Twitter

Elmo

I never use this site, it really doesn't interest me? It seems like its just alot of hype

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8089508.stm

rediguana

In fairness to it, I find it quite useful. I have about 480 followers on Twitter. If I write a new blog post, I just plug it on Twitter and I get a solid spike in traffic.

There is a lot of hype alright. If your product or service sucks, Twitter can't save it.

My area is wine. It can be tough to get any converation going about that on Boards, but maybe 80% of my Twitter network are wine people, so it's quite focused, in that sense.

lostexpectation

terrible study, obvioulsy out to skew it, its mobile micro blogging, its very good for looking for things happening now, to find things with people of similar interest.

flogen

Twitter has a lot of benefits but it depends on how you use it and what kind of people you follow... it is just a medium, after all.

Elmo

Do I have to sign up. I don't really want to twitter but I might find something on it.

Earthhorse

I'm not on Twitter nor was I interested in joining until I read this TIME article on it.

IRE60

It seems now to be completely in the preserve of ‘celebrities’ and their followers/devotees/stalkers. The recent race to the bottom of who was going to get 1,000,000 followers first was fairly stomach churning with Ashton Kutcher getting that dubious accolade (and using outdoor posters and his wife’s underwear to achieve that – please!)

Whilst the platform is no doubt popular and perhaps useful in some respects it has one major flaw (possibly two). The first is finance, no business model (per say), no income, supposedly haemorrhaging cash and no white knight on the horizon. The last white knight galloping around bought YouTube and some Band Aids.

Last is the rather caviler attitude they have to squatting (Google ‘twitter Ryanair’ for a bit of a laugh).

gogglebok

Can you use it with mobile phones in Ireland?

I don't really see the point if it's just a web thing, or if it's expensive to text. Not unless you have a serious business to plug. But I seriously don't know what I'm talking about.

lostexpectation

its expensive on irsh mobiles, but agtweet.com makes it cheaper

flogen

IRE60 wrote: »

It seems now to be completely in the preserve of ‘celebrities’ and their followers/devotees/stalkers. The recent race to the bottom of who was going to get 1,000,000 followers first was fairly stomach churning with Ashton Kutcher getting that dubious accolade (and using outdoor posters and his wife’s underwear to achieve that – please!)

Whilst the platform is no doubt popular and perhaps useful in some respects it has one major flaw (possibly two). The first is finance, no business model (per say), no income, supposedly haemorrhaging cash and no white knight on the horizon. The last white knight galloping around bought YouTube and some Band Aids.

There's no doubt that the business model is sketchy at best but you can be sure that if it went on the market tomorrow many companies would pay top dollar for it - buy now, examine the books later would be the approach just like it was for YouTube.

Last is the rather caviler attitude they have to squatting (Google ‘twitter Ryanair’ for a bit of a laugh).

That is something that needs to be corrected but it won't be an issue until the company starts to make money (or is bought up by a larger company with loads of money). Just like what happened with YouTube and music/TV copyright - no-one cared until the company had a bankroll behind it that they could plunder.

gogglebok wrote: »

Can you use it with mobile phones in Ireland?

I don't really see the point if it's just a web thing, or if it's expensive to text. Not unless you have a serious business to plug. But I seriously don't know what I'm talking about.

You can use the aforementioned Agtweet.com, which basically gives you an Irish number you can text updates to - so it costs the same as a regular text.

Depending on the phone you have you can also download a twitter client although that only really makes sense if you're on a contract and have a download allowance.

monellia

Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found.

And most people only ever "tweet" once during their lifetime, the researchers found.

...and? This is nothing new. It is commonplace for people to register accounts on websites and never go back to them. I can‘t count the number of times I‘ve heard "Ahh I have an account but I never use it". This article was so obviously written for the sole purpose of filling up space. Twitter is a fairly harmless tool aimed at people who use the web a lot and like to exercise their self-indulgent tendencies. I use it to interact with friends, see what certain celebs have to say and to follow news reports. Media outlets such as RTE, BCC and the Guardian use it to post brief up-to-date reports with a link to the full story. Dead handy!

Elmo

It seem very like RSS to me, and most companies provide RSS feeds.

lostexpectation

you can't sms your rss easily, (not eveyone has web phones)

Elmo

lostexpectation wrote: »

you can't sms your rss easily, (not eveyone has web phones)

Perhaps I am old fashioned and really don't need to be that connected all of the time. I use my phone for phone calls, I couldn't be bothered with small screens no matter how big a iPhone screen gets.

fatgav

just to give another prop to agtweet.com i stumbled across it thanks to this thread and it's brilliant, especially for me on Meteor. Can update via sms for free. Perfect.

lostexpectation

Elmo wrote: »

Perhaps I am old fashioned and really don't need to be that connected all of the time. I use my phone for phone calls, I couldn't be bothered with small screens no matter how big a iPhone screen gets.

twitter can live without you then, it amazing me being on twitter is less bothered about ashton kutcher and managed to ignore that whole story, while someone not on twitter is terrible bothered by it???

twitter allows for even quicker more immediate info and to find out whats happening NOW.

Elmo

lostexpectation wrote: »

twitter can live without you then, it amazing me being on twitter is less bothered about ashton kutcher and managed to ignore that whole story, while someone not on twitter is terrible bothered by it???

Oh, Good I was a bit worried there!

I never mentioned Ashton Kutcher***, someone else did.

IRE60

Sorry to resurrect this again but just when you thought that the race to the bottom had abated:
Penguin Books have just bought the rights to "Twitterature", an idea of two First year students (naturally) to distill the world’s great works into ‘twenty tweets or less’.
The Guardian yesterday, in their print headline, abridged Ulysses into ‘Man Tours Dublin’.

asdasd

As someone who hates Facebook and Bebo, but who likes Twitter I call foul on that report. And on the BBC's sensationalist headline.

Of course 10% of users do 90% of the posts. Thats true of all social media.

The reason I like twitter more than the rest are

1) I like hearing what Stephen Fry, Darie o'Brain etc have to say. What they have to say is more interesting than what you have to say. They post a lot too. Fry is in Germany at the mo, fiming on Wagner, and he is ambiguous on him. That fact is more interesting than the fact that a "friend" on facebook is having a barbi. Also these guys are funny,
2) It is good for events i.e. the #tag thing.
3) It is good for posts from events. Like Iran

Frankly you could follow trends on twitter and get the news in the world - at least the angocentric news, really quick .

They dont have a business model yet, Neither did google for a while. They need to work out how to add "advertising" - preferabley something like restaurants in your area etc. which add value ( there is a location field in the xml).

That "debunking"' stroy was nonsense.