man forced his way into a child day care center in Dendermonde, a small town in Belgium, Europe. He attacked the staff and the little children in the child day care center with a knife. One staff member and two babies were killed, several other staff members and babies were severly wounded. The agressor managed initially to escape, but he was arrested 90 minutes later.

Very quick the news of this horrible attack found its way to Twitter. As soon as the attack was mentioned on websites of Belgian newspapers, Twitter users picked up the story and expressed their agony in their Twitter messages. Later on the articles on Belgian news sites were also announced on Twitter, in Twitter messages that were automatically created. The news about this horrible attack became also known to news agencies, newspapers, radio and television stations and news aggregators worldwide, who also published it on their Twitter accounts.

Using Twitter Search, I traced the Twitter messages containing the words "Dendermonde" or "Termonde" - the French name for Dendermonde. From October 2008 until the moment of this writing, these words were mentioned in 1450 Twitter messages from 409 different Twitter users. The graph below shows the number of Twitter messages containing the words "Dendermonde" or "Termonde" per hour.

The peak on the graph is the hour after the stabbings were commited. Later smaller peaks occured when new facts about the agressor became public and when the funeral services for the victems were held.

As can be expected, a large part of these Twitter users can be located in Belgium. Belgium is followed by the Netherlands and France, neighbouring countries of Belgium. There were also Twitter users from countries far from Belgium announcing the horrible facts, e.g. Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Portugal and Serbia in Europe, also in the USA and Canada, in Brazil and South Africa, and also in Asia (Malaysia, Philippines).

74% of the Twitter messages containing the words "Dendermonde" or "Termonde" contained a hyperlink to a story on a newssite or a blogpost. The most productive Twitter users turned out to be Twitter users from news agencies, newspapers, radio and television stations and news aggregators. The 409 Twitter users posting messages containing the words "Dendermonde" or "Termonde" have in total over 100,000 followers. As Twitter Search is only capable of finding Twitter messages for public Twitter users, the total number of Twitter users who published messages containing the words "Dendermonde" or "Termonde" will probably exceed 409. The total number of Twitter users who were potentially informed of the horrible facts on January 23, 2009 at Dendermonde will probably exceed 100,000.

This analysis of this event shows that traditional media have discovered their way to Twitter. A large part of the messages published after the dramatic stabbings were indeed automatically published by these Twitter news accounts.

News travels also far and travels fast. Within a couple of hours Twitter users from locations far outside Belgium also twittered the horrible facts.

Currently the storm caused by the horrible facts has faded away. Life in and around Dendermonde has returned to its normal state. Unfortunatly several families will have to live with the tragical loss of life.

Poken on Twitter

2009-11-14T22:44:00.003-08:00

A poken is a small physical device capable of exchanging online social networking data with other poken devices. A poken has a USB connector, so you can plug the device into your computer to connect your device to the Poken web database. On the Poken website you can decide which social networking profiles you want to share with your Poken friends. This social network profile can be your Twitter account. If two poken devices are held close to each other, they will exchange contact data of the owners.

Pokens are produced by a Swiss company. The inventors of this device saw it as a digital alternative of exchanging business cards. Pokens were launched in the last trimester of 2008. They became pretty soon a hype in the Netherlands. Only in March 2009 this device got attention on the TechCrunch blog. Pokens were also presented at the SXSW conference, where they became talk of the conference - as Twitter was during the 2007 edition of SXSW.

I have been tracking the buzz on Twitter regarding pokens for a while now. You can find below some graphs showing insight on how the poken hype evolved over the past months. This analysis was performed on data obtained thru Twitter Search. Only Twitter messages from public Twitter users were available for analysis. Since September 2008 I discovered over 31,000 Twitter messages from 7641 different Twitter users.

The first graph shows the number of Twitter messages per day related to poken.

You can compare this graph with the result of Google Trends for Poken - showing the usage of the term in searches. Another reference chart is the number of blogposts found by Blogpulse refering to Poken.

The hype on Twitter started before the hype on blogs (shown on the Blogpulse chart) and the hype in search trends (Google Trends).

Another interesting graph is the cumulative number of Twitter users who posted at least one Twitter message related to poken. This graph shows that the number of users is still increasing.

I tried to link the 7641 different Twitter users to their location, their country - based on the information in the Twitter profiles.

The top 5 countries ranked according to the number of messages :

Netherlands 34% of all messages related to Poken
Germany 16%
Japan 15%
USA 9%
Belgium 4%

The top 5 countries ranked according to the users :

Netherlands 24% of all users posting Twitter messages related to Poken
Germany 16%
USA 14%
Japan 9%
Belgium 5%

A similar distribution can be found in the information for Google Trends for Twitter. Both lists are dominated by The Netherlands. Swiss internet users search often for poken, however Twitter uses from Switzerland are less active, they are only ranked 7.

The hype in the different countries can be observed in the graph showing the number of Twitter messages related to poken. Twitter users in the Netherlands started posting Twitter messages related to poken from December 2008, with a first peak around mid January 2009. Since then the hype around Poken has faded away within the Dutch Twitter user community. Twitter users in Germany picked up the Poken hype around mid March 2009, with a first peak on March 28. The hype is still continuing at a rate of about 100 Twitter messages per day.

A similar pattern can be observed in the graph showing the number of Twitter users having posted messages related to poken. Currently there are more Twitter users in the Netherlands who have posted Poken related Twitter messages, but it the trend continues there will be soon more German Twitter users.

Twitter messages related to poken came from over 70 countries, from all over the world. There came from the Netherlands and Germany (as can be observed in the graphs shown above), from Japan and the United States, but also from countries such as Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand, China and Malaysia. Dedicated Twitter accounts for Pokens have been set up in different countries : Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan, Slovakia, Spain and South Africa.

Twitter Search

2009-11-14T22:44:00.001-08:00

There are announcements that Twitter will add new functionalities to Twitter Search (Cnet). Links will be crawled (which is currently not the case) and a reputation ranking system will be worked out. This is of course good news.

