Tag: tweet

Lisa Tickled Pink Hates Technology: The Social Experiment

Posted by Jeffrey Powers at 11:29 AM on March 9, 2010

If you by chanced checked out “This Week in Tech”, you watched as Leo Laporte talked with Kevin Rose, John Dvorak and Clayton Morris talk about events in tech. I had the show on live as I was working on other projects as they did something that was not only interesting, but also shows how someone can turn from a nobody to a social mediate. Someone who didn’t even expect to become one.

They were talking about how Conan O’Brien had announced he was following a random person. They decided that this group could do the same thing. Therefore, Kevin Rose got onto twitter and looked for someone that only had 2-3 tweets. But what he found was the perfect twitter account.

@Lisatickledpink Hates Technology

The foursome started talking about this Twitter, in which all the viewers (about 1,700 at the time) started to follow Lisa Etheridge. They realized that she was in New Zealand and had notifications turned on. Therefore, she got an interesting wakeup call to everyone following her on Twitter.

By the end of the show, she had over 2,000 followers. The news instantly topped on Digg, which helped with more followers. Her count right now? 12,526.

Yep, she did in 2 days what most of us couldn’t do in 3 years. And while a lot of those followers could be bots and soon-to-be-dead profiles, she still has a considerable audience that will receive her status updates throughout the day. An amazing feat and a great way to start her iFame.

I mentioned Conan O’brien before. His experiment has netted a couples’ wedding to be paid in full. Of course, Conan wasn’t the first to turn a nobody into someone. However, with Twitter gaining more users than it ever has before and an average of 600 tweets a second, the world is getting more connected than ever. Where as my Twitter hits something like 0.00002 percent of the population, Lisa has an ear of 0.00025 percent. To put into perspective, @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) has 0.092 percent (Based on 4-5 Billion user accounts)

So to Lisa Etheridge – Enjoy this new fame and use it wisely. You have been put in a position that can mean people are listening to you. Don’t forget to mention my twitter handle every now and then, too – @geekazine

Tags: "Leo Laporte", aplusk, kevin rose, lisatickledpink, this week in tech, tweet, Twitter

Posted in Information, Social Media, Twitter

4 Comments

Quick – Tweet Now! You Might Be the 10 Billionth Twitter!

Posted by Jeffrey Powers at 11:30 PM on March 3, 2010

Well, the craze is on. 10 Billion Tweets will probably be hit by time you read this. 600 tweets a second (2.16 Million an hour). So in about 18 hours – Depending on how many people go Tweet crazy – The 10 Billionth Twitter will be posted.

The 5 billionth was held by Robin Sloan, who posted “Oh Lord”. It was a reply to another tweet.

I am guessing you won’t get a new car or $10,000 iTunes card. You will get some recognition as the Deccabillitweeter. I know that’s not a word, but maybe it will catch on….

If you want to catch all the madness – even have a Twitter countdown party – You can go to GigaTweet and watch the proverbial Twitter Ball drop. Wear a funny hat and a blow into a noisemaker. Maybe even drink some champagne. I think that is what Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone will be doing.

Tags: biz stone, Deccabillitweeter, evan Williams, gigatweet, jack dorsey, tweet, Twitter

Posted in Twitter

No Comments

The Onion’s fake news is too close to real news

Posted by Jeffrey Powers at 12:56 PM on November 14, 2009

O.K. – Check out this Onion article – Man’s Facebook Status Given Book Deal

Now check out this article on WSJ – S—mydadsays Lands TV Deal

Can someone say “Irony?” Little did the Onion know, they were reporting a “Close to news” story. And it happened in the same week.

I heard about this Twitter account a few weeks ago. An old codger saying things that just make you laugh. Here are a couple Twitters:

“You look just like Stephen Hawking…Relax, I meant like a non-paralyzed version of him. Feel better?… Fine. Forget I said it.”

“Son, no one gives a s— about all the things your cell phone does. You didn’t invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that.”

“The baby will talk when he talks, relax. It ain’t like he knows the cure for cancer and he just ain’t spitting it out.”

“Just pay the parking ticket. Don’t be so outraged. You’re not a freedom fighter in the civil rights movement. You double parked.”

Of course, the Twitter profile is run by Justin, a 29 year old who lives with his 79 year old dad. The Twitter profile is full of profanities, so you might want to not show the kids. But you can get a chuckle out of it.Then check out the CBS schedule, because that is who gave Justin the sitcom.

Oh yeah, there is also talk of the Twitter having a book deal, too.

Tags: book, cbs, Facebook, onion, post, sitcom, TV, tweet, Twitter, wall street journal

Posted in Twitter

Comments Off

Be Careful How You Use The “T” Word

Posted by fogview at 4:50 PM on July 1, 2009

I’m talking about the company that starts with “Twit” and ends with “er”, and seems to be the hottest social media site around these days. A year ago I would mention that I was using Twitter to friends and family and I would get a strange look. Now it seems everyone wants you to follow them on Twitter: radio and TV stations, news shows, companies, and the list goes on. I even had a few friends sign up for Twitter, “just to see what it was all about.”

Lately with all the news breaking about the death of Michael Jackson and others, and the happenings in Iran, Twitter seems to be the way a lot of people are getting the news. The information may be short, but it can happen in real time. I heard a story about someone sending Twitter messages from Iran and someone else commented that their comments were pretty short. The person replied that “140 characters seems like writing a novel when you are being shot at.”

It’s no wonder that Ev and the team over at Twitter want to protect their name and brand. In a blog post today, they stated, “We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of ‘going after’ the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter…”

They also state, “Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well…”

I started with Twitter over two years ago when it was mainly a way to keep up with your friends over SMS. (That is where the 140 character limit came from.) At the time it was mainly the A-list bloggers who had accounts and the rest of us geeks came along for the ride. At the time there didn’t seem to be any business plan to monetize the service.

Fast forward two years, and to my knowledge Twitter is still not generating any income, but I think that will change soon. With all the attention it’s getting and all the commercial companies looking at Twitter as a cheaper way to provide customer support and keep in touch with customers, the Twitter team must be finalizing plans to support these commercial customers by having them dig into their pocketbooks. I’m sure ads will come to the site as well.

People new to Twitter (i.e., on-air news people) don’t know what to call these Twitter messages: twits or tweets. Today’s Twitter blog posting clearly shows that the official term is “tweet.” I know this makes Leo Laporte, the owner of the TWIT (This Week In Tech) podcast, and who also owns the TWIT trademark, a happy man. There has been past discussions between Leo and the Twitter team about how similar the names, TWIT and Twitter are, and I’m sure today’s posting was an attempt to clear that up.