Wallstrip took a break from discussing high-profile stocks to discuss the Twitter microblogging service. They mention some of the microblogging companies including Comcast and JetBlue Airways. They also mention that some users are discussing stocks on Twitter. Twitter has grown 600% since the start of the year says Wallstrip. They also not that you can't invest in Twitter - it's a startup that hasn't even started to monetize yet. Here's the Wallstrip clip.
Barack Obama wants to let people know who he chooses as a running mate by email or text message. You can sign up here.
Barack is about to choose a running mate, and he wants you to know first. You have helped build this movement from the bottom up, and Barack wants you to be part of this important moment.
Sign up today and we'll send you an email announcing Barack's running mate.
You can also text VP to 62262 to receive a text message on your mobile phone.
Barack Obama has a popular Facebook profile. He also has over 50,000 Twitter followers. He could have used either of these distribution channels but his campaign chose this method. Maybe they are trying to grow their database of contacts. Obama did use Twitter to announce that people could receive his VP selection by text message or email.
A crash of Amazon.com's heavily used Amazon S3 storage service has caused problems for many Web 2.0 sites that rely on the service. You can find a status page for Amazon's service here.
Here are a few of the outages and problems.
Plurk, Twitter and Kwippy are having problems showing images loaded with Amazon A3. It sounds minor but it just isn't as much fun microblogging without the avatars.
Posterous.com reported problems posting different types of files.
Another site down is Smugmug.com - you can see their message here.
Slideshare.net reported problems related to the outage.
A video and photo sharing site called Phanfare also reported problems.
More discussion of the outages can be found here on Techmeme.
This is just a sample of the many sites affected by an Amazon Web Services problem. The cheap hosting service has become popular with Web 2.0 startups. There was a similar Amazon Web Services outage back in February, 2008 - see here.
Two More Microblogging Sites: Identi.ca and Kwippy
The number of microblogging worlds to visit continues to climb. You can add them to growing number existing microblogging tools like Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Jaiku and Pownce. Twitter - the most popular of these types of tools - has been functioning better lately but this improvement has come at the expense of the Twitter API. The latest microblogging entries are Identi.ca and Kwippy.
Identi.ca is a recently launched microblogging service that has a similar feel to Twitter. It is unique in that it uses the Open Microblogging specification. Identi.ca recently added a response tab and they are planning many more features. You can read some other posts about Identi.ca here, here, here and here.
Kwippy is a microblogging service with a unique look that allows updating via GTalk and Yahoo messenger. Kwippy groups comments together in threads which makes them easier to follow than on Twitter. Kwippy also allows entries that are longer than 140 characters. Following is easy on Kwippy and can be done with a single click. You can read a few other posts about Kwippy here, here, here, here and here.
Both of these new microblogging sites can be updated through ping.fm. You can follow bloggersblog on identi.ca here and on Kwippy here.
Plurk - the microblogging service that is gainging popularity for its easy to follow discussion threads and horizontal timeline - has given its users the ability to mute discussions. The feature was added after a short period of downtime earlier this evening. The way Plurk is a designed a busy thread can constantly burble up - possibly annoying a user that was not at all interested in the thread's topic. Plurk's blog says the mute feature was one of the most requested topics. They are also promising more noise-reducing features in the future.
One of the most requested feature from plurkers is the ability to 'mute' certain plurks so that they won't receive any future 'new response' notifications from it.
Well, be careful of what you wish for.
This will be one of the many more noise-reducing features we will be introducing in near future.
Keep the feedbacks coming and thanks for helping us make plurk-land a better place to hang out.
Now you can happily mute any plurks that are annoying you. You can follow bloggersblog on Plurk here.
Twitter's woes have continued this week. Plurk is a unique microblogging alternative. To attract more Twitter users Plurk has added a Twitter import tool that tells you which of your Twitter friends have set up an account on Plurk.
There has been some confusion as the import tool adds Twitter friends as fans in Plurk instead of sending out a friend request. Maybe Plurk was trying to avoid the problem of spammers moving from Twitter to Plurk and adding thousands of friends instantly. Some people are also using different names in Plurk so one might inadvertently add someone who is not your old Twitter friend by mistake. Others have said the service limits the number of friends they can locate. It isn't perfect but it does at least provide a way of locating which of your friends have set up account inside Plurk. You can see an interesting thread about it here in Plurk. If you plan on joining Plurk you should consider using your Twitter name since people will probably be looking for it in Plurk.
You can find a list of Plurk resources and tools here. If you need an invite to get into Plurk you can find one here.
You can microblog sideways on a new service called Plurk. As The Inquisitr reports the early adapters are already flocking to the latest microblogging tool. Posts on Plurk (plurks) flow from left to right accross a screen divided into chunks of time. The Inquisitr calls this a "visual timeline."
