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Posts Tagged → Twitter

January 19th, 2010

Bill Gates Now On Twitter

I would guess there are some pretty loud cheering going on at Twitter headquarters with Bill Gates joining today.  Whether you like him or not, as a software developer you would have to agree that your system is a success when the biggest software name in all the world signs up with an account.  You can see his page here… http://twitter.com/billgates.  In the first seven hours of his account, his follower list has reached 100,000 people.  This is with only five messages sent.  I know that convention says that it should be called TWEETS but I must say that even though I have had an account for three years, I still do not feel comfortable saying it.

There are many things about Mr. Gates that I disagree with but I do have a respect for him and his accomplishments.  We disagree on political issues as well but I have to respect the philanthropy that he and his wife do.  I do think that his joining Twitter is a tremendous statement about the success of the company.  I still meet people that tell me that they do not understand what all the excitement is about.  In the beginning I did not understand it either.  With the mobile features available on Twitter and the ability to integrate their service with other social networks, their potential is endless.  I would like to send my congratulations to the creators of Twitter for their continued success. 

Posted via web from Paul L. McCord Jr.

By Paul • Posted in Personal • Comments
October 31st, 2009

EEEEEvil Twitter ;-)

Twitter

 

How appropriate on this Halloween that I have 666 followers on my Twitter.  Although that is just a coincidence, it is a little creepy.  If you look at the top right of the photo above you can see where I circled it. Last night I noticed this and asked for one more person to follow and no one would.  Then this morning I removed someone that I did not know just to make it 665 and then I came back in here to find that I had another follower.  If I had just left that one person on there, it would be 667.  Cue up the Vincent Price scary laughter. I thought this was funny so I had to make a screen shot just to share on my blog.

By Paul • Posted in Personal, social networking • Comments
October 26th, 2009

Twitter or Facebook?

A question that I hear frequently is “Which is better, Facebook, or Twitter?”  I do not think this is the proper question to be asking because they complement each other.  In fact Twitter by itself may seem less useful although I disagree.  It is the ability to use Twitter with Facebook and other social networking sites is where the real value comes in.  With Twitter, you can post either by SMS, or by using a smart phone.  I think that if you really want to get the most out of all these sites is to have your own site that does not move.  This site is my attempt at doing that.  If you put together a permanent site, preferably a  personal domain, everyone will know where to find you. At this point, you can put links to other sites that you use.  Social networks come and go and though you may have many friends/contacts on all of them, you need a place that is always there.  It does not have to be a blog.  Some people just put together a site full of links.  As you may have seen technology writer John C. Dvorak does this very thing.  He put together channeldvorak.com so people have a central location to find him.

Once you have a presence that is all yours and that is not going anywhere then you can sign up for other programs or social networking sites.  These sites often have plug-ins that can be installed on your personal page.  Many of your friends will only participate on Facebook, or Myspace.  Many will only get on Frienfeed, or Twitter.  You can see the dilemma where you find yourself jumping from one site to another.  With the advent of the really simple syndication (RSS) feed, many systems have been established where all social site feeds can be fed together on one site.  Friendfeed is one of these as well as Google Reader.    Facebook is the big rave these days with more than 200 million active users so that is where many people gather.  The problem with that is popularity comes and goes with these sites.  You may remember Xanga.com when it was the big thing.  Then it was Myspace and so on.   It is only a matter of time before Facebook will be supplanted as the number one place.  By having your own page that is always there,  people can find you when one of the social sites goes under.  Secondly, by having your own site, search engines can find you allowing people to search for you.

If you have a Twitter account and use it the way it was intended, you will see that it is far more than just an instant messaging (IM) system.  Most of these social sites have a feature built in that allows your Twitter updates to automatically update your status on their sites.  Twitter is so light weight that you can use it even if you do not have a smart phone, or one capable of data transfer.  They allow you to send text messages to a short number, 40404.  As long as you do not post more than 140 characters in a single message, it will be posted on your Twitter page located http://www.twitter.com/yourusername.  Not only can you follow your updates on the Twitter page in real time, but it also updates other social sites simultaneously.  I have found that with many Twitter updates that I send, I get responses on Facebook, Myspace, and Friendfeed.  Since all of these sites notify you via email when someone responds to you, it makes it easy to immediately respond back.

If you ever find yourself bored at the doctor’s office, you can just send a text message that you are waiting for your doctor and someone on Facebook responds and it starts a conversation.  It helps when you are bored and stuck doing something you are not that excited about doing.  So to ask whether Twitter or Facebook is better, you should be asking how do you use them together.  I have met many ham radio operators online that also communicate using these tools.  It is really fun once you learn how to use them.  I hope this helps to explain a few ways to use them together.