But some of the current limitations of Twitter Search are not discussed. The Twitter Search API currently returns up to 1500 search results. Older tweets cannot be found thru the API. According to Mashable there were over 10000 tweets per hour related to swine flue. Even if there are less than 1500 matching tweets for a search query, tweets older than a couple of months will not be found. Tweets from several months apparantly disappear in a black hole for Twitter Search.

Another issue to be tackled with a reputation ranking system is that it has to take into account that there are many (sub) communities on the Twitter platform. They are all linked together thru Twitter users who are within multiple communities. Twitter users in a country can be considered as an example of such a community, as shown in the various previous posts on this blog where the twitospheres in particular countries were analyzed. But there are also communities by topics of interest.

Reputation is important within a context. A user from France will probable use French for his tweets within the French Twitter community, whereas a German Twitter user will use German. How will a global reputation tackle these contexts ? How will a reputation ranking system detect the language used in tweets ? Someone can be very influential in a specialized community, but on a global level never appear in a top 1000.

Reputation is a property linked to a person, where a person can have a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a Linkedin profile, one or more blogs. But he can also be present in the traditional world, he can be invited as speaker on major conferences, he is perhaps author of groundbreaking books, ... A reputation ranking system within Twitter will only catch a part of someone's "global" reputation.

Nevertheless I am looking forward to the new functionalities that Twitter will be releasing in their Twitter Search product, hopefully soon.

Tweespeed

2009-11-14T22:43:00.000-08:00

The success of Twitter has inspired a lot of developers to create their own Twitter mashup. TweeSpeed is an example of this phenomenon. TweeSpeed is a web service that calculates the number of Twitter messages, also called tweets, sent in the last minute. TweeSpeed is based on the public timeline, it grabs information for the 5 last minutes and calculate an average speed for one minute. The actual number of Twitter messages is higher, Twitter messages from private accounts do not show up in the public timeline.

TweeSpeed offers three views of the number of Twitter messages per unit of time. There is the gauge at the front page. There is also a view of the speed by minute for the last day. And finally there is a view of the speed by hour for the last week.

The events around the death of Michael Jackson had a strong impact on Twitter, as already reported by the traditional media such, e.g.CNN.

Looking at the graphs made available by TweeSpeed, I discovered that it was possible to show more history that just the last day or the last week. The graph below starts at June 13, 2009. The rumors and the formal announcement of the death of Michael Jackson caused a sharp increase in the number of Twitter messages on June 25, 2009. The next peak was on June 29, 2009 - when all kind of rumors concerning the cause of death and the funeral arrangements were spreading around. The funeral and memorial service on July 7, 2009 triggered the third peak.

The graph shows also a cyclical trend. The volume of Twitter messages in the past four weeks is significantly lower on Saturdays and Sundays. The peaks occur typically around 20:00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), which is around 16:00 US Eastern time and also 13:00 US Pacific Time. The volumes of Twitter messages are at their lowest level between 11:00 and 12:00 UTC, which is around 7:00 and 8:00 US Eastern time and also 4:00 and 5:00 US Pacific Time, when the majority of the population in the United States is probably still sleeping. It looks like Twitter users from the United States are still dominating Twitter usage. Coincidentally, the volumes of Twitter message are at their highest levels during the working hours. Does this mean that Twitter users (especially in the United States) are still allowed to Twitter during working hours ?

Bing Goes The Dynamite!

2009-11-14T22:39:00.001-08:00

We very firmly believe the open exchange of information can have a positive impact on the world. Every day we see evidence supporting this belief. Most Twitter accounts are public for a good reason—people find value in openness. An open approach means value for users, value for partners, and value for Twitter.

We have a team focused on delivering value from a search and discovery perspective at Twitter and they're just getting started. Twitter is earning a reputation for delivering real-time results to queries about things that are happening right now. Moreover, there are already tens of thousands of Twitter apps and more to come because people want the choice to consume and create tweets wherever and whenever they prefer. The folks over at Bing took a keen interest in Twitter and worked fast to establish a working relationship with us in line with our open approach.

You can read more about Bing's new Twitter search on their blog or just try it out. Twitter is providing Bing access to the overwhelming deluge of public, real-time tweets rushing in from all around the world so they can help you find those that make the most sense right now. While Twitter currently presents tweets based simply on timeliness, Bing is experimenting with new solutions such as "best match." We hope more working relationships with organizations in the search business will mean even more variety for users.

Because of our open approach there are many ways to interact with Twitter, and there will be many more to come. As we work to mature our service and platform offerings, we also hope to develop meaningful relationships with companies that share our vision of creating value for everyone involved—especially users. Whether it's emerging startups, big companies, or people simply sharing information, we're establishing successful partnerships. Also, it's fun.

There's a List for That

2009-11-14T22:37:00.001-08:00

We’re putting the finishing touches on our new Lists feature and we're really excited about the folks who have already taken a lot of time creating awesome lists. From the @timelist of funny people to your own list of people who make you laugh—it's easy to see how this feature increases discovery and adds value in lots of ways.

Lists also make it easier to curate tweets into meaningful real-time experiences on your own sites via the Lists API. Media companies are already taking advantage: for example, check out @huffingtonpost's use of the Lists API in their World Series coverage.

@Bettydraper/rolodex: A collection of fan-created Mad Men characters
@NYTimes/staff: The colorful people behind The Gray Lady
@BBC/radio1-1xtra: Turns out BBC radio hosts are a chatty bunch
@Joesebok/poker: A list of professional poker players by a professional poker player
@jayrosen/mindcasters: A list of the some of the best new media thinkers by an NYU professor
@Stocktwits/suggested: A list of traders for stock market fanatics

We’ve been taking our time rolling out the lists feature to make sure things go smoothly and developers have a chance to begin experimenting with our Lists API. For example, TLISTS will provide tools to efficiently build, measure and distribute Lists, while Listorious hosts a directory of 'awesome lists' on Twitter.

