Tag Archives: twitter

Twitter is the new MySpace

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I get a lot of good emails but Rachel made a great observation today:

Not only is “Spongebob” a trending topic on Twitter, but it’s “Wich Spongebob.” The fact that we have gazillions of people taking quizzes about their similarity to a Spongebob character is sad, but not nearly as sad as the fact that the word ‘which’ is being so persistently misspelled.

Twitter has become MySpace.

We knew it was coming when celebrities showed up. We knew the site was a big deal even before the illegally stolen, internal, not-for-public-consumption documents were released.

The obvious difference being the “openness” of Twitter. MySpace, Facebook, etc. required at least some level of friendship to get to people’s intimate details. Not to mention this level of aggregation, which is only skimming the surface, has never been so public before The original beauty of Twitter was the quick-yet-personal musings that everyone could see (private profiles are often condemed by “social media experts”) and chose to follow.

But now the rest of the world is here and it’s a bit frightening. Its not the small ecosystem that we initially enjoyed being a part of. Senators, porn stars, real estate agents, company executives: they’re all here. Plus, everything is indexed, searchable, retweetable, and easy to find.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw more people revert back to a more “closed” system in the near future. We are teetering on the edge of novel and unnerving.

Add Twitter Favorites to your site

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Hint: if you’ve never used Twitter the following won’t make much sense to you.

I easily annoyed by people on Twitter who ‘RT’, or ‘re-tweet’; they simply post an update that says exactly what someone else says, plus attribution. Frankly, answering the Twitter mantra “What are you doing?” with “this is what someone else smarter, funnier, or more charming is doing” seems inane. It’s poetic, though, in the sense that it’s a quick litmus test for people worth “following.” Alex has always been against this practice and suggested an alternative to RTs: favorites.

Screenshot: History doesn't retweet itself

There are very few features on Twitter: updates, direct messages, replies, favorites, followers, followings. I charge everyone to use the favorites feature more often. In fact, there’s a site dedicated to finding the real good ones: favrd.

Point being: I’m a huge proponent of using the little star. I’ve started publicizing my favorites here in the sidebar of Mind/Averse and it took less than 30 seconds using WordPress. It’s really quite simple.

Add Twitter favorites with the WordPress RSS widget

Screenshot: WordPress RSS widget

Assuming you have a widget-friendly WordPress theme installed, simply do the following:

  1. From the WordPress dashbord, Browse to Appearance > Widgets
  2. Select the ‘Add’ button next to the “RSS” widget
  3. Visit your Twitter favorites page and determine your personal RSS feed (view the page source if you’re stuck here; find the <link> tag with http://twitter.com/favorites/youridhere.rss)
  4. Insert the favorites feed into your RSS widget, give the widget a title, pick your options, etc.
  5. Save the widget and save the changes to your sidebar

Now everyone who visits your site can immediately find the tweets you find useful. You’ll get to be cooler, smarter, and funnier simply by association.

Other ways to integrate Twitter favorites

I can think of various creative ways for individuals and businesses to use Twitter favorites.

For example, if I were a company with customers sending @replies to me telling me how great I was, I may favorite those. I can then use something like SimplePie to integrate my favorites into my blog as a separate page of testimonials. I know 37signals uses ‘buzz’ from Twitter on their site.

Screenshot: 37signals buzz around the web

Bonus: do the same with @replies

The @replies RSS feed is a bit different and uses the Twitter API and 401 authentication, not a custom RSS feed, for your replies. No worries, you can either pull the RSS feed from Twitter Search or you can do the same thing using the following syntax:

http://twittername:[email protected]/statuses/replies.rss

In theory, the API will include all mentions (any time @devinreams is included in an update, not just at the beginning of an update).

Ha, this is why they call me a social media pro.

Top Websites That Aren't (Yet) Mainstream

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Lets dive right into them, shall we? I present to you, the websites that aren’t quite mainstream … yet.

1. GMail

  • Who: Google
  • What: Free e-mail with lots of space, IMAP, mobile accessibility, powered by ads
  • Why it’s cool: GMail was on the cutting edge of webmail with a huge giveaway of space and a smart interface coupled with the awesome power of Google search.
  • Why it’s not mainstream: People are afraid of Google still. They see the ads and think that your information is no longer private nor secure and that your precious e-mail and information will be sold to spammers and advertisers. Ironically enough, Google is one of the best at combating spam.
  • Send me an e-mail

2. Hulu

  • Who: NBC, News Corp (and now the content of dozens of others)
  • What: Free access to legitimate television shows and movies in high quality, powered by ads
  • Why it’s cool: I can watch Comedy Central shows, Food Network, Fox, etc. in high definition with less advertising and all for free. I can even subscribe to the show and get alerts when a new episode is up.
  • Why it’s not mainstream: Nobody has heard of it. And NBC continues to botch up their video content by releasing stuff like NBCOlympics.com. So, we all assume media companies don’t get “real” video yet and wander over to YouTube.
  • View my public profile on Hulu

3. Newsvine

  • Who: Veterans of Disney, ESPN, and other media organizations; MSNBC
  • What: News from multiple sources PLUS the ability for anyone to write, “seed” (post an existing) or comment on an article.
  • Why it’s cool: We can contribute the news and read about whats important to us. Plus we can engage with others and talk about stories, debate points, create long lasting friendships, call someone a retard, the list goes on…
  • Why it’s not mainstream: I think it’s too much work for someone to ‘seed’ the news and it gives little value for me to share it with someone else. To many, there is not enough incentive to write articles either. The only saving grace is the fun in arguing and being social on the internet. More people are interested in participating but I don’t think they know about their options.
  • Add me as a friend on Newsvine

4. Twitter

  • Who: Obvious (Ev Williams)
  • What: 140 character message broadcast to anyone who wants to “follow” you (and you get to follow people back)
  • Why it’s cool: It’s like chatting with only the people you want to listen to via SMS, the web, and many other applications
  • Why it’s not mainstream: People still don’t “get” it because nobody has explained it the right way to people. You can’t just say “you have to do it” because everyone can see through internet fads. Not everyone is into making random connections with strangers on the internet. Plus, the site really isn’t what I’d call user friendly.
  • Follow me on Twitter

I thought about adding a “how to fix it” to each of these but nothing about them is broken. They’re just different, unknown, and misunderstood websites that may just always maintain that “web2.0” charm.

But then again, only the “early adopters” were using these sites:

  • Facebook – why do you need a profile online? I have real friends.
  • Google – what else is there to search for? I found the porn.
  • Craigslist – we already have classifieds, they’re called the classifieds.
  • eBay – I can buy cheap things at Wal-Mart.
  • Amazon – books belong in stores (so that I can read them for free!).