By Paul • Posted in blogging, opinion, social networking • Comments
October 4th, 2009

Friendfeed Sidebar

I took the Twitter activity sidebar off the right side of this blog and replaced it with the Friendfeed sidebar.  This is because every time I send a Twitter message, it goes to the Friendfeed anyway.  Secondly, any time I send a Facebook, Flickr, Delicious, Youtube video, it also goes to Friendfeed.  I figure this is a better way of keeping the web site updated because whatever social networking program I post on, it will show up on the side bar.  Also, with the Friendfeed side bar on my page, I can post right from my page without even having to go to the other page.

What a pretty morning with the rain coming down.  It is only 64 degrees and rain and I love it.  For once we can turn the air conditioner off and let the outside air in.  Unfortunately having the window open means hearing all the neighbor noises but since it is daytime, I think we can handle it.

By Paul • Posted in blogging, social networking • Comments
August 7th, 2009

Despite DDoS, Twitter Still Rules

The social networking world was turned upside down yesterday when Twitter and Facebook were victims of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack making the service difficult to access yesterday.  This attack is nothing new as many sites have been attacked in this manner.  The buzz around technology related sites this morning is that the attack was really targeting one individual because of his stand on the Georgia versus Russia situation.  With many social networking sites having a connection to Twitter, the attack was far reaching.  There are many places such as Friendfeed, Facebook, blogs and other sites that will pull Twitter posts to their sites.  In fact this very page shows my Twitter posts on the right side of this page.

To clarify what a DDoS attack is and how it works I will try to explain.  A malicious person will find open computers around the world and upload a “bot”, or a program that runs automatically at set times.  This person will upload these bots onto other computers as they find them open.  These bots will ping a site continuously from many different victim computers sort of like what happens when you are access a web site.  These attempts to reach the site are at such a high volume that it takes up all of their bandwidth preventing legitimate users from being able to access the site.  When I say bandwidth, I am referring to a sort of a pipeline and its size.  The larger the size of pipeline, the more data that can be sent through the pipe.  If all the contents of the pipe are being consumed, then nothing else is left for anyone else.

Twitter still rules the social networking world despite what you may hear from other sites.  The reason I say this is because if you actually go to Friendfeed,  you will find that at least 50% of the traffic on there started by a Twitter post.  Of course from there, people will comment on Friendfeed.  The same can be said for Facebook because most of the traffic that I see are originally posted as Twitter.  Most of these sites have their own features that are very useful but again they depend on the traffic that is generated by Twitter.  With each news story that comes out putting down Twitter, they continue to grow.  In fact their growth is exponential with each story that comes out.  This is probably a result of people’s desire to follow the crowd.  In fact just this morning I un-followed 500 people/bots/strangers.  I will admit that I love the ability to get news from Twitter in real time even before it is on the news.  I can find out when a roll over accident is on the freeway before it is even broadcast on television.

So unless someone can come up with a tool that is so easy to use through short messaging system (SMS) they will continue to rule.  With smart phones becoming more prevalent people can update a news story directly from the site.  Instantly millions of people will know within minutes.  In some cases these posts actually result in the media’s attention instead of the other way around.  Having Twitter is empowering to the individual.  As it has been seen recently, there were individuals in Iran that were posting to the world the violence that was going on.  These Twitter posts were fed into many social networking sites and also to the news media.  In fact every major news entity in the United States has a Twitter page.    I know some people that use them just to follow news sites so that when something happens, they get a message to their phones.  It is inevitable that at some point a new technology will come out and unseat Twitter as the major social tool but for now they remain on top.  I will continue to follow these technologies and see new breakthrough tools as they develop.

By Paul • Posted in Internet, Twitter, cell phones, opinion • Comments
August 7th, 2009

Slimmed down Twitter

The last couple of days I have been removing contacts from my Twitter page because there was a lot of spam.  I went from 675 followers back down to 73.  I think I may have inadvertently deleted a few people that I did not intend on doing.  Since it took me several hours to go through there and remove contacts I deleted some that I did not recognize.  If you are one of the people that I speak to on Twitter and you find yourself removed from my list, please re-follow.  The problem is that when you delete users, you see their login name and not necessarily their actual name.

The reason that I did this was because I have found over time there are robots that are automatically connecting to users and posting spam. Secondly you get followers that search for certain political key words and then follow you.  Sometimes they agree and sometimes they disagree.  In either case, I do not wish to be arguing politics on Twitter. This is particularly irritating and so I usually try to un-follow them fast.  One of the strategies that has worked for me is when I purposely post something that I know will be offensive to certain political groups.  When they begin to lash out at me then I know who to un-follow.  It has been pretty effective so far.