Anyone can curate and publish lists, so if you have an idea for one, just click "New list" in the sidebar of your Twitter account and you're on your way. Add accounts to a list using the "Lists" drop drown on a profile page. We believe Lists will be a new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.

¿Qué estás haciendo?

2009-11-14T22:36:00.003-08:00

A principios de mes invitamos a algunos voluntarios a traducir Twitter en más idiomas. Gracias a estos entusiastas voluntarios hispanoparlantes, Twitter está ahora oficialmente disponible en español. Puedes cambiar el idioma en la Configuración o visitar Twitter.com y cambiar la configuración del idioma en el la opción situada en la esquina inferior derecha.

Algunos usuarios hispanoparlantes como Pepe Aguilar (@PepeAguilar), Manu Ginobili (@manuginobili), José Hernández (@Astro_Jose), Andreu Buenafuente (@buenafuente), Juan Fonseca (@FONSECA) y La Moncloa en España (@desdelamoncloa) habían descubierto el valor de Twitter incluso antes de que lanzáramos esta versión traducida. Esperamos que ofrecer Twitter en español signifique más gente capaz de acceder y disfrutar de este servicio.

¡Bienvenidos!

Get to the Point: Twitter Trends

2009-11-14T22:36:00.001-08:00

As Twitter grows and the number of tweets each day continues to astound us, we’ve noticed an increasing amount of clutter in the public timeline, especially with trending topics. Trends began as a useful way to find out what’s going on but has grown less interesting due to the noisiness of the conversation.

So, today we're starting to experiment with improvements to trends that will help you find more relevant tweets. Specifically, we're working to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful. The improvement won't be very noticeable at first, but this is a small step toward unearthing more value in search and getting you more relevant results.

Retweet Limited Rollout

2009-11-14T22:35:00.005-08:00

We've just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild. Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy. In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know.

You may remember that we shared the mechanics of this feature with developers a while back so they could think about how to work it into Twitter apps. Now we're ready to start trying it on Twitter. The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we'll know right away. If things look good, we'll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%.

SMS for AXIS Indonesia

2009-11-14T22:35:00.003-08:00

As director of mobile products and partnerships at Twitter, one thing that always makes me smile is the growing demand for sending and receiving tweets via SMS. The ease of composing a text message combined with the "interruptiveness" of getting an alert for an account you follow is a powerful combination. This has always been the aspect of Twitter that excites me most. It's cool to think that a café in Jakarta can write their Twitter username on a chalkboard and tell people to text "follow username" to our shortcode for alerts about the daily special.

Today we are are announcing a partnership with AXIS (@axisgsm) in Indonesia to offer tweets via SMS on the shortcode 89887 (TWTTR). So if you live in Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Medan, Semarang, or anywhere in between, send "START" to 89887 to activate your phone. To learn about all the useful commands we support via SMS click here.

If your country isn't supported with Twitter SMS, we're working with lots of folks around the globe and it's possible that your network will be up and running soon.

The Perfect Combination

2009-11-14T22:35:00.001-08:00

As our platform team works with more and more developers to expand access to information, users are able to tweet and read tweets in expanding ways across the web. Today, LinkedIn launched a smart integration that lets you sync up your account with Twitter to allow for an easy flow of information to take place between your networks.

You’ll be able to set your professional status and display more fresh content on your LinkedIn profile via Twitter. And, showing your stream in places off of Twitter.com will connect you to even more people. Shared interest in tips, news, leaders and perspectives can thrust conversations into virtual brainstorms and even business opportunities.

The peanut butter and the chocolate have come together to make the perfect combination. Enjoy!

Facebook Unlinks Your Twitter Links

2009-11-14T22:29:00.000-08:00

UPDATE (noon PT): Facebook has now rectified this issue.

-
Mashable reader Ben Kerin has noticed an odd change on Facebook that began last night: those importing their Twitter feeds into the service no longer see their links as clickable.

In short: if you’re posting web links (Bit.ly, TinyURL) to your Twitter feed and using the Twitter Facebook app to share those updates on Facebook too, none of those links are hyperlinked. Your friends will need to copy and paste the links into a browser to make them work.

If this is a design decision on Facebook’s part, it’s an extremely odd one: we’d like to think it’s an inconvenient bug, and we have a mail in to Facebook to check. Suffice to say, the issue is site-wide: it’s not just you.

Good Wine and Books

2009-11-02T05:28:00.001-08:00

For Twitter to be at its peak in utility, people who would have never had access to the world's information need to be able to not only receive it but engage with it, too. Room to Read, a San Francisco based non-profit, will help us make that happen by bringing libraries and literacy to the world's poorest regions.

Together we'll be making some awesome wine over the course of a year to benefit @roomtoread, and with each case sold they'll be able to supply about 60 local language children's books to educate the 300 million kids around the world who can't read.

Pumpkin Carving Templates for Geeks: Twitter Fail Whale, RSS Pumpkins

2009-10-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

Mashable created a list of great social-media-inspired pumpkins for all you geeks this Halloween.

Social media is mainstream in 2009 so why not pay homage to social media with a Halloween Jack O Lantern? Mashable’s social media pumpkins are a total scream, be sure to check out the entire list over at Mashable but here’s a sneak peek!

Fail Whale Jack O Lantern from Twitter! The Twitter Fail Whale is part of our pop culture, so why not make it part of your Halloween display?

Do you feel the need for an RSS feed pumpkin this Halloween? Show your neighbors just how geeky you are with RSS Jack O Lantern! We are such geeks in our family, I am almost tempted to carve this one.