According to Plurk, the service is "a really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life, and follow the events of the people that matter to you, in deliciously digestible short messages called plurks." At first glance, I'd call it Twitter with a visual timeline.
Plurk has an emphasis on actions as opposed to clean slate message, and each user is offered there number plus a drop down list with actions such as is, thinking, was, asks and similar. Each "plurk" is posted to a visual timeline that includes drop down threads for replies. The service also offers "cliques" for plurk distribution and various privacy options.
The new service also offers emoticons, image and video sharing, direct messaging and group discussion through cliques.
One downside to the new service is that you need to build up karma in order to do many things. There isn't anything wrong with requiring karma for certain tasks but with Plurk it seems you need karma just to complete your bio and it takes a while to get it. Karma is just one way Plurk has set itself up so that people have to use the service before they can use certain features. For example, if you invite ten or more people you can also gain access to some special emoticons. The service has been a little sluggish at times but that's forgiveable since it is new. However, there is no excuse for that headless creature logo. If you are going to use mutants as logos at least provide them with heads.
Plurk isn't much of a threat to Twitter, the leading microblogging service. Twitter provides a much cleaner and easier way to share news and information. With a large number of friends Plurk could quickly become overwhelming. Plurk is well aware of this as you can see by this fairly strict set of plurking guidelines. They suggest you keep friends under 200 in these guidelines. Plurk is more useful for threaded conversations than Twitter. This combined with its unique and quirky attributes mean it will probably develop a solid following over time.
You can follow bloggersblog on Plurk here. If you need an invite you can get automatically by following this link.
Update: You can remove the headless creature from your page by clicking edit next to "My Profile" and then selecting "customize profile." There you will see some creatures with heads. Thanks to @tinythoughts for the tip.
Twitter Connects Popular Twitter Users to Twitter Problems
Bloggers here, here, and here are discussing Twitter developer Alex Payne's recent comment that Twitter is hit the hardest when popular Twitter users "perform a number of actions in rapid succession."
The events that hit our system the hardest are generally when "popular" users - that is, users with large numbers of followers and people they're following - perform a number of actions in rapid succession. This usually results in a number of big queries that pile up in our database(s). Not running scripts to follow thousands of users at a time would be a help, but that's behavior we have to limit on our side.
Robert Scoble seems to think that Twitter is blaming him. It isn't clear that Twitter is signaling him out or anyone else. It sounds more like they were just being honest and saying this is how and where Twitter sometimes starts to become overloaded. (By the way here's a good list of several things that might really be Scoble's fault.)
While Robert Scoble does have a huge number of followers he isn't the most followed on Twitter. Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose and Barack Obama each have far more followers than Robert Scoble according to Twitterholic. Of these three Barack Obama is the only one also following a huge number of people back because his Twitter account uses auto-follow.
Farther down on the list are heavy users like Guy Kawasaki and Chris Pirillo who have about 12,000 to 13,000 followers. My Twitter is a little farther down from them with about 10,500 followers. If they are heavy users then I am too. I do tweet less often than Guy Kawasaki and Chris Pirillo and I tweet much less frequently than Robert Scoble does. I currently have 1,700 updates while Robert Scoble has over 12,000.
Whether a popular Twitter user has 1,000 or 12,000 updates Twitter should be able to handle them and whatever richochet effect they have on Twitter's service. If they can't handle something Robert Scoble or Leo Laporte have to say to their numerous followers then they won't be able to stay up the next time there is a big breaking news event either.
Twitter's Alex Payne also said that they will be adding new limits on what Twitter users can do.
Chris Kilmer and Tembrooke both ask if putting some limits on what users can do in our system would help, and they're both right. We have some limits, and we're adding more. Legitimate users should never notice them, but these new limits should help mitigate the worst case failures and attacks.
Some people are suggesting ways Twitter could try and reduce the number of tweets. Here are few methods.
Twitter could disable the auto-follow that is used on a number of Twit accounts. This would make these users (like @Scobleizer and @BarackObama) have to manually follow people and it would likely reduce the number of people they follow.
Twitter could limit the number of people someone could follow. Facebook has a limit of 5,000. Mathew Ingram notes that some people want Twitter to apply follower limits. Ryan Spoon makes the case that Twitter needs its power users. Facebook's 5,000 friend limit sounds far too low for Twitter but do people really need to follow nearly 90,000 people like one user did? While there might someday be a cap on the number of people someone can follow there should never be a limit on how many followers someone can have. It wouldn't be right to tell someone they couldn't get Barack Obama's tweets just because 30,000 other people were.
Twitter could try harder to stop spammers. There are some obvious adult spammers on Twitter and some that use tricky means to get people to follow links. Others come aboard and quickly follow tens of thousands of people in a few days. They could try and block the follow scripts some of these people must be using.