In a given day, I will get 10 or so new followers that I do not even know.  It is clear these followers are not real people but robots because when you look at their profile they are following over 1,000 people and only 20 are following back.  Also they only have less than 100 updates.  Anytime someone has only a fraction of updates compared to how many people they are following, that is a pretty good give away.  There are some people that I genuinely enjoy hearing from on Twitter.

By Paul • Posted in Internet, Twitter, opinion, social networking • Comments
July 12th, 2009

Blogging Versus Social Networking

This morning I ran across a post on Friendfeed that proclaimed how Friendfeed was so much better than blogging.  He posted how he has thousands of followers on there and how it was real time for people to interact with the posts.  To my surprise, most of his respondents were in agreement with me in that blogging was better than social networking.  My stated reason was that a blog has a permanent address so that people can find you.  I use Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook among others just like thousands of others.  The problem with all of them is that they are vying for your time and attention.  They are all competing against each other in an attempt to unseat the other one as being the number one network.  Each time another network comes out, people go sign up for them and some stay and some keep their old network.  Many like myself keep all of them but have to divide my time among them.  Twitter wins out almost every time because I can post quickly from my phone and it automatically updates the others.

My blog keeps the same address and is not subject to the popularity of a particular social network.  Since these networks come and go within a two year period it would be easy to lose contact with some people.  If you do not actively use these networks then you could lose contact with those friends since the popularity of that network could dwindle and its followers would move on to another network.  For those that prefer to use these social networks as their primary interaction with friends, I would suggest you also maintain a domain hosted web site.  This can be a blog or just a static site where you have a permanent address where people can find you.  These addresses are indexed by search engines making them easier to find.  This way as the Facebook of the day give way to the newest social network, people will still be able to find you.

Also one of the benefits of having a blog over a real time social network is that you control the content and the duration of the post.  If you use a social networking site, the content is only visible as long as no one else is posting.  As new items are posted, these posts are moved down on the page giving way for new content.  Eventually your post is moved completely off the page.  In addition to this, there is another benefit to a blog over the social networking site.  Most social sites have limitations to how many characters you can post in a single post.  Like Twitter will only allow you to post 140 characters at one time.  These limitations vary depending on which site you go to but there are limitations.

Another problem with these social networking sites is that there seems to be a erroneous cultural attitude that email is obsolete and going away.  This idea is not very well thought out because email will never go away unless a newer “mail” technology comes into play.  This is because many or maybe I should say most employers require all communications to be made using the company email system.  At my work for example, they block access to all social networking sites and web based email systems.  If you would like to communicate with someone outside the organization, you must use the employer’s email system that is subject to monitoring.  You cannot control the content of a social networking site and therefore not allowed.  For this reason, many of those on social networking sites refuse to check their email.  To them it is an antiquated system that is not worth using.  They fail to realize that every one of these social networking sites requires an email address to confirm their identity.  Email is not going away.  These people discard their email and so you cannot leave them a forwarding address if you move.  By keeping a permanent web site that is available for search engines, you can still be found after several years.  These are just a few of the reasons why blogging is better than social networking. 

If you have not spoken to someone for five years, they can always go to their favorite search engine and search for you.  Your blog or permanent domain will be found in the search engine results while many of the social networking sites may not be.  You may not like to blog but having a permanent web address can be used to point your friends and family to your social networking site that you prefer to use.  I too enjoy using many of these sites and in fact use Twitter every day.  By having my permanent domain, people can find my Twitter page without having to search around all day.  I hope I have been able to explain a few things here so that you will understand why I maintain this blog even though I do not have time to get on it as much as I like.  On a social network, I would not have been able to post my information in such detail.  This makes it easier to fully explain my point.

By Paul • Posted in Personal, blogging, opinion, social networking • Comments
May 3rd, 2009

My New Blackberry 8900

My new phone

This weekend I replaced my phone with this Blackberry Curve 8900 from T-Mobile.  This phone while lacking 3G capability is very nice.  I have been torn for sometime about whether I was going to change providers or stay with T-Mobile when my contract ran out.  I think it was my son coming home to live with us that made up my mind because with four phones, the price can be very steep, especially if you have Internet capability.  We have the 1800 minute family myFavs plan with each person being able to select five numbers where they can make or receive unlimited calling.  Also we have unlimited mobile to mobile calling, and unlimited nights and weekends.  We also have unlimited text messaging because after all, I do have teenagers.  I cannot blame them because since I have Twitter, I get just as many texts as they do.

I considered switching to a new carrier but the cost of buying four new phones and the new, more expensive rate plans would have been just too expensive.  Since we have been with T-Mobile since 2000, we have a good history to go on so we decided to stay.  I have had flawless service in the last nine years with them so we decided to stay with them.  When we signed up originally they were not even called T-Mobile but rather Voicestream.