COMING TWITTER IN MORE LANGUAGES

2009-10-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

Twitter is currently available only in English and Japanese. With some help, we will soon be rolling out support for French, Italian, German, and Spanish. These languages are commonly referred to using the acronym FIGS and are often the starting point for services like Twitter when its time for more language support. Later, we hope to offer Twitter in several other languages. No matter how sophisticated technology gets, we're reminded daily that it's about people and that's something we've taken to heart regarding translating Twitter.

People Make Twitter Better

The variety of Twitter applications exist today because developers took advantage of this simple, open platform. Protocols like @mentions and retweet were invented by users to get more out of their Twitter experience and we are able to follow up with a technical response to make them actual features. Starting today, we are offering a simple tool for people with experience in other languages to suggest translations for the Twitter web site. Then, we'll follow up technically.

Twitter Translate users can make suggestions.

We are inviting a small group of people to become volunteer translators at first. As more folks volunteer, the translation suggestions should accumulate faster and we'll have enough material to respond by making Twitter available not only in English and Japanese but also French, Italian, German, and Spanish. We will distribute the translations to Twitter platform developers making it easier for them to offer multiple language support as well.

If yours isn't one of the six languages we're going to be available in soon, we thank you for bearing with us—we'll get there as soon as we can. Our tiny, five person team of Andy Lorek, Matt Sanford, Alex McCauley, Sean Bell, and Yukari Matsuzawa from Twitter has done great work putting this plan together. We're very excited that more people will be able to use Twitter in their native language!

INCREASE YOUR FOLLOWERS

2009-08-10T09:28:00.001-07:00

BECOME A MEMBER AND ADD YOUR TWITTER PROFILE TO OUR LIST

WHY JOIN=>Give More Visibility To Your Twitter Profile
NOW ADD TO OUR LIST [as a comment] or SEE THE LIST

Heal The World

2009-07-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.” -Mahatma Gandhi

Be a part of the Heal The World Movement

Put this logo atleast on some corner of your blog

Copy Paste Code

Revolution With Twitter

2009-07-21T00:12:00.000-07:00

Keep Yourself At The Top Of Twitter

* Twitter Traffic Machine - The Automated Growth & Money Making System.

*Generate Cash At Will Using Twitter.

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*TheTweetTank 99% Automated Twitter Money! New Website! 3%+ Conversion!

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Twitter

Quick Money With Twitter

2009-07-21T00:05:00.000-07:00

Twitter

Yes,you can make quick money with twitter

STEPS

*Make an email address registered to INDIA

*With that email address register to Rupeemail with the below Link

*After Registering you will get the clue about how to use it in Twitter [USE YOUR BRAIN]

BEST WISHES

Twitter

Follow Us On Twitter

2009-07-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

Twitter in Plain English

2009-07-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

Twitter

Adjustements - not to read

2009-07-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.Twitter is a microblogging site.Twitter is a good site.I love Twitter.

Twouble with Twitters: SuperNews!

2009-07-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

Twitter

Twitter VS Blog

2009-07-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

Twitter

I’ve been on the fence regarding public or protected tweets on Twitter.com. I’ve actually toggled that switch at on at least 3 different occasions, and then reverted back to Public maybe a day later.

Public tweets are visible to the world, indexed by Google, and make it easy to nanoblog (something that can be encapsulated in 140 characters or less, which might not otherwise be blogworthy). Protected tweets are private, and are visible only to those people whom you follow on Twitter. They aren’t indexed by Google, and they’re essentially part of a private conversation.

The problem is that the public/protected flag is a global setting for an account. Either all of your tweets are public or they’re all protected. There is no middle ground, or ability to change this on a per-tweet basis.

So, why set an account to be “protected”? One of the things that strikes me about Twitter is how much it feels like a conversation in a pub. It’s informal, loose, and sometimes a bit more unfiltered than would be otherwise advisable. A common type of tweet (of which I am probably more guilty than others) is the rant/vent. Bitching about meetings. Letting off some steam in little 140 character puffs. Probably not something that should be indexed by The Goog. To be really honest, probably the kind of thing that shouldn’t be online in the first place, but that’s probably another post.

If a twitter account is set to be “protected” then it becomes a bit more safe to open up a bit more (too much?). The pub conversation becomes more intimate and real.

Why set an account to be “public”? It makes it easy for people to follow you. Your social network/graph can grow without obstruction, and you will likely find new people who are doing things that interest you.

But, it’s not as simple as it sounds. I currently follow 70 people. That’s about the maximum I think I can follow. There are 318 people following me. It’s just physically impossible for me to reciprocate. Am I missing out? Possibly. But anything important will trickle through various conversations and I’ll see enough to make sense of it. And anything really important will likely exist outside of Twitter.

And I doubt anyone would really miss anything by being unable to follow my tweets. Sure, they’d miss out on some extremely witty banter, but anything important would show up in other conversations, and eventually outside of Twitter.

To me, twitter isn’t a publishing platform. It’s an informal hangout. If I want to publish anything, I’ll put it on my blog, or as a comment on someone else’s.

Twitter

Twitter VS Facebook

2009-07-13T09:33:00.000-07:00

Twitter

The phenomenon of social networking is still in its infancy and it remains to be seen exactly which network might become the 800-pound gorilla in the space. It is reminiscent of the dotcom 90s, when I worked in the search industry; dozens of venture-backed search firms battled for dominance and search appeared to become a commodity, with limited monetization potential, or so we all thought at the time.

There are now so many social networks vying for users that even the most elite “Digerati” have trouble keeping up with the ever-shifting landscape. And most are still struggling to find effective monetization strategies, casting doubt on their long term survival and pointing to massive consolidation at some point.

The Evolution of Social Networking Compared to Search

In the now-infamous dotcom era, Yahoo, Lycos, Excite and others evolved into portals in a desperate attempt to find ways to make money, since nobody had really found effective ways to monetize search. That was, until companies like Goto.com (which became Overture and was eventually bought by Yahoo) and Google invented the concept of paid search and contextual, pay-to-click advertising models. The rest is history and we all knew who won the war.