They could also look at limiting the number of tweets a person can send per day or per month. Look at this list and you will see a list of 100 Twitterers who each have sent a total of more than 25,000 tweets. Some of them have sent over 100,000 tweets.
Some Twitter users have also suggested paying for Twitter.
The above measures might all help reduce tweets but that doesn't mean they should be implemented. Twitter has to be careful and find ways that reduce tweets that won't upset its users. It would be best if Twitter would be able to continue to grow without any new restrictions but its obvious they have been having serious growing pains and server issues. Implementing some of these measures could give them more time to add solutions that give them greater tweet capacity. It will be interesting to see what Twitter does next.
Twitter is not just for bloggers and tech people anymore. Over the past few months there has been a steady migration from Facebook and MySpace. Now celebrities like John Tesh are even jumping onboard. You can find John Tesh's Twitter here. So far it just pulls in the latest updates from his blog - like this entry about how smiling is good for you. John Tesh says his blog is the place to go if you need "intelligence, inspiration and encouragement for your life." It goes to figure that his Twitter also aims to inspire you.
John Tesh started out by following lots of people at once including three people at Urlesque. Tesh may have an unflattering following-to-followers ratio right now but it will probably ultimately balance out as more Twitters subscribe to Tesh's tweets. It should be noted that there is still some doubt that this Twitter actually belongs to John Tesh. It would be a pretty boring fake with zero @replies or humorous fake tweets. If it isn't really John Tesh maybe the real John Tesh will notice and come and take it over. Others have said that if John Tesh is really on Twitter it means Twitter has jumped the shark or that it is time to move to Pownce. You can see more tweets about John Tesh's Twitter here and here.
NASA's Mars Phoenix Twitter Keeps Space Buffs Informed
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has made one of the best uses of Twitter to date with its MarsPhoenix Twitter. The MarsPhoenix Twitter kept tweeting - from the lander's point of view - during the final approach to Mars. There were some exciting moments as everyone hoped the landing would be a success.
After making an impressive landing MarsPhoenix informed us that it was in the perfect place for digging.
MarsPhoenix is now updating about the availability of new photographs and its mission duties. The Twitter also links to the mission's website where you can find photographs, video and detailed information about the Phoenix Mars Lander.
Robert Scoble blogged that Mars didn't make the Techmeme front page but this one-line entry on TechCrunch did make it on Techmeme. Techmeme's algoritihms must not have found many people linking to Mars-related posts over the Memorial Day holiday? Scoble also points to a FriendFeed search that shows lots of Mars updates but the best Mars action has been on Twitter on the MarsPhoenix account.
Twitter is down again today for the third or fourth day in a row. It has had numerous problems of late after running pretty smoothly from January to April. Part of the reason may be the rapid growth in April. TechCrunch blogged about Twitter's uptime woes recently and Twitter responded. Twitter says the latest outage was due to a database failure.
Downtime is not good. We caused a database to fail during a routine update early this afternoon. We switched to a replica and expect this recovery to take place quickly. We're all working on it and watching right now as Twitter gets back up to speed. We have a thread open on our support forum which we'll update when we have more details to share. Getting our act together is something we continue to work on as we grow our company and our service.
The downtime has become so frequent that the Is Twitter Down? website has changed the answer to the question from "Yes" to "Of Course."
The number of new Twitter tools and services launching seems to really be accelerating. In the past couple weeks we have seen the launch of tools like TrackThis, a useful tool that tracks package deliveries, and TwittEarth, a 3-D model of the Twitter universe that uses cute avatars to represent Twitter users. Here are some of the new apps and tools recently added to the Twitter tools list.
Autopostr.com, Autopostr.com lets your twitterfriends automatically know you posted a new photo on Flickr
FuelFrog, FuelFrog provides a way to track gas mileage on Twitter
Intwition, Intwition shows popular links on Twitter broken into will be popular, is popular and was popular categories.
Prayer Requests, A Twitter account that lets you broadcast an anonymous prayer.
Summize, Summize is a real-time tweet search engine.
TrackThis, Track your packages on Twitter - supports FedEx, UPS, USPS and DHL tracking codes
TweetShirts.com, Service will make t-shirts out of popular tweet ideas submitted and voted on by users.
TweetWheel, The TweetWheel helps you find out which of your Twitter friends know each other.
Twist, This service creates charts that let you compare trends in Twitter. The charts can be embedded onto your blog.
Twistori, A social experiment tracking tweets using I love, hate, think, believe, feel and wish.
TwittEarth, A mashup that shows live tweets from all over the world on a 3-D globe as they happen.
Twitter Ratio, Twitter Ratio returns your TFF Ratio (Twitter Follower-Friend Ratio).
TwitterSnooze, Allows you to temporarily silence your noisy Twitter friends.
