John McWhorter: Twitterish. How technology remakes language. ONE HAS LATELY heard much of the hashtag. That is, the Twitter symbol #, used to categorize a tweet. Charlie Sheen’s first tweet, for example, was famously: “Winning ..! Choose your Vice... #winning #chooseyourvice.” #Winning has gone on to live in irony across the Twitterverse, in mockery of the eternally less-than-winning Sheen. But even President Obama recently urged students to tweet their senators about raising the interest rates on federally subsidized student loans with the hashtag “#DontDoubleMyRate.” The new thing, however, is using the word “hashtag” in conversation. Given that Twitter, along with texting and instant-messaging, is so often thought of as a dire threat to the writing skills of the American adults of tomorrow—not to mention to the English language and therefore civilization itself—what in the world does it mean that people are now speaking in Twitter?
Nor is it unusual for written conventions to make their way into speech. BREAKING: Twitter Starts Testing Features for Businesses. We know that Twitter believes that businesses are central to helping grow and monetize the microblogging service; recent integrations with Citysearch and LinkedIn have foretold its interest in the space. Today though, Twitter has begun to take its biggest steps in providing new features to businesses and monetizing those features. In a blog post, the company announced that it has begun beta testing its first feature made specifically for businesses: "Contributors.
" An Explanation of the Contributors Feature Contributors is a feature that focuses on creating more authentic engagement for business accounts. With Contributors, a business account with multiple contributors (say, for example, the @Twitter feed) can add the specific user that tweeted on behalf of the business to the byline. Here's Twitter's explanation of the new feature in testing: Cheap Beer If You Check-In… Or Just Tweet. One of the most compelling aspects of the location-based service Foursquare is that they are increasingly enticing users to check-in to venues by partnering up to offer special deals to those who do.
A person who checks-in at a coffee shop and shows the barista, may get a free coffee, for example. It’s a win-win for both the service and the venue because it gets people using the app more and gets people visiting the venue more. But what if users and venues go around Foursquare and start using Twitter for that?
That has started to happen recently, as venues are getting wise to the idea of using these special deals. One issue with venues offering these deals through Foursquare is that the service is still relatively small and unknown. Of course, there’s a downside too. Foursquare has another potential leg up as well. Another location-based service, Gowalla, is working on its own similar concept for venue deals. The Oscars of Twitter: Shorty Awards to Honor Creators of Short-
Last year, SawHorse Media, a Twitter aggregator that pioneered the concept of lists, put together the Shorty Awards. This contest and ceremony was intended to "honor the best producers of short, real-time content. " The first show was such a success that SawHorse is currently producing a second event. Like the Webbies, the Streamys and other award shows for online content, this event will recognize the geeky heroes we probably follow more than we do real-world celebrities - the ones who make us laugh, think and act.
Voting is now open in 27 categories; read on to see who's making the grade. Categories range in scope from serious topics such as government, health and politics and to lighter fare such as music, culture, celebrities and humor. The awards are given based on each content creator's whole Twitter oeuvre, not just a single tweet. Last year's special guests included MC Hammer and Gary Vaynerchuk. Ricky Gervais - Gervais Quits Twitter - Contactmusic News. Twitter’s Answer To Facebook Connect. The Twitter Flatline: Why Doesn’t Twitter Grow? [STATS] Twitter's growth has stalled for yet another month, according to new numbers from Compete and Quantcast.
In fact, Twitter.com's traffic peaked in July 2009 and hasn't reached that level since.According to web analytics firm Compete, Twitter's U.S. traffic grew by 1.45 percent, from 22.48 million in November to 22.81 million unique visitors in December, hardly numbers to brag about. It's even worse when you consider that these are lower numbers than June 2009. We started to notice this trend all the way back in May, but could never have guessed then it would continue into the new year.