So it seems today that applications like Twitter and Facebook, while attracting new users at astounding rates have not fully defined their business models and the 800-pound gorilla has yet to emerge. It is still early in the game and, as with search in the mid 90s, the eventual winners in the social networking space may not even yet exist, but I would argue that Twitter and Facebook are emerging as potential contenders to dominate.

The differences between the two networks are substantial and in some ways a direct comparison between the two is actually difficult to make. Twitter is simple and feels like Google did in 1998, while Facebook offers a portal-like interface somewhat reminiscent of Yahoo.

Key Elements of Facebook and Twitter

Facebook appeals to people looking to reconnect with old friends and family members or find new friends online; the mashup of features like email, instant messaging, image and video sharing, etc. feels familiar, while Twitter is a bit harder to get your arms around at first.

Most people can very quickly grasp how to use Facebook to connect to friends and family, using it to share thoughts, images, etc. Like MySpace but more geared to adults than teens, Facebook is a social networking Portal; beckoning you not to leave but rather to stick around and communicate within the network.

Twitter on the other hand, encourages you grab ideals in byte-size chunks and use your updates as jumping off points to other places or just let others know what you’re up to at any given moment.

Why People Love Facebook

Facebook appeals to social animals and can be very addicting to people who have an insatiable appetite to stay connected with friends and make new acquaintances. In fact, some people report they rarely use email or IM tools anymore in their online social communications anymore, relying almost entirely on Facebook for email, chat, image and video sharing.

Facebook addicts prefer the social portal model versus having to log into AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Gmail, Hotmail, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, etc. Instead, Facebook gives them a single alternative to all these applications, with one login and interface to manage their online social interaction needs. This largely explains the explosive growth Facebook continues to experience and why the company reportedly invested $200 million in data center upgrades last year to keep up with demand!

Why People Love Twitter

The usefulness of Twitter is not readily as obvious to some people as Facebook; although it may be more addictive once you get the hang of Tweeting; you get more immediate responses and it seems to live somewhere between the worlds of email, instant messaging and blogging. Twitter encourages constant “linking out” to anywhere and, in that respect, is more analogous to a pure search engine; another way to find people and content all over the Net.

Twitter has quickly built brand awareness and a loyal following, especially among the technically adept; bloggers, online marketers, evangelists, basically anyone with something to promote seem to find Twitter extremely valuable.

When asked why they love Twitter, users say like “I can ask a question and get an instantaneous response”. They crave the ability to “tap into the collective consciousness” of others on the network, bouncing ideas off others with whom they would otherwise have no means of connecting. Twitter addicts claim it’s like the old fashioned water cooler, where people can gather to shoot the breeze on whatever topic is on their minds. Twitter is like a communications stream you dive into for an invigorating swim.

Different Communication Styles for Different Social Settings

Let’s say you go to a wedding or other social gathering where lots of people know each other. The style and tone of communication there will be more like using Facebook; you chat with old friends and acquaintances, mixing and mingling in an intimate manner. In this setting, people tend to feel more relaxed and “in their element”. Conversations are familiar and center on shared experiences and connections.

Now, when you go to a large party or social event where you don’t know most of the people in attendance, you will use a very different style of communication, more like Twitter; you want to meet people and somehow make yourself known, stand out from the crowd, make an impression, self promote and make new connections. Twitter is like getting the podium and not everyone feels comfortable or knows how to stand comfortably in the spotlight.

In fact, almost all of us, when first approaching Twitter, tend to use it to post useless updates like “Going to lunch”, thinking of it as a another tool to communicate with friends, when in fact, it is more like stepping on to a stage, where you are communicating with an audience and quickly find that you need to find a voice and say something useful and interesting or quickly lose the attention of your audience. People refer to Twitter as a mini or micro blogging platform.

So Which Social Network is the Best?

While zealots will immediately point to either Twitter or Facebook as being superior, the truth is that each has its advantages and disadvantages and will tend to appeal more to different types of people and for different reasons. Each can have great or little value to anyone; it really depends on what you are trying to accomplish in a given situation. Consider some of the pros and cons of each network:

Twitter Pros

Easy to navigate and update, link to and promote anything
Reach far beyond your inner circle of friends
One feed pools all users; anyone can follow anyone else unless blocked
Pure communication tool, rapid responsiveness
You don’t have to be logged in to get updates; you can just use an RSS reader
Very interactive, extensible messaging platform with open APIs
Many other applications being developed (Twitterific, Summize, Twhirl, etc.)
Potential SMS text messaging revenue from wireless networks (although Twitter states they are not currently getting any cut)
Potential future advertising and/or enterprise subscription-based revenue streams
With its “thin” overhead, Twitter is probably more scalable than Facebook, giving it a cost advantage

Twitter Cons

Limited functionality; find people, send brief messages, direct replies
Limited to 140 characters per update
Not all people find it immediately useful
Over-emphasis on follower counts
Easily abused for spam and increasing the noise level
Relatively smaller installed user base
As yet no readily apparent monetization strategy

Facebook Pros

Application mashup; find people, make connections, email, instant messaging, image/video sharing, etc.
Most people can quickly grasp the value of connecting with friends, family and established contacts; some people report they use Facebook instead of email and IM
More emphasis on deep connections with others vs. who has the most connections
“True Friends” feature increases your transparency to selected connections; almost like having private and public profiles
Huge, rapidly growing installed user base
Inherit stickiness, third party applications, “gift giving” and personal data collection make Facebook a powerful advertising platform

Facebook Cons

More difficult to navigate and update
Requires investment of time to realize sustained benefit
Opt in model requires a user to allow others to connect
Less immediate responses; unless you stay logged on continually
Overhead of mashup and “thick” applications could limit scalability, bloat cost structure

The Future of Social Networking

In the end, both Twitter and Facebook are simply communication tools; both will continue to evolve and morph as users find new ways to extract value and either network may or may become a long term winner in the rapidly evolving social networking space. Ultimately, the fact remains to be seen whether either application has a profitable, scalable and sustainable business model or whether the exit strategy is simply to be acquired.

