twitter

Here are the ten people to whom I’ve given the most gold stars on Twitter:

1. @sween (43)
2. @rachijan (39)
3. @badbanana (27)
4. @apelad (26)
5. @yowhatsthehaps (21)
6. @biorhythmist and @texburgher (18)
7. @strutting (17)
8. @donchiefnerd (16)
9. @GPappalardo (15)

If you’re on Twitter, you should follow these kids. Each of those stars is worth at least a chuckle, and most of them evoked an all-out laugh--though I don’t think I rolled on the floor even once.

If you’re not on Twitter, you will be soon. You might as well give in now and start by following some people on this list.

The list comes from Twitterbelle, a cute little web app by @poeks that checks who you’ve favorited with your last 200, 500, or 1000 stars. Feel free to check out my full list. (Plus, you should prob’ly follow everyone in the top 50).

After reading a couple of blog posts on a comment system called Disqus, I want to give it another shot.

I tried Disqus back in the day, and it was really slow and generally fairly annoying. Most of their issues seem to be resolved, and they've picked up a lot of steam in the meantime. So now I'm considering swapping out my current comments for something a little more hip and magickal. But I'd like your feedback on the issue. So here's what you've gotta do:

1. Leave a comment below.
2. Let me know how you feel about the experience.
3. That's it!

You'll notice that there are several ways to identify yourself. If you have a Disqus, Facebook, or Twitter account you can use one of those. Feel free to try out a couple of accounts, or choose none at all. You can also link to this post on just about any social media site (FriendFeed or Twitter or Reddit or YouTube, for example) and it should pull in those comments as well.

So I'm curious what you think about it.

How is the experience? Do you like it better than a traditional blog comment system? Can you see yourself actually voting on other comments à la Slashdot/Reddit/Digg?

Have you used Disqus (or Intense Debate, or another similar service) in the past? Was there anything about it that you couldn't stand?

Most importantly, will this make you more or less likely to join the conversation?

We don't need to make a decision right away. We can play with Disqus for a while and see how we feel. If it's horrid, the old comment system is just a pref setting away.

So talk to me :)

Note: This is the first post on my blog (and currently the only one) with Disqus comments enabled. All older posts still use the native comment system. So you've gotta try Disqus out on this post. Thanks!

The Twitpocalypse is upon us, and a whole lot of things have broken...

In some cases it's recoverable though. If you click a link from your favorite Twitter-related service and come across a URL like this, you can fix it! Just use this handy dandy little bookmarklet and you'll be back on the right Tweet in no time.

UNpocalypse!

Use this like you normally use a bookmarklet. Drag it to your bookmark bar, or right click and "save as bookmark".

The standard bookmarklet disclaimers apply: This works in Firefox and Safari, but might not work in all browsers. It's a quick and dirty bookmarklet, so if you use it somewhere it doesn't belong it will do unexpected things with your browser. Don't try using it on non-Twitpocalypsed tweets, as it will try to grab some random tweet from the far distant future.

Apparently nobody cares what you had for lunch. Nobody wants to hear about your bodily functions (or so I hear). So what else is Twitter good for?

Keeping your finger on the pulse of awesome, of course!

And the best tool for the job is Twitter Search. Check out some of my favorite Twitter searches below. Make up some of your own and share. Enjoy!

Note: Because some people on Twitter use offensive language, these searches occasionally return content that gets apps blocked from the iTunes App Store.

A handful of questions about Twitter

when is too much too much?

That's the beauty of Twitter. You choose your own level of involvement.

if I don't respond to follow them does that mean that they know I'm not interested in them? why are they following me?

People new to Twitter, people who are unfamiliar with the follow/friend paradigm, and people who think it's a popularity contest will be bugged if you don't follow back. But that's because those three groups don't understand the power of a one-sided friendship.

On Facebook, you have to be friends (bi-directional) with someone to interact with them. Both of you have to agree on the status of your relationship.

But Twitter isn't about who is listening to you, or who is a bi-directional friend. Twitter is about who you interact with. For example, I am not following about a third of the people I interact with (reply to, talk about, etc). A good chunk of them aren't following me either. Because on Twitter, everything is open, and you don't have to have a defined relationship with someone to interact.

If someone responds to you, it'll show up under "@ replies" and you can carry on a conversation. But just because you're talking with them doesn't mean you have to listen to everything they say.

if they are following me are they listening or are they just waiting for me to follow them?

