twitter

Hello, Twitter? What happened?

Just when I got used to Twitter the server stopped responding. Five minutes without this minimal communication is killing me.

Oddly enough my post was on the fact that the CNet blog tool ate my last post about CohesiveFT. I am sure we will find it sooner or later.

Weekend fun: Find the signed copy of Sarah Lacy's book at Green Apple in SF

I ran into Sarah Lacy and her husband Geoff at Green Apple and she sneakily signed the only copy left of her book in the store and stuck it back on the shelf. That's a special prize for whoever picks up Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0

I've been giving her a bit of a hard time that I don't really care about the story (I am still waiting for my copy from Amazon) but the truth is I am just jealous that … Read more

Observations on Twitterdom

Twitter and tweeting are rapidly becoming part of the lexicon, at least among the digerati who have discovered the jouissance of followers and following. Twitter hasn't unleashed a unique technology, but an inspired broadcast pivot on existing messaging models. As the generation that has grown up texting rather than e-mailing takes over the planet, Twitter and its ilk will go mainstream.

With Twitter, you have followers (those who subscribe to your 140-character-limited tweets) and following (those whose tweets you follow). As you can see from the graphic below, Twitter usage comes in all shapes and sizes.

At the top … Read more

News flash: Web 2.0 is unreliable

In the blogosphere of early and ardent technology adopters, sites like Twitter and Seesmic have justifiably gained the attention and buzz. Twitter has had a series of well documented outages, and this weekend Seesmic seized up when videos of movie celebrities, such Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford, were posted to the video sharing site.

It also caused problems at partner sites, like TechCrunch, that embed Seesmic video comments (vomments) on their pages.

These recurring problems once again demonstrate that the much loved Web 2.0, consisting of many start-ups lacking adequate infrastructure and stable code, is unreliable. The larger start-ups … Read more

A business model for Twitter: Pay up

The Web spirit of "build an audience and figure out the business model later" is a great filter. It allows products and services into the wild without barriers or the need to sell advertisers on an unproven concept.

Those who can build an audience, such as Twitter and FriendFeed, and before them Google, Facebook, and dozens of others who turned into giants, have the scale to develop monetization schemes that a loyal and fanatic user base won't summarily reject.

In the case of Twitter, the service is a hit, attracting millions of "tweeters," many of … Read more

Another Twitter outage: Sound the alarms!

OK, I'm having a little sport here. And no offense to "The Scobleizer," but Twitter's been down for much of Thursday and, truth be told, civilization, as we know it, continues.

I was debating whether to even post this update considering the service's flaky performance of late. It's reached the point where Twitter's consistently going down. Looking in from the outside, you have to assume that management has a sense of urgency about resolving these glitches, once and for all. Why it's taking seemingly forever to get on top of the problem … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 725: CBS' podcast of indeterminate length

In today's episode, Leo Laporte drops in (and out) to discuss the future of CNET, the future of Yahoo, and lack of future we'll all have if the Air Force doesn't stop trying to build a real-life Skynet. Also, Leo points out why we should probably all delete our Plaxo accounts, Nintendo gets patent trolled, and can we leave Twitter? At least for one day? Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 725

**NOTE: We are making a change to our podcast feed system on Monday, May 19. You do not need to subscribe to a new … Read more

How valuable are you on Twitter?

At around 11:50 p.m. Pacific time Sunday night, uber-blogger Robert Scoble posted a short note to Twitter: "@dtan just reported an earthquake in Beijing. Wonder how large it is? Off to check out USGS site."

Of course, as the world knows by now, Scoble was referring to the devastating quake that is already believed to have killed at least 12,000 people.

Some may be skeptical about Scoble's subsequent claims that news of the disaster was flying around Twitter before the U.S. Geological Survey posted anything on it, but one thing seems clear. Because … Read more

Follow your man-eating plant on Twitter

Social networking has arrived at the plantbox. An outfit called Adafruit Industries is peddling a gadget that's part Twitter, part Tamagotchi, and part Martha Stewart, with a good dose of Little Shop of Horrors thrown in along the way.

"Botanicalls Twitter" is a $160 kit that monitors house plants and relays their condition to a Twitter account, texting your mobile phone if necessary. The system, which has its roots as a research project at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, uses embedded sensors that supposedly detect whether a plant is in need of water, food, or … Read more