As we learned in the search space, consolidation will eventually prevail. Unless they can find a way to turn all those eyeballs into profits, social networks will lose relevance. It does seem obvious that the venture capitalists are betting they will not only continue to enjoy tremendous growth but will also successfully monetize all that traffic.

But, will either Twitter or Facebook become the next Google or will they fade into the rear view mirror of technological and social evolution? What do you think?

Twitter

Some Twitter Celebrities

2009-07-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

Twitter

Movie, Music, Sports, and TV Celebrities

Jimmy Fallon http://twitter.com/jimmyfallon

Taylor Swift http://twitter.com/TaylorSwift13

Kathy Ireland http://twitter.com/KathyIreland

Penn Jillette http://twitter.com/pennjillette

Britney Spears http://twitter.com/britneyspears

Greg Grunberg http://twitter.com/greggrunberg

David Lawrence http://twitter.com/dhlawrencexvii

Lance Armstrong http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong

Shaquille O’Neal http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ

John Cleese: http://twitter.com/JohnCleese

Ashton Kutcher: http://twitter.com/aplusk/

Demi Moore: http://twitter.com/MrsKutcher

MC Hammer: http://twitter.com/MCHammer

Steven Fry http://twitter.com/stephenfry

Kevin Smith http://twitter.com/ThatKevinSmith

Levar Burton http://twitter.com/levarburton

Natalie Gulbis http://twitter.com/natalie_gulbis

Brea Grant http://twitter.com/breagrant

Politics and News Celebrities

Barack Obama (staff writes this so it’s not as interesting) http://twitter.com/BarackObama/

Al Gore http://twitter.com/algore

Arnold Schwarzenegger http://twitter.com/schwarzenegger

Maria Shriver http://twitter.com/mariashriver

Anderson Cooper http://twitter.com/AndersonCooper

Rick Sanchez http://twitter.com/RickSanchezCNN/

Technology Celebrities

Pete Cashmore http://twitter.com/mashable

Veronica Belmont http://twitter.com/Veronica

Mike Arrington http://twitter.com/TechCrunch

Biz Stone http://twitter.com/biz/

Evan Williams http://twitter.com/ev

Leo Laporte http://twitter.com/LeoLaporte

Robert Scoble http://twitter.com/Scobleizer

Wil Wheaton http://twitterholic.com/wilw/

Kevin Rose http://twitter.com/kevinrose

Matt Cutts http://twitter.com/mattcutts/

Shel Israel http://twitter.com/shelisrael

Twitter

Twitter Mobile

2009-07-13T09:24:00.000-07:00

Twitter

Name	Platform
ceTwit	Windows Mobile 6, Windows Mobile Smartphones
Hahlo	designed for iPhone/iPod Touch, probably works in any browser, web based
Jargong	see this page for supported phones
Jitter	Java. Any mobile phone with CLDC 1.0 / MIDP 1.0, which should be pretty much any phone supporting MIDlets. In other words, if you can run downloaded games on your phone, you can also run Jitter.
MobileTwitter	jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch
PocketTweets	web based for the iPhone or iPod Touch
psychzzz	web based, should work on pretty much any browser
SQIJ	Windows Smartphone 2003SE, Windows PocketPC 2003SE, Windows Mobile 5/6 Smartphone, Windows Mobile 5/6 PocketPC
ThinCloud	designed for iPhone/iPod Touch, probably works in any browser, web based
Twitter2Go	web based, WAP or xHTML-MP interface
Twitter Email	any mobile phone that can send email
Twitteresce	Java J2ME enabled phone
Twitter Flashlite	FlashLite 2.x enabled device
Twitter IM	any mobile phone that supports Jabber, Gtalk and LiveJournal chat
Twitter Mobile Home	web
Twitter SMS	Any phone that supports sending SMS text messages
Twitter Webdebolsillo	web
TwitToday	Windows Mobile 5/6 touchscreen PDAs
Twapper	web
Twobile	Windows Mobile 5 or above Touch-screen device (no touch-screen=no work)

ceTwit

Works as advertised. The author tests on an HTC TyTN II (AT&T 8525) and a Samsung Blackjack, but he has tried to make it Smartphone friendly. For what it’s worth, it worked like a charm on my HTC S621. Well, user icons weren’t displayed, but I would consider that a feature not a bug, as it uses less bandwidth (Canadians will appreciate that). Update: I got in touch w/ the author, and he confirmed that the Smartphone version doesn’t support avatars, intentionally. Of all the Windows Mobile Twitter clients I tried, this is the one that remains on my Smartphone.Download here.

Screenshots:

Timeline	Action menu

Timeline options	Update

Hahlo

Another web based Twitter client designed specifically for iPhones and/or iPod Touches. So no jailbreaking or software installations required - just point Safari tohttp://hahlo.com. Of the web based clients, this one was the most “buggy” for me. A direct message sent to a friend apparently just disappeared into the ether. With that said, it does have a lot of features and the UI is decent.

Screenshots:

hahlo home	Timeline

Update	Replies

Jargong

I’m actually glad I don’t have a supported phone. This is another one of those “the entire world in one” applications. Here’s their schtick - “Jargong is Social Networking(Flickr and Twitter), Instant Messaging (MSN, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk and Jabber) and Feeds (Google Reader) in a single client application”. Phew. If you’ve used this app and have some thoughts to share, by all means do so in the comments and I’ll update this paragraph accordingly.

Screenshots:

Twitter part of Jargong

Personal timeline

Jitter

Jitter is Java based, so it’s almost guaranteed this one will work on your phone. Very minimal, low bandwidth, text only. A tiny bit ugly, but certainly functional. I’m a little confused why it had people in the “send a direct message to” list that I’ve never added to Twitter, but eh, no big deal. Perhaps the coder assumed everyone adds Scoble to Twitter.