TwitterSoap, Twittersoap is a mashup of Mobypicture and Twitter.
Twitturly, Twitturly is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter.
Twixxer, Twixxer is a photo and video sharing component for Twitter.com.
Who Should I Follow?, Helps you find other interesting people to follow on Twitter.
You can find the complete list of Twitter apps, tools and services here.
If Twitter is not yet in the mainstream maybe someone should tell that to the spammy folks who are desperately trying to get their messages distributed on Twitter. Some Twitter users are launching tools in an attempt to fight the rise in Twitter spam. There are a few spam methods that are bothering Twitter users. One is follower spam where a Twitter user attempts to follow an exceedingly large number of people. Twitter sends out email notices when a new person is following you but there is scant information in this new follower email so people have to visit the new followers Twitter to see who they are. Another type of spammer is one that sends out lots and lots of tweets (often using popular and topical keywords) and clutters up Twitter search services like Tweetscan.com. Yet another variety of Twitter spammer tries to send numerous @replies to many people in an effort to get attention.
A couple Twitters have been set-up to track spammers and Twitter spam. @OddFollow is an aptly named Twitter that watches for people following lots of people and for Twitter users following just women. @Stopthespam has been doing an excellent job tracking the Twitter spam problem. StoptheSpam also has a website: stoptwitterspam.com.
A new service called Twitter Twerp Scan (@TwerpScan) (via Download Squad) will scan the list of people you follow to look for users that have a following-to-followers ratio that is equal to or greater than 1.5 to 1. You can then unfollow these "people" if you think they are spammers.
A recently launched website called the The Twitter Blacklist has made a list of "known spammers and other morons on Twitter." The site uses a scale tweeted by Twitter user @evan.
The ratio idea doesn't always work and at least one noob was caught on The Twitter Blacklist. A new person may come on Twitter and follow a couple hundred Twitterers. It doesn't take long to get to that number if you are also adding Twitter news services (that generally don't follow back) and the Twitter accounts of some of your favorite blogs. It may take a while for a newbie's ratio of following-to-followers to get close to 1:1 so they may temporarily have a ratio that appears spammy. One Twitter newbie caught up in the was Chris Needham. Needham loved the attention and made a tshirt.
Note: The Twitterblacklist tweeted that they aren't using titles like "Worthless Attention Whores" to indentify possible spammers any longer.
Follower spam may end up being the easiest type of Twitter spam to solve. Simply adding more information about who has followed you in the emails Twitter sends would go a long way towards curbing the annoyance. Others have suggested a weekly or monthly list that contains information about new followers. Twitter could also allow people to sort their list of followers in new ways. The big future problem that will be much more difficult to eliminate are the spammers that try and fill up the Twitter search engines with spam tweets. As more and more people use search engines like Tweetscan and Summarize it becomes easier for spammers to spam Twitter - and they won't even have to follow a single person to do it.
People use Twitter in many different ways and there is no standard way to use it. There isn't a rule book about how to use Twitter. Most of us even ignore the question Twitter asks us "What are you doing?" most of the time. Because it is an evolving community it can be complicated to determine whether a specific behavior is appropriate or not but you can find behavior and usage patterns emerging.
Earlier on the bloggersblog twitter (using PollDaddy's nifty poll feature) I posted a poll asking "Is it okay to Tweet and Run? How long should someone remain on Twitter after posting a tweet?" The responses have varied but most people don't have a problem with someone tweeting something and then disconnecting from Twitter. There are many people who connect to Twitter with mobile devices who post to Twitter in short bursts. Some of these users are almost always tweeting and running. However, if you have posted a question or tweeted a message that invites responses it might be appropriate to linger for a few minutes to see if anyone sends you a response tweet. There are Twitter users who prefer people to linger a little while after they post a tweet.
The latest Twitter problem would make a perfect addition to the tear-water tea Owl makes in Arnold Lobel's short story "Tear-water Tea" - from the children's book Owl at Home.
"Tweets that no one ever sees because they never arrive," said Owl. Owl was crying. Many large tears dropped into the kettle.
This happened with much greater frequency in 2007. It happened multiple times that year as Twitter struggled with rapid growth and it was always very confusing and frustrating. Much of Twitter's growth this year has been during a period of very good uptime.
Paris Lemon calls the partial tweet outage Twitter Fail: Day 3 and points to the Twitter Status Twitter. There's also a @Twitter Twitter but Twitter doesn't seem to be updating this one. Mathew Ingram notes that the last entry on the Twitter blog is from five days ago. He also links to the Get Satisfaction entry about the problem where there are now 300 comments. Twitter also has all of our email addresses. Twitter has several options for letting people know about the progress they are making on fixing major problems. They should make better use of them.