It was going to be a toss up between this phone and the G1 but I finally decided on this one for one reason.  I kept reading about how the G1’s battery life was very short.  Secondly T-Mobile’s 3G rollout for Oklahoma City would not be until August.  The 3G speeds were sure to make the battery run down even faster.

The phone that I settled on is this Blackberry and I love it.  They may say that it has no 3G but the Internet is every bit as fast as my dad’s Iphone and my brother’s Blackberry through Alltel/Verizon.  This phone also has Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) through wifi.  The speeds are almost as fast on the mobile EDGE as it is on my home wifi making it very usable.  The one thing that I love about this phone the most is the fact that I can be connected to Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, and Blackberry Messenger all at the same time.  I have three different email accounts including my University of Oklahoma account.  I have Twitterberry, and the Facebook for Blackberry installed and I can have all these programs running at the same time. 

Of course yesterday was my first full day with this phone and with all the heavy usage on social networking sites and phone calls, the phone is still not dead.  I charged the phone all day Friday and it is now Sunday.  I am very pleased with its performance.  I just love the message notification section where I can check any of those systems and respond to any of them from one spot.  This is pretty amazing how smooth it works.  It is almost as addicting as the computer itself.  I just wanted to share how pleased I am with this new phone.  Do not let the lack of 3G discourage you from this phone because it is quick enough to make it useful.  I would definitely recommend this phone. 

By Paul • Posted in mobile, opinion • Comments
April 6th, 2009

The New Friendfeed

I have been sitting here watching the Gilmore Gang on http://www.twitlive.tv and they are talking about the new beta of the new Friendfeed.  You can get to it here http://beta.friendfeed.com.  There is Steve Gilmore, Mike Arrington, Robert Scoble, and Leo Laporte among others.  They are really passionate defending Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed.  I must say that I am amazed at the new Friendfeed but there is so much information coming my way that it is difficult to follow.  There are filters that you can set up to make the tons of information manageable.

The big argument is that Twitter has become so main stream and on practically every news talk show around while Friendfeed has so many more features.  They are arguing whether Friendfeed will ever overtake Twitter.  I think as of right now, I use Twitter the most.  I also use Twitter to update Facebook.  Friendfeed was the first to be able to allow posting stories, messages and allowing others to post messages to them.  Facebook had included that feature lately and I love that.  Friendfeed now has a notifier so you can read your Friendfeed messages right on your desktop.

I love the live updates on Friendfeed though it is very fast if you follow a lot of people.  If you follow a lot of people, you may want to use the filters or you are going to have a headache trying to follow all the information scrolling across your screen.  The incoherence of this post is a classic example of the information overload.  I am typing this at the same time while listening to the Gilmore Gang podcast, and reading the Friendfeed posts as they pop up on the bottom right side of the screen on the notifier.  I truly love it though I remember the nature and anonymity of Friendfeed in the past where it is very easy to be attacked in a very vicious manner if you post something that is not very popular.  If you have thin skin then you may want to be careful what you post because people are very aggressive when they disagree with  you. 

At the moment, Twitter and Facebook are leading the pack and looking at current trends I would say that Friendfeed would never take the lead.  I do know enough to know that you cannot judge by current trends because there was a time when Google was a small part of Yahoo before Google really took off.  There was a time when America Online dominated the online world and most people thought they would never be surpassed in the online world.  Over time you never know what is going to take off.  All I know is that in the last couple of hours since I saw the new beta Friendfeed, and seeing the rate of information flow, I am scratching my head in amazement.  On this one story, there are new posts appearing at a rate of about two per second.  Absolutely amazing real time information.  If you are one of those that must read every post you will find yourself mesmerized and hypnotized by the information overload.

You could literally spend 24 hours a day on Friendfeed where every news story in the universe is streaming across your screen from both political spectrums at the same time.  You could find yourself involved into a religious or political fight in seconds on Friendfeed.  I do like it though because it allows you to see both perspectives on virtually any topic you can think of.  As I said before you could be in a hostile environment easily so you need to be prepared for that.  Don’t let me give you the idea that everyone is ugly and unfriendly on Friendfeed because that is not the truth.  I am just saying there are thousands of people that actively follow these threads 24 hours a day and anyone can see it.  Due to the very nature of its fast and capable social connection, your posts are read very fast and responded to within seconds at times. 

Again, I think this is an amazing interface and destined to go far.  This has only been out a few hours and the traffic is just phenomenal.  Despite this, I am not likely to try to get all my friends to go to Friendfeed because it took me forever to get some of them to go to Facebook and Twitter.  I love all of them but some people do not like all the overload.  As people drift over, I will add them.  I use all three because there are different audiences.  If you are inclined to try these types of toys, then give it a try.  My Friendfeed URL is