Screenshots:

Java apps list	Update

Jitter Options	Timeline

MobileTwitter

I think this was the first actual Twitter app for jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches. I could be totally wrong. It’s functional, not ugly, what more can I say. It looks a lot like the web interfaces (PocketTweets etc). But it has a cool icon for your Dashboard. Install it via Installer.app.

Screenshots:

Public Timeline	Update

Light on the Prefs

PocketTweets

Another web based interface to Twitter, but very specifically created for the iPhone and/or iPod Touch. Just visit http://www.pockettweets.com from your iPhone/iPod Touch. It is very slick, loads quickly and it’s pretty feature rich. Of the web based Twitter interfaces for the iPhone, this one is my favorite.

Screenshots:

Timeline	Toolbar

Update

psychzzz

Very plain. Kinda blah. Only allows you to update Twitter, not read friends updates etc. But it gets the job done, and it’s certainly low bandwidth. Just point your mobile browser to http://mobi.psychzzz.com. You an also run a few other tools from the page, like “Domain Checker” and “Site Ping”.

Screenshots:

Home page

SQIJ

I try to stick to the saying “if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything”. I’m making an exception here. Seriously, don’t download this software if all you’re looking for is a Twitter client. SQIJ is actually a collection of “Applets”, and Twitter happens to be one of them. If the other Applets appeal to you, and you want a Twitter client, maybe this software is for you. Things that annoyed me: you have to run a setup.exe w/ your phone docked (just give me the .cab please), you have to create a SQIJ account in order to add the Twitter applet and it was slow as death. With all of that said, the actual UI wasn’t totally ugly or hard to use.

Screenshots:

Your “SQIJ’s”	Following list

Timeline	Update

ThinCloud Twitter

This is a web-based Twitter client designed specifically for iPhones and/or iPod Touches. That means you don’t need to have a jail-broken device, just loadhttps://twitter.thincloud.com/login in Safari. I preferred PocketTweets, but you may not.

Screenshots:

ThinCloud home	Friends list

Timeline	Update

twitter2go

Uhhh something’s awry at twitter2go.com. Or at least in Internet Explorer Mobile. The “bookmark” function (which is a bit of a security risk as it saves your username and password in plain text) doesn’t work, trying to view someones status will only display one specific user (no matter what name you enter). The update feature, however, works perfectly fine. Even if you’re determined to find a simple web based Twitter client, I’d skip this one.

Screenshots:

At least Update works

Twitter Email

There are a few 3rd party services such as http://emailtwitter.com, but I’m not sure I’d recommend them. Though you can set up an account with them so you don’t have to email your password each time you want to update, it’s still not ideal. A better solution might be to sign up for tumblr, find the private email address used to update your tumbl blog (it’s in the “goodies” section”) and then usehttp://twitterfeed.com to import your tumble blog RSS feed.

Twitteresce

For some reason, Twitteresce fails to install (on my Java J2ME enabled phone). I transferred the .jad file to my phone several different ways, and I get a default “this Midlet failed to install” error. Such is life. If you have an experience using this client, please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll update accordingly.

Twitter Flashlite

I don’t have a Flashlite enabled phone, so I couldn’t give this one a try. From the dev: “The application just updates the status message but I am thinking to add support for other Twitter APIs. There are bugs in application (not saving credentials in SharedObject, bad graphics, bad user-interaction (UI, soft-key-mapping). I would post the code later after fixing/cleaning.” I’ve tried leaving a comment on the devs site asking for some screenshots, but I’m not sure it went through. Ah well.

Twitter IM

From: http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=28

Twitter asks that you verify your Jabber, Gtalk and Live Journal chat addresses, just to make sure that you’re you. If you haven’t added your IM address to Twitter, follow the first set of instructions. If you’ve added your IM address but your updates aren’t posting, skip down to the second set of instructions.
Log in to Twitter.
Click on the Settings link in the top navigation bar.
Click on the Phone & IM link.
Click to verify your IM account. That should do it!

Twitter Mobile Home

Point your mobile browser to http://m.twitter.com/login. Login. Done.

Twitter SMS

First see: How to activate your phone for Twitter

Then text your update to:

In the US, use 40404.

In Canada, use 21212.

In India, use 5566511.

Anywhere else, use +44 7624 801423

Note that Twitter won’t charge you anything for sending the SMS messages, but your cellular provider might.

Twitter Webdebolsillo

It works, it seems to have all the features you’d want, and it’s entirely in Spanish. If I could read Spanish, I’d have more to comment on, but even from just clicking around I was able to find most of the features you’d expect (friends timeline, public timeline, direct messages, etc).

Screenshots:

Timeline	Profile

Timeline clickable links

TwitToday

Looks brilliant. Couldn’t get it to show up on a Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone today screen (non-touchscreen device). As the author states “When posting a tweet, the key is speed. I don’t want to wait to launch an app, I don’t want lots of features. I just want something to take my message and post it.” Which is exactly my view. I’m bummed I can’t give this one a shot. Or I should say, I’m bummed I’m not smart enough to figure out a way to get this on my today screen.

Screenshots:

TwitToday

Twapper

Here goes. Twapper is a 30 Boxes and Twitter mashup. Kind of. Visithttp://m.30boxes.com/twapper in any mobile web browser (or regular browser) and enter a username. You’ll see their updates and friends updates. Or, go directly to their username by using the URL http://m.30boxes.com/twapper/rossm, where rossm is the user you want to view. If you want to update your Twitter status, send direct messages etc - join 30 Boxes, add twitter to your Web Stuff, and post an update to twitter from their Status line. Then login on your mobile and you are good to go. Too much of a hassle for me, so no screenshots for you!

