My own piece of the Internet
 
Tag: <span>twitter</span>

Tag: twitter

#illRideWithYou

During the Sydney Cafe siege on 15 December I watched Twitter melt down into a morass of self-congratulatory compassion over the #illridewithyou hashtag. In an incredibly short time there were 120,000 tweets from Australians bravely standing up to anti-muslim behaviour by offering to ride with Muslim’s on public transport. News.com.au described it as a twitter movement which would “restore your faith in humanity”. Buzzfeed thought that it was “one of the few positive things to come out of the horrific events in Sydney.” The Sydney Morning Herald was a little more measured, seeing it as a bulwark against the “climate of fear and …

Why no one uses Google+

At the last count Google+ had 90 million registered users, 60% of whom “engage daily”. Whatever that means. The other 40% are wondering what the hell they can use Google+ for. Except of course the SEO bunnies who are using Google+ to jack up the rankings of websites. The jury is still out on both Google+ and the SEO benefits. So how could this happen? Google have been promoting Google+ heavily, they have linked it into their search pages, their lucrative ad network, and CEO Larry Page has been touting the platform in earnings calls as growing rapidly and one …

Poor old Malcom Gladwell

Malcom Gladwell must be wondering what went wrong. In October 2010 the award winning New Yorker writer penned a piece that tried to address the hyperbole about so-called twitter revolutions and suddenly he was the most hated man on twitter. The response was spectacular. Twitter erupted into outrage, Biz Stone co-founder of twitter responded with a thoughtful but dense piece in The Atlantic Monthly that promoted twitter as a force for fostering relationships and creating meaningful change. For Stone the power of twitter lies in its ability to empower people through communication. He finishes his defence with: Rudimentary communication among …

The anatomy of a #spill on twitter

Last night I was watching the ABC news and checking our twitter when I was some mention of an #alpspill. I searched for #spill, tweeted something inane and waited for the ABC to report something. It came in the 7.30 report and it amounted to guesswork by Kerry O’Brien about Julia Gillard being in Kevin Rudd’s office. Apart from the Twitter gossip there really wasn’t any news. Crikey was silent, The ABC was relatively silent, The SMage was relatively silent. Some “star tweeters” like @bernardkeane simply said “I can’t comment”. What there was on twitter though was a lot of …

Is Twitter just a million moronic conversations

Once watching the TV was a complete passive act of slovenly consumption. The evening show was watched while slumped on the couch all senses dulled by the blue rays of the box. Now watching the TV is only one part of watching the TV. In face “TV events” can be enjoyed by hooking into the Twitter firehose and looking for the right hashtag. During the Logies, an Australian TV award show for all US folks, I noticed that the digital hipsters at the event were tweeting, that people on the couch were tweeting, that journalists were tweeting. Everybody was talking …

Twitter growing up through acquisitions and advertising

You’re a small start-up. You’ve invested heaps of time and money in your twitter client which will be supported by advertising and suddenly Twitter throw a spanner at your well greased wheel. What do you do? Last week Twitter announced that they had acquired atebits, the folks behind the Twitter iPhone app tweetie. As soon as they did there were a heap of tweets lamenting that Twitter had done so and saying “I feel sorry for all devs”. There are people forming unions and grabbing the pitchforks to storm the barricades. They are talking about creating a new open platform …

The buzz of social media

Google just released Google Buzz which has demands that we “go beyond status messages”. To me this appears to echo the feeling many people had, including me, when confronted with micro-blogging sites like Twitter – so what. It represents a profound misunderstanding of what a status message actually is. Status messages are really: part of a conversation the start of a conversation a cry for help a complaint a grandiose aphorism about what’s wrong with the world a proclamation of love and of course a comedy. Whilst twitter and Facebook might appear to a Google engineer to be merely a …

Famous for 15 tweets

Last Friday when Oprah tweeted that she was joining the 21st century some Twitter folk lamented the gentrification of twitter. If Oprah tweets then her legion of middle American fans will tweet and suddenly I don’t look so cool or edgy anymore. Bugger! The truth is that twitter was already mainstream – Ashton Kutcher and Brittney are not quirky underground artists, they are celebrities through and through. The concern appeared to be that with Twitter becoming more mainstream it would be harder to become a twitter star. You would actually have to do something in order to be famous for …

Twitter tips

I first came across Twitter in 2007 and dutifully created an account. Then I looked at the question “What are you doing right now?” and thought “I am mindlessly looking at Twitter”. The question was a tough one, being a somewhat private person the idea of venting my most personal thoughts online was unthinkable. A friend joked that the best response would be “having a shit”. He may have been right. That Twitter could evolve into a rather nifty PR tool, a DM tool (sorry but it’s true) and customer engagement tool did not occur to me. I wish I …