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Who is on Twitter?

New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones breaks down who uses Twitter. A sample:

  • people who are just back from a really awesome run
  • people who have forgotten how to use email
  • people who have forgotten how to text
  • people who are involved in "social networking" and optimizing the power of re-Tweeting and "computers"
  • people who are hungry
  • people who are back from an OK run
  • Shaquille O'Neal
  • people who have never seen snow
  • people who like Battlestar Galactica
  • people who are about to go for a run

Also, NamOf.

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HOME TWEET HOME

This is a good photo essay on the offices and people at Twitter, an online service I've been proselytizing about lately. It's a bit self-referential fluff job for a product that still has a limited audience, but I still found it an interesting read especially with the accompanying fantastic photos.

The number of Twitter users has grown in the past year, and during events that spark a lot of twittering--such as tech­nology conferences--popular users are constantly posting "tweets" to thousands of people. This puts strain on the underlying message-routing architecture, which, the Twitter founders admit, wasn't built to do such heavy lifting."

It's kind of shocking that their architecture isn't very scalable. One would think that nowadays this would be a priority, particularly for a service like Twitter unless they set the bar for concurrent usage to be very, very, very low. They need to address its lack of scalability immediately to ensure the future growth and success of Twitter.

Read more here.

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SOMETHING ONLY I FIND INTERESTING (PROBABLY)

This may be something only I find interesting, but on a micro level, what's the difference, in terms of strictly actual strategy and grass roots organization irrespective of politics or partisanship, this year between Obama and McCain? The difference rests with Twitter.

Don't get me wrong: the primetime TV spots, radio ads, mass mailings, phone canvassing and all the other traditional forms of campaigning are important. However, in an increasingly digital age with the decentralization of news and communication, the winner will be decided by those who can successfully leverage the Internet. As any student knows today, JFK was able to defeat Nixon in large part due to his ability to first exploit an advantage with televised debates, and thus ushering in an era marking the central importance of television for politicians. A similar revolution today is taking place. But instead of JFK and the TV, it involves Obama and the Internet.

Barack Obama has an active Twitter page with over 39,000 followers. Again, this is on a micro level, but it is a good representation that demonstrates how the Obama campaign "gets it" and is arguably running the first bellwether digital campaign that has successfully grabbed the Internet by its proverbial horns. Rather than letting itself be "Swiftboated" and its message controlled and twisted by others, Obama's presidential campaign is utilizing the vast array of vehicles of communication that are available online, be it social networking sites or user-generated content, and transforming it into a well-oiled hive-mind: E pluribus unum, or "Out of many, one." And that one being a particular message dictated by Obama's camp.

For a campaign or politician that doesn't "get it," the usage of Twitter would probably draw a complete blank (I have a hard enough time explaining the service to friends). However, Twitter can be described by a traditional political definition: Sound bites. Each Twitter update is essentially series of short sound bites, which are easily digestible, bloggable, and uhm, forwardable (you get the point). While 39,000 followers (or subscribers rather) is merely a blip, just picture the impact of 39,000 stones being tossed into a pond and the ensuing ripples. The impact can be exponential.

And on top of all this, the service is also FREE thus freeing up valuable campaign funds and resources.

I really hope political science professors are taking note of this BRILLIANT entry. Class is in session suckas.

[Note: I know that the soapbox is starting to get scuffed from all the times I've been stepping up onto it, especially as of late. I promise this isn't a frequent thing--just every four years or so. I'll soon go back to posting about absurd YouTube videos shortly, so don't go away!]

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AN ARGUMENT IN SUPPORT OF WHY YOU SHOULD TWITTER

I'm a big fan of Twitter.  I've mentioned it before.  Admittedly it took me a long time to get onboard with Twitter and to see its purpose.  I originally joined and began using it just to end Kaizar's constant hounding and proselytizing about the greatness of Twitter and twittering and things twits. It took a while, but I've now become a huge fan of this service especially as a few more of my friends have joined and started using it.  You ask, "What is Twitter exactly?"  And why should you Twitter?  This short video below does an EXCELLENT job of explaining it and I hope it convinces you to join and start twittering!  On a side note, I also love the video's creativity.  Fantastic stuff.  It really makes me want to learn video editing.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o]

What makes Twitter so appealing to me is that it does a great job of incorporating mobile phones.  I primarily use Twitter with my cell phone, which has a qwerty keypad making it easy to write.  And it's great to receive my friends' Twitter updates as a text message essentially on my mobile.

On a related note, I think the time is ripe for someone to re-examine Robert Putnam's seminal study Bowling Alone.

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