Christopher Herot's Weblog

Phweet

Twitter exists somewhere in the middle of the continuum between real-time, synchronous communication such as the phone and instant messaging on the one hand and asynchronous communication such as email on the other.  However, Stuart Henshall and David Beckemeyer observed that a surprising number of Twitter conversations escalate to real-time.  (Try doing a Twitter search on "Skype".)  The result: Phweet.

Phweet allows you to invite a fellow Twitterer to a real-time voice conversation which can be any combination of Flash-based in the browser and plain old phone connections.  The invitation is sent as a Tweet containing a URL which the intended recipient can click to enter the conversation.  There is an option to send this URL via Twitter Direct Message, but a more interesting usage is to send it out on the public feed.  Although the user interface asks for the Twitter handle of the intended recipient, anyone can answer, and if more than one person replies they are all joined in the conversation.  The result - a "Tweetup".

The implementation is "Alpha" and thus still a work in progress, but it works as advertised.  The actual conversation is carried by the TringMe widget and TelEvolution service which supports both Flash and SIP, although I have only tried the Flash version so far, and it worked well on my RCN cable modem.  Check it out.

Thanks to Jeff Pulver for bringing this to my attention.

Twitter Stressing Out

What more can I say!

Corporate Twittering?

Christine Perkett recently asked for examples of corporations which were successfully using Twitter.  She found a few good ones, although the total number is quite small.  Her list:

• @JetBlue
• @CNN
• @ssldl
• @mahalotravel
• @hawaiianshirts
• @suddenlyslimmer
• @hockeygiant
• @speedypin

I don't follow any of those myself, although I have gotten a fair number of follow notifications from users who appear to be corporate entitities.  Most of these appear to be bald-faced attempts to get me to follow them, but they if they don't seem interested in my opinion or if I don't have some relationship with them I don't see why I should reciprocate.  In any event, half of them appear to be inactive, perhaps the artifact of a half-hearted experiment or a startup that didn't get off the ground.

Some businesses that I would like to see participate in Twitter:

• airlines - let me know of promotions, weather problems, listen to my travel stories
• TV shows - let me know when Saturday Night Live is really live and not a rerun
• Department of Homeland Security - tell me when we can stop being at level Orange

On the other hand, I'm not sure I want all these places watching me.  Tweets are certainly public knowledge but it does feel kind of creepy to have faceless entities following what I send.  I'm waiting for the first court case to cite someone's Twitter history as evidence, or at least as probable cause.  Certainly the ethos of Twitter is more closely aligned with real people sending and receiving.  Perhaps Seesmic would offer sharper distinctions.  It's hard to be anonymous when you have to send a video of yourself.

Let Christine know what you think by commenting on her post or tweet @missusP.

 

Average Age on Twitter: 37

Twitter's developers have been silent on the demographics of their user base, but there has been speculation that it may skew older than Facebook or AIM.  Recently Zena Weist used Twitter itself to conduct a survey.  While it was admittedly an unscientific sample, she did get 120 responses.  The ages ranged from 14 to 68, with the average being 37.  That may explain why several of my over-37 friends have been asking me about Twitter recently.

You can contribute to the poll, and track the results by tweeting your age to @zenaweist.

Social Media Breakfast

Bryan Person organized Social Media Breakfast 5 this morning at the venerable S&S Restaurant in Cambridge.  The topic was "How Twitter changed has changed my life."

I don't know that Twitter has changed my life that much, but I have found it useful for keeping up with my West Coast friends, seeing what web sites Robert Scoble has been visiting, and in general staying on top of what's hot.  More recently I've discovered that there is an active community of Twitterers in the Boston area.  However, thefour-minute testimonials from Scott Monty, Doug Haslam, Jim Storer and Laura (Pistachio) Fitton taught me a number of new things, to wit:

• Twitter now has 800,000 users and an increasing number of outages.
• Twitter is a community - the more you give the more you will receive
• Use the Favorites feature so save tweets for later
• Think of the Twitter feed as a river - dip into it but don't try to drink all of it
• The @username convention can be used to send messages to people who are not following you.  (I just tried this and it may just be an urban legend You need to look in the Replies tab - see Bryan Person's comment below.)
• Use Tweetscan to see what anyone has tweeted on any topic.
• Twitter Karma is a Flash app that lets you manage your friends and followers, including bulk following.
• You can get reports on LA freeway accidents at twitter.com//LAFD.
• Don't worry if you don't have Twitter Equilibrium - it's not personal if everyone you follow doesn't follow you.
• Club 140 tracks who has sent tweets that are a "perfect" 140 characters in length.
• There are a lot of wikis and blogs that provide information for newbies and advanced users:
  • Twitter Fan Wiki
  • Mark Glaser

I met a librarian who send out a tweet when she is at her desk in the library.  Send her a tweet and she will look stuff up for you.

Flickr stream: socialmediabreakfast, smb5

Steve Garfield streamed live video from his Nokia N95-3 using Qik.  Steve also suggested checking out Flixwagon.

Twitter Broken

First the connection to AIM went away and now this.

In the 60's R. Crumb predicted Twitter

I found this in my archives.  It's from Robert Crumb's Zap Comix from the 1960's.   How did he know?

Twitter in NY Times

Jason Pontin wrote a long article on Twitter in the business section of today's New York Times entitled From Many Tweets, One Loud Voice on the Internet.  Pontin estimates that the service has over 350,000 members and "is one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet" but is skeptical, noting that "A little secretiveness is, perhaps, a necessary lubricant in our social relations."    That may be a generational phenomenon, according to Emily Nussbaum's article in the Feb 12 New York Magazine where she notes that the majority of 13-to-17-year-olds have a profile online.