It would have been nice if Twitter had worked through this bug over the weekend. Twitter will eventually be working again. As we have said in the past there isn't much you can do but wait. You can cry about it like Owl and make your own pot of tear-water tea or you can find something else constructive to do with the downtime.
PollDaddy has launched a clever new service called PollDaddy Twitter Polls (via Webware) that lets you set-up an online poll and send out a tweet that informs your followers about the new poll. Here is an example of a poll we made about what Andrew Baron should do with the money he makes from auctioning off his Twitter on eBay. You can see the poll and participate in it here.
So far it looks like most people think Andrew Baron should donate the money to charity like Karoli at Odd Time Signatures suggested. Giving the money to his followers is in second and keeping it all for himself is third.
The polls are easy to use. The poll includes a descripton of the Twitterer who posted the poll. There is also a comment form where people can comment or maybe add a write-in suggestion. There are quite a few people testing PollDaddy's new Twitter tool out on Twitter today. As with any service if it is overused it could become annoying.
Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron is auctioning off his Twitter account @andrewbaron on eBay. He has about 1,400 followers. Initially Baron's follower count dipped after he announced the sale last night but now his follower account has climbed to about 1450 because of all the discussion about the auction on Twitter. As Andrew Baron explains in the eBay listing the new owner of the Twitter can change the name to a new one - providing the new name doesn't already exist on Twitter.
The winner of this auction gets my account with all of my followers. The account is in my name now, but the winner of the auction can pick any other name that's available on Twitter for the transfer. For example, you could have http://www.twitter.com/x where x=any name thats not already taken. You can change it yourself at anytime too, one of the cool features about Twitter settings.
So basically it's like getting a new account with your own name, but having a pre-installed audience.
The first sign of value to most people would be the number of followers I have (the audience size). At the beg. of this auction, there are 1397 followers and I am actually quite proud of the actual quality of these followers, moreso than the number. Feel free to explore everyone to see who's there.
Also, as with any dynamic group, there is obviously risk. My followers could jump ship at anytime. There is no guarantee on this part. People will come and go, thats just the way it is. Whether you represent a company, a group or just yourself, this group will not want to be sold to, Im sure. The successful winner will share a reciprocal value with the followers.
Finally, I'd just like to give props to all of you out there who are following me on Twitter. No offense what so ever - we can easily find each other again.
The auction, which has reached $510 after 26 bids, has already exceeded price expectations. The big questions are how quickly will the Twitter bleed followers once the sale is complete and how much will this damage Andrew Baron's credibility on Twitter? He has called it an experiment and he does have the @rocketboom Twitter to move to after he sells the @andrewbaron Twitter account. Twitter spam has become a bigger issue as of late and a lot of people don't like the idea of a new user taking over the account and spamming them even though they can easily unfollow. Another issue is privacy - people might have sent @andrewbaron direct messages that they don't want someone else to read.
Some MySpace accounts with tens of thousands of dollars sell for $100 or more. You can see an example here. This particular Twitter account auction is surpassing the value of the MySpace accounts that have tens of thousands of followers. There is a lot of discussion and some interesting comments about the Twitter auction on Chris Brogan's post. There are also posts on Stowe Boyd, TechCrunch, Jennifer Navarrete, Rice Blogger, Tame Bay, Steve Saylor, IZ Reloaded, PatPhelan.net, Marketing-SEO.com and Ewan's Musings. You can also follow the discussion here on Techmeme.
Writing books is a noble goal. Author, blogger and cartoonist Hugh MacLeod feels the need to delete his Twitter account so he can focus on writing them.
It's no big deal. I liked Twitter. But I found it too easy.
I think my time would be better spent drawing cartoons and writing books.
That's just how I feel.
If it's no big deal then why not just go on a Twitter hiatus instead of pulling the account? Twitter accounts can be reactivated but it hasn't been an easy process for some.
You could also turn off the Internet as Robert Scoble suggests in a post today.
Want to get something done? Turn off Twitter. Turn off Facebook. Turn off blog comments. Turn off FriendFeed. Turn off Flickr. Turn off YouTube. Turn off Dave Winer's blog and Huffington Post. Turn off TechMeme.
Turn off the distractions.
Hugh MacLeod is off Twitter (at least for now) but the Twitter distraction continues for the rest of us.
Twitter is rapidly becoming one of the most popular services to create applications and mashups for. New Twitter apps and tools seem to be launching daily. Graham Langdon at the Entrecard Blog recently blogged (via Adrants) that Twitter will be bigger than Facebook. Useful applications and tools created with Twitter's API could eventually be enough to propel Twitter past Facebook. Some of these Twitter tools may even become small businesses. Seesmic recently acquired the Twhirl Twitter client app - see Mashable's report.
We recently created a Twitter Tools List that contains links and descriptions of some of these Twitter apps, services and tools.
Here are few highlights from the list.
