Twitter

Today I got to 30,000 tweets, a very nice number. There was a time when I seesmiced 5700 times in one month. Recently it’s been about 700 for last month.

MG had noted that, after a week, Twitter seemed to realize that it was a problem that the replies still weren’t working, and was pointing people to Summize for a workaround. I said “I hate having to rely on the web version of Twitter, first of all, then having the reply tab bork, and THEN having to go to summize, and hit reply there and pray that twitter works. It’s why I only check Twitter once or twice a day now.”

richard - Jun 0, 2008

Yep, all those I’ve conversed with are safe.

Did I make the cut?

As a frequent user of twitter following over 1000 people it’s impossile for me to keep up with everything that’s going on. That’s especially true now that I’m going out more often, working and summer is here. As a result of these factors I removed anyone that doesn’t @ me very often, doesn’t remind me of a conversation or doesn’t post much. As a result the signal to noise ratio has gone down and twitter should be more manageable. In total I removed about six hundred people this morning. Now to see how things change.

Corvida - May 2, 2008

I can definitely sympathize. Even though I’m in the US, the city that I stay in is pretty non-technological, let alone social. Getting people to use social networks is a tough thing. Even though they have their benefits, it’s not for everyone and everyone isn’t particularly fascinated with the web in the same way that we are unfortunately.

As a student it was not unusual for me to spend no more than six hours a day at home. The rest of the time I was out socialising, whether helping post grads with their work or with those from my studies. As a result of this I started to pay attention to many of the social networks. It had shifted from Facebook where all my real life friends could be found to more abstract social networks such as twitter, jaiku and others. Through these networks I saw what everyone was up to and I could take the opportunity to go out and meet them occasionally at first and then more and more frequently as time passed. By the time I left England I had the opportunity to meet with one group every Friday morning and quite a few others on a number of different occasions. As a result my social life was built around what I saw via twitter and seesmic. In geneva that social scene is pretty small at the moment. Some people are in Geneva, some are in Lausanne and others in Zurich. The problem is they’re not centralised therefore participating is not practical. That’s one of the weaknesses of social networking that I’ve encountered over the years. I do miss that aspect of life in England and I should attempt to recreate it here. I’m not the only one facing this problem. Corvida of Read Write Web wrote about this topic recently and it’s an interesting challenge for Gen Y and early adopters. The majority of the users of mobile social networks congregate in one specific city and rarely move outside of it. As a student facebook was great to find out about events that were going on within that circle, then twitter became great once I graduated. Now the challenge is to find what social network will be of interest in a city like Geneva. Would it be facebook used by most people in my age group. paying services that guarantee no results or simply going out into the physical world hoping to meet people that way. Each method requires time and I’m not sure which is the most adapted to the lake Geneva region. It’s something I’m going to explore over the coming weeks. I want to rebuild a good physical world social network once more and see which tools remain relevant now.

Farouq Taj - May 6, 2008

Boycott Twitter comment {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:“http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/cLSxVM5Nco_th1.jpg”}“title”:{“value”:“Boycott Twitter comment “}“videoUri”:{“value”:“http://www.seesmic.com/video/j4tlLCBLTT"}}}

That’s why I use jaiku {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:“http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/YRwLb6LXiV_th1.jpg”}“title”:{“value”:“That’s why I use jaiku “}“videoUri”:{“value”:“http://www.seesmic.com/video/rUIBfi5lPG"}}}

I’m not the only person that’s annoyed with the vast amount of downtime suffered by twitter and there is a call for an international boycott of twitter on may 21st. During that day we’ll be using other more reliable services to show that twitter is nothing without the community that makes it what it is. Twitter has been having some serious issues over the last few weeks. It seems that the service is down almost as much as it’s active. Exaggeration or not, it’s a problem, and it seems to be worsening rather than improving. As a result, a bunch of us Twitter power users were using FriendFeed to discuss a way to hit Twitter where it hurts in order to send a message to the powers that be. Sourc

For any of those that have never used Jaiku before here is a typical conversation from the users. They’re all interested in mobile phones and what they can do. It’s a nice change from twitter’s web 2.0 and social media slant.

Of course I’m the most active twitter user in Geneva, as if that was going to be a surprise to anyone. Before that I was London’s most active twitter user with over 5000 posts in a month back in December.