Twobile

Since I don’t have a touch-screen Windows Mobile device, I couldn’t actually test this one. Anyone who uses it regularly and has an opinion, please feel free to share it in the comments and I’ll update this paragraph. Twobile can be downloaded here.

Screenshots:

Twitter Applications

2009-07-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

Twitter

Widgets	Twhirl	Twitteriffic
Widgets by Twitter	Twhirl by Seesmic	Twitterrific by IconFactory
see more	Download or see more	Download or see more
Google Desktop	iPhone & iPod touch	iPhone & iPod touch
Twitter Gadget by Google	Twitterrific by IconFactory	PocketTweets by PocketTweets
Install or see more	Install or see more	Install or see more
TweetDeck	Widsets	Opera
TweetDeck by Iain Dodsworth	Twitter Widget by WidSets	Opera Widget by Opera
Download or see more	Install or see more	Install or see more
Spaz	Blogo	Digsby
Spaz by Ed Finkler	Blogo by Brainjuice	Digsby by dotSyntax
Install or see more	Install or see more	Install or see more

There are even more Twitter apps, visualizers and geegaws listed over at theTwitter fan wiki. Interested in creating your own app? All these apps were built using our easy-to-learn API.

Twitter

Twitter Tools

2009-07-13T09:22:00.001-07:00

Twitter

Twitter is a great service, but it would be nothing without the other sites, tools, and apps that help you get the most out of it. Here we highlight more than 60 of our favorite Twitter add-ons.

Apps, Widgets and Plugins – Windows

Triqqr – Submit tweets directly to Twitter and view user profiles.

Pwytter – Cross platform Python Twitter client with Asian character support.

Teletwitter – Experimental open source client.

TwitBox – View and submit tweets, see replies and direct messages, delete your own tweets, and multiple account support.

Twitterlicious – Update Twitter status, easily check replies and direct messages.

Twitteroo – Client with rurl URL shortening, clickable links and tweets, customization, and both public and friend timelines.

Chirrup – Twitter client with extensive Japanese language support.

TwittIt – Extremely compact and simple app for submitting tweets.

MadTwitter – A reincarnation of Twitterrific, except on Windows.

Twitter CLI – Post tweets via the command line.

What’s Up? – Gadget that allows you to see latest tweets from your friends.

Twadget – Simple gadget that lets you view and submit tweets right from Vista’s Sidebar.

KipFolio Widget – Simple Twitter widget for KipFolio.

Twitter-Sync for Yahoo – Syncs Twitter status with Yahoo Messenger status.

TwitterYM – Simple Yahoo Messenger status updater.

Twessenger – Updates Live Messenger status to reflect latest tweet.

Twit4Live – Set status message as latest tweet, send tweets from within Live Messenger, and send tweets to contacts.

Apps, Widgets and Plugins – Mac

Twitterrific – A compact client that publishes tweets, shows unread tweets, has easy access to profile pages, shows either public or friend timeline, and more.

TwitterPost – Basic client that submits tweets, shows your current iTunes track in your feed, and more.

Twitgit – Read your friend’s tweets and submit your own, right in Dashboard.

TweetAhead – Schedule tweets to be posted ahead of time with a simple Dashboard widget.

Twitterlex – Dashboard widget that shows your friend’s latest tweets as well as allows you to submit tweets.

Twidget – Update your Twitter status within Dashboard.

TikiTwit – Match your iChat status to your last tweet.

Apps, Widgets and Plugins – Linux

BLT – Perl script that lets you see what your friends are doing right from the Terminal.

Twitter for Vim – Publish tweets right within Vim.

ZenTwitter – A GUI frontend for Twitter using zenity and curl.

Twitux – Twitter client for the GNOME desktop.

gTwitter – GTK+ based app inspired by Twitterrific.

Twitter.el – Publish tweets while in Emacs.

Twitbar – Post tweets from the GNOME deskbar.

Twit.el – Another utility that allows publishing of tweets within Emacs.

Cross-platform Apps, Widgets and Plugins

Tweetr – Submit tweets, upload files, urltea built in, delete messages.

Spaz – Cross-platform client built with AIR.

Tweeter – Java based client with customizable UI.

Twinja – AIR based client which allows you to follow users on the fly.

Search

Twitterverse – Search through archived public timelines and tweets.

Twittersearch – Search Twitter and tweets by word.

Terraminds – Search for specific users or tweets.

TwitDir – Allows user to search for users by name, location, or username.

Browser Plugins

TwitBin – Send and view tweets right within Firefox.

TwittyTunes – A FoxyTunes addon that posts what you’re currently listening to Twitter.

Shareaholic – Share links and webpages via Twitter right within Firefox.

Search Plugin – Tweet right from the Firefox search box.

Tweetbar – Put Twitter on your Firefox sidebar.

Twippera – Twitter widget for Opera that can send and view tweets.

TwitterFox – Compact Firefox extension that can publish and view tweets.

Mobile

iTweet – A mobile Twitter site designed for the iPhone.

iTwit – Mobile version of Twitter made for the iPhone.

Tweeter – Twitter on your mobile phone while avoiding text message charges.

Jargong – Browse Flickr, do some social networking, but most importantly, check and publish tweets.

WildSets – Extensve Twitter app for mobile phones.

TwitterBerry – Twitter built for various BlackBerry devices. Update and view timelines with ease.

jTwitter – View timelines, enter updates, and more, all on your mobile phone.

TreoTwit – Easily check and update your Twitter right from your Treo.

Random/Other

Twittervision – See where in the world people are submitting tweets from, real time.

TwitThis – Allow visitors to your site to easily share a page or post via Twitter.

MoniTwitter – Receive important updates about your site via Twitter.

TwitterNotes – Share private or public notes via Twitter.

RSS2Twitter – Share any RSS feed on Twitter, and have new RSS items automatically be tweeted.

TwitterBuzz – Find out what is being most linked to on Twitter.

Twitterholic – Shows the top users and accounts on Twitter.

Twitter