A little of both. Some people actually care, and some just want you to follow in return. Some are robots, some are spammers, and some are real people, who are really interested in what you have to say.

But regardless of the type of user, you should feel no obligation to follow back. I use a couple of tools to make this process easier.

Twimailer sends me really great "follow" notifications, so I can usually decide right in the email whether I want to follow back or ignore.

TweetSum calculates your recent followers' DBI ... It's a bit like a Google PageRank for Twitter users. It's based on their likelihood to follow you, to interact with you, and not send spammy tweets. It has a simple interface for sorting through the masses of followers and deciding who is worth following back.

at what point will i have to separate my friends from commerce, brands, I like, don't like, don't know.

I still haven't. I unfollow brands and companies that annoy me, but I don't worry too much about mixing them in with the stream. If you really need the separation, check out Nambu (Mac only) or TweetDeck (really awful interaction). They both allow you to group the people you follow, so you can interact with them as discrete streams. I tried that approach for a while, but it didn't suit me, so I'm back to one big river of messages.

how many is the right number of people to listen to, follow.

That depends.

I follow anyone who interests me at the time. If you make me laugh, or you start a conversation with me, or I interact with you in some other space--Facebook, IRL, mailing lists, etc--I might start following you. But to me, following is a fluid concept... If I tire of you, I might unfollow. If you tweet too much, I might unfollow you. If you set up automatic tweeting of all your Last.fm activity, there's a good chance I'll unfollow you.

But following isn't the only way I interact with people on Twitter. I track quite a few things that I'm interested in, and converse with people who talk about them. I listen to--and usually engage--everyone who talks to or about me, regardless of our respective follow status.

at what point does it get too hard to do?

When you think about it too much :)

This was originally a response to a post on a Meetup group I attend. It's a bit rough, but I feel like there's some value in it, so here ya go :)

You can do market research. You can study focus groups. You can try to start a Facebook group or roll your own online community. Or, if you are Robert Scoble and Seagate, you can invite your fans to meet you in Times Square for a free hard drive.

Seagate just launched the fall lineup of their FreeAgent external hard drive family. They rented space on the two biggest screens in Times Square to tell everyone about it. And they gave away a handful of drives to some of their best fans.

the @colorwars are taking the twittersphere by storm. it's time to choose a team, kids.

and that team is @theBlackteam

1. pick your team (text follow theblackteam to 40404)
2. show your support... change your avatar to something more fitting, add a banner to your myspace page or blog, etc.
3. visit theBlackteam home base for resources and more info.

to get a ribbon that looks like mine, you should be able to copy and paste this code into any post on your blog/website/myspace. if that doesn't work, add it to your header or footer.

how to add your own ribbon after the jump.

i think twitter is a huge experiment in human interaction. what does a group of users do when given a service (for free) which does essentially nothing, with no real direction or constraints on its use? they play. yesterday i got to witness a twitter microevolution firsthand.

a less known feature of twitter is the ability to track certain phrases. whenever someone posts a tweet containing that word, you will see it even if you're not following the user who tweeted. the most common example is "overheard". in fact, twitter has been telling its users to "track overheard" for quite some time. judging from the lack of tweets they must have disabled it. until yesterday, that is.

sometime around noon, all hell broke loose. twitter began sending out updates to all the curious users who had ever tried to "track overheard". most of them had no idea what was happening. so they start responding:

one of my favorite things about twitter is that it doesn't attempt to place bounds on, or even really define, how the service should be used. keeping track of my gas mileage is just as valid a use for twitter as letting people know when i post to my blog.

@dacort has a really spiffy script for generating twitter stats.

i ran it on mine... it's not to hard to guess when i usually go to sleep :-)

[via]

and all i can think is, "but i had something interesting to say!"

i'll prob'ly forget by the time it's back up.

i mentioned my newfound twitter addiction a couple of weeks ago. my addiction has now been upgraded.

if you haven't been using Remember The Milk, you should be. it's an online to do list with all the functionality you'd expect from a Web 2.0 app.

today i hooked the two of them together. RTM now lets you interact with your tasks by sending Twitter messages. they'll send you messages back when tasks are due. you can mark 'em complete, or postpone 'em via messages.

because Twitter likes text messages, i can now text my productivity to my Remember The Milk account too. i think this just replaced my phone's to-do lists and calendar in one fell swoop, and i've only been using it about an hour.

i guess the upside is that this will prob'ly increase my productivity instead of just fueling my addiction to Twitter. and it's a good thing i signed up for unlimited texts.