Ten things thou shalt not tweet Boing Boing. Digg considering adding Twitter updates. Psycho Killer: ‘Murderer’ Tweets Provide I. Bored of the same old regurgitated comments on microblogging site Twitter, one social media specialist decided to experiment in extreme tweeting. New Media Knowledge’s Chris Lee got under the skin of the notorious ‘dinner_guest’ murderer. Many of the entries on microblogging site Twitter may not have relevance for many people as users describe the minutiae of their day-to-day lives, but they spurred one social media consultant on to experiment with the lengths one could go to with her Twitter updates.
Claire Stokoe describes herself as a “social media engineer”, working for Worthing-based social media consultancy Fresh Egg. When she got “bored of coming across the same stuff constantly being regurgitated on Twitter”, Stokoe decided to shake things up a little…by creating a killer. Dinner Date Stokoe decided to create a fictional Twitter user called dinner_guest. “I’m a huge fan of Thomas Harris books, so it was Hannibal Lecter all the way,” Stokoe told NMK. Serious Business Brand Value. What Twitter and Facebook's 2009 Trends Tell Us About Ourselves. The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space. As the year comes to a close, several social media companies decided to take a look back and reflect on the events, people, technologies that captured our interest this year.
Twitter took the first crack when it revealed the most discussed topics of 2009. Facebook was next when it released its Facebook Memology for the year. Both reports are interesting and have a lot of useful information, yet nobody's really taken the time to analyze just what these trends mean. What did our society care about, and why? First, A Recap of Facebook and Twitter's Top Trends of 2009 Before you start reading this week's column, please make sure to take a good, long look at this year's top trends for Facebook and Twitter. First, Twitter's 2009 trending topics: Here are Facebook's top status trends: 1. The #3 trend on Facebook? 2. 3. 4. Twitter Reveals Most Discussed Topics of 2009. One of the best aspects of Twitter is that it has become a central nexus for discussion of the topics of the day. Twitter is quickly becoming the world's water cooler, making it a useful tool for figuring out what's being discussed across the world.
Twitter's Trending Topics are especially useful, as they highlight whether the Twitterverse is talking about Tiger Woods, the Mashable #openwebawards or Santa at this very moment. Just a short time ago, Twitter released new data on the top trending topics of 2009. It's a collection of the most discussed news events, people, movies, TV shows, technologies, sports and hashtags from the last 12 months. While some of the rankings won't come as a surprise (e.g. The full list, which we are reprinting below from Twitter's blog post, is a unique and interesting insight into what trended in our culture. Could you get by without Twitter? Are good tweeters born or made? Knowing me, knowing you... BBC reporters Zoe Kleinman and Carolyn Rice swapped social networking lives for 24 hours. "I'm not anti-Twitter, I just don't really understand it," said Carolyn Rice, accompanied by the sound of my jaw dropping to the floor.
I have 2,149 (and counting) "tweets" - individual messages no longer than 140 characters long - under my belt, but I have never questioned whether I understand it. I use a smartphone application to post tweets to the Twitter website from my mobile when I'm on the move. Carolyn, meanwhile, last logged on to Twitter ten months ago. Twitter addiction Does that make me an addict? "The definition of addiction is something that causes detriment to other areas of your life," he said. Nonetheless, Carolyn and I decided that maybe it was time Twitter and I took a break from each other, while Twitter and Carolyn got reacquainted. Twitter experiment "It was my first experience of how instant and transient Twitter can be.
" OMG. Did you just feel a quake? The Great California Shakeout was a drill and not a real quake event Tweets are being used by the US Geological Survey (USGS) to get instant public reaction to earthquakes. The agency is trawling the messages to find out what people felt during a tremor - whether there was a lot of shaking in their area or not. There are big spikes in Twitter traffic immediately following a quake and the USGS believes emergency responders might find the information useful.
It could help them assess very quickly the severity of a particular event. However, the survey stressed that the social networking tool would only ever supplement the existing scientific reporting systems which determine shake effects. Quake tweets "It is a speed versus accuracy issue," explained Dr Paul Earle. "Twitter messages start coming out in the seconds after an earthquake whereas, depending of the region, scientifically derived information can take 2-20 minutes," he told BBC News.
Noise filter.