Commuter Feed, Commuter Feed is a free service that lets you post reports on traffic and transit delays in your local area using Twitter.
Ego Twitter'in, A ridiculous Twitter app from Snoop Dogg's web peeps that shizzolates your tweets.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, head of Her Majesty's Government, became the first head of government (at least, as far as I can tell) to officially embrace Twitter.
Is this a momentous occasion? It's hard to say. Politicians have been increasingly embracing various forms of social media. Nowhere, for example, do more elected officials actively write blogs than in Europe.
Some have suggested in recent days that Twitter is going mainstream. Perhaps that's the case as well.
The 10 Downing Street Twitter is using Twitterfeed to publish news from the 10 Downing Street website's news feed. They also have one tweet that was entered directly here.
Stuart Bruce appears to have been the first to report this on Twitter. He has also blogged the news.
The U.S. government is behind the UK when it comes to Twitter. There are some U.S. congressman on Twitter - see here, here, here, here and here. The U.S. State Department has a Twitter here for its Dipnote blog but the White House doesn't have a Twitter.
Update: Online Journalism Blog says it was Dave Briggs who first tweeted about the Downing Street Twitter not Stuart Bruce. Briggs beat Bruce by a little over an hour according to Tweet Scan.
FriendFeed is an aggregator of personal social media feeds. You can broadcast all your personal feeds on FriendFiend like this and include your blog feed, Twitter feed, Delicious feed, Amazon wishlist, Flickr feed, and so on. FriendFeed has been letting its users reply to items posted on FriendFeed including tweets. This was creating a problem because people would reply to a tweet on FriendFeed but there would be no echo of this tweet on Twitter. To solve this problem FriendFeed has added a feature that will send an @reply back to Twitter.
There is now a checkbox that lets you also send the comment as an @reply on Twitter. You will have to provide your password to have the tweet sent as an @reply from your account.
FriendFeed's tweak helps solve a discussion fragmentation problem that Mashable says has been discussed a lot lately.
There has been a lot of conversation in the circle of folks that dips into my FriendFeed stream regularly on the topic of comment and discussion fragmentation, which essentially means the problem of posting things on your blog, them ending up in your lifestream at Twitter and FriendFeed, and the ensuing conversation never making it back to the original posting place. This little bit of functionality actually re-unites a bit of the conversation from the FriendFeed fragment (shard?).
I wonder if this means that they'll be working on further comment fragmentation formulae? We'll be interested to see how this develops.
Expect more services that attempt to interact with Twitter in a similar manner. Twitter has been growing faster than ever lately. There are 948,895 twitter accounts according to Twitdir.com. A lot of web companies are going to find the idea of adding services that interact with that large userbase very appealing.
Here's a video from Common Craft that explains Twitter in an easy-to-follow manner. It isn't funny like the zombies video from Common Craft but it might be useful for quickly explaining Twitter to someone who has never used it before. (via Twitter blog)
A new website called Politweets is displaying the political tweets posted on Twitter. The tweets are seperated into by party with tweets mentioning Democratic candidates on the left side and tweets mentioning Republican candidates on the right. It's a fun way to track news and people's opinions of the candidates as we watch to see who is going to get the nomination for each party. Politweets was created by Character140, the people who created Twittertale.com.
An article on WriteNews.com lists some of the political news Twitters such as @politics and @RedState. The article also lists Twitter accounts that are for the Democratic and Republican candidates themselves. Here's a list of some of the candidates' Twitter accounts and how many followers they each have.
Our sister site WritersWrite.com has launched a Twitter for blogging tips at twitter.com/blogtips. This Twitter account will provide links to one or two blog posts or articles featuring blogging advice or tips each day. Twitter has proven to be a useful tool for covering breaking news events like earthquakes, wildfires, and the writers' strike so it should work very well for blog tips as well.
For many more uses of Twitter check out the handy Twitter Fan Wiki. You can also keep up with new Twitter uses on Twitter Hacks.
WritersWrite.com has been providing writing news and information since 1997. BloggersBlog.com was spun off from WritersWrite.com in February, 2005.
The writers' strike is officially underway after a last minute negotiations to halt the strike failed. Union members of the Writers Guild of America, West and Writers Guild of America, East will be picketing outside major studios in Los Angeles and New York today.
Our sister site WritersWrite.com has launched a Writers' Strike Twitter that will be twittering updates about the hopefully short-lived writers' strike. You can also find blog posts and strike resources on their Writers' Strike resource section which can be found here.
A website called TwitterPoster is a mashup created from Twitter that provides a visual representation of the degree of influence of Twitterers. Those with more followers have larger images on TwitterPoster. TwitterPoster's website says it was inspired by The Million Dollar Homepage and tagclouds. Each Twitter avatar in the mosaic is linked to the Twitterer's profile
The L.A. Times which has been providing non-stop updates on the blazing California wildfires on its website and breaking news blog has added a Twitter profile to the mix at @latimesfires. The twitter launched about three hours ago and alredy 49 has updates.
We added to the L.A. Times Fire Twitter our fire resources post from earlier today which includes several other Twitter profiles covering the fires.
Other Web 2.0 related posts include this one from Danny Sullivan which covers wildfire map resources like the Google Maps mashup that has been cited by numerous blogs over the past two days. More map tools and resources can be found here. If you are interested in the technology being used to cover the fires and alert people about approaching fires you might also like Mobile Messaging 2.0's post discussing all the reverse 911 calls.
Google has acquired Jaiku. Jaiku is a microblogging and mobile blogging that competes with Twitter. Google probably wants Jaiku for its mobile features and there are rumors Google may use it with an upcoming Google phone. Google is also always on the lookout for more places to expands its advertising - they offer mobile advertising through AdSense/AdWords. Google is pretty vague about why exactly they bought Jaiku in their post about the purchase.
Technology has made staying in touch with your friends and family both easier and harder: living a fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle is easier (and a lot of fun), but it's more difficult to keep track of everyone when they're running around at warp speed. That's why we're excited to announce that we've acquired Jaiku, a company that's been hard at work developing useful and innovative applications for staying in touch with the people you care about most -- regardless of whether you're at a computer or on a mobile phone.
Current Jaiku users can still use the service normally, and new folks can sign up for an invitation to the service when we're ready to expand. We plan to use the ideas and technology behind Jaiku to make compelling and useful products. Although we don't have definite plans to announce at this time, we're excited about helping drive the next round of developments in web and mobile technology.
The purchase raises questions about why Google would purchase Jaiku and not the more popular Twitter? Was Twitter's asking price too high? That seems unlikely. Was there bad blood between Google and Twitter founder Evan Williams - who also founded Blogger? There are also concerns being raised that Jaiku could become another Dodgeball.
Ironically, a lot of the most interesting discussion (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) about Google's purchase of Jaiku can actaully be found on Twitter, which currently has a more active community than Jaiku. As Dave Winer writes, "Today is Jaiku Day in TwitterLand."
The Google deal will probably encourage a lot more people to sign up for
Jaiku. Oddly, Jaiku has put new signups on hold for now so people will have to wait.
There was so much discussion of Jaiku today on Twitter that there were calls for it to stop.
Twitter, Inc., the company behind the popular microblogging and communication tool called Twitter, recently received an infusion of venture capital funding (see here, here, here, here and here). Rex Hammond blogs that "all blog posts about Twitter getting funding should be limited to less than 140 characters" which is a good idea - unfortunately, this post is already well over the limit.
The amount of funding Twitter received was not disclosed. Twitter, Inc. has a post explaining its cash infusion.
First, Twitter was a fun side project, then it was cared for lovingly at Obvious until it was time to form Twitter, Inc. Today, we're excited to announce an important moment for Twitter. We've raised funding from our friends in New York City at Union Square Ventures.
From some of his early writing about Twitter we had a hunch Fred Wilson was someone we'd get along with. After we met with Fred and his team, we knew we wanted to work together. As Fred's written in his post about the news, Twitter is going to use this funding to grow our resources and focus on the important tasks ahead.
To help us achieve these goals we're also working with our old friends out here on the West Coast at Charles River Ventures. In addition, we're honored to include some folks we've been inspired by as angel investors including Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Ron Conway, and Naval Ravikant to name a few.
Union Square Ventures' VC Fred Wilson, who is a Twitterer himself, has a post about the funding on the Union Square Ventures' website.
There are estimated to be 300,000 users on Twitter but this estimate has not been updated in two or three months. Recently, Twitter was where some people first heard about the Minnesota bridge collapse. The Los Angeles Fire Department is also providing updates on its Twitter account.
These are just a few of the many uses for Twitter. The Twitter Fan Wiki keeps a frequently updated list of news services, apps, mashups and other interesting Twitter tools and Twitter accounts. It will be interesting to see what new features and services Twitter adds down the road. The communication tool Twitter offers is what has made it so popular so quickly but ultimately Twitter may add more social networking features like profiles and compete with the larger social networks.
The huge Live Earth concert to spread the message about the threat Earth faces from global warming takes place tomorrow on 7-7-07. The Live Earth website includes a blog called Going Green, a Live Earth product blog. The blog currently only contains one post about available press materials. The blog will likely get much more active on Saturday. The blog also notes that the Live Earth website is green hosted with solar powered Also.net.
Another blog will be available on VH1. According to a Live Earth press release VH1 will also be running a live blog about the Live Earth concerts at VH1.com. VH1 says their bloggers will be busy starting at 1PM EST.
From 1 pm - 5 pm EST, our bloggers will be at work, chatting about the action on the TV screens. Feeds will come in from around the world, and we'll throw some opinions out there. Who rocks harder, Foo Fighters or Fall Out Boy? Who has more stage presence, Madonna or Shakira? Figure it out and get back to us on Saturday.
Live Earth has also been providing regular updates and planet saving tips on Twitter at LiveEarth070707. Green and global warming news on Twitter not associated with Live Earth can also be found on the Green News and Global Warming Twitters. For more news about the concert try following the Live Earth tag on Technorati. You can also hear performances live on the web at liveearth.msn.com.
Kevin Rose's Pownce Provides Challenge to Twitter, Jaiku
The hot new microblogging site Twitter.com has already seen a challenge from Jaiku and other microblogging tools. Now the recently established company Twitter, Inc. faces a challenge from Digg founder Kevin Rose. Roses' new website called Pownce promises to make it easy for people to share files and messages with friends.
Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You'll create a network of the people you know and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast.
The new Pownce website is currently invite-only but it is bound to build a following thanks to the fact that Rose can make use of his own popularity and the highly trafficked Digg.com website. Some havealreadybranded Pownce as a Twitter killer. However, Pownce initially lacks the community that has already been established for several months on Twitter. Twitter is also far ahead with the Twitter API and the large number of applications that have been built specifically for Twitter. There are also many news services and organizations providing daily information for Twitter users. It will take a while for Pownce to duplicate this effort and by the time it does Twitter's traffic will have grown even larger and new services and features will have been added. For a breakdown of Twitter vs. Pownce features check out this post from Michael Arrington. As Arrington notes Twitter could easily add any features they don't already have: "I expect Twitter will add most of the Pownce features in the short term anyway."
As we noted on Twitter a new Twitter directory called TwitDir has debuted. The directory allows you to search for Twitter members. The results show the Twitterer's name, bio, avatar and webpage link. They also include the Twitterer's number of followers, friends, updates and favorites. A copy of the Twitterer's latest tweet is also included. TwitDir also maintains lists of the Twitterers with the most followers, updates and friends. There is also a list of the top favouriters -- the people who are keeping the highest number of favorites.
You can also find Twitterers covering specific subjects using Twitdir by searching subjects like sports, politics, books, news, health, science and celebrity. A Twitdir subject search will only give you Twitterers that have the subject keyword as part of their name. In the future the Twitter bios could also be indexed for searching. Or, tagging could be implemented to make it easier to find Twitterers by the subjects they tend to tweet about.
You can follow TwitDir developments on its blog and on the TwitDir twitter account. TwitDir is also running a game that is asking people to guess how many Twitter accounts have been established.
Twitter continues to add new features. Overnight they added a replies tab to the popular microblogging and communication tool. The new replies tab pulls up all the replies to your tweets from other Twitterers. Some Twitterers are now noticing a few old replies they may have missed at the time of tweeting.
As Pixelspread notes the addition of the Replies Tab follows Twitter's recent addition of hyperlinks to Twitter names when the @ syntax is used. Biz Stone from Twitter, Inc. blogs about Twitter's decision to support the @ sybol in this post.
At some point, Twitter-ers came up with their own method of directing updates to one another using an @ symbol. We started supporting this behavior by doing things like creating the in reply to link, confining the reply messages to friends in the loop, and linking the @username to a profile. Another layer of support to this behavior is a feature we launched tonight which collects updates directed at you-just in case you missed 'em.
Twitter also added a small ad for their new Facebook app that lets you use Twitter from inside Facebook.com.
A glitch is causing some Twitterers to have surprising gains of thousands of new followers. Twitter users that have gained hundreds or thousands of new subscribers from the error in the last 24 to 48 hours just started showing up on Twitterholic, a website that ranks Twitterers by followers, friends and updates. Here are a few of the big jumps. The jumps occured over the last day or two.
Jelijah: Jumped from 5 followers to 1,803 followers even though he hasn't updated in a month.
Brad: Jumped from 51 followers to 2,988 followers.
Bill HR: Jumped from 25 followers to 2,974 followers.
David Moldawer: Jumped from 41 followers to 1,764 followers.
TechCrunch: Jumped from 1,942 followers 3,358 followers.
Brendan Borlase: Jumped from 30 followers to 1,676 followers.
Ernesto Pena: Jumped from 33 followers to 856 followers.
If you go to Twitterholic you can see how these Twitterer's follower counts jumped from a few followers to thousands of followers overnight. These are just of few of large jumps in follower counts. There are probably many others.
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Twitter is not just for bloggers and tech people anymore. Over the past few months there has been a steady migration from Facebook and MySpace. Now celebrities like John Tesh are even jumping onboard. You can find John Tesh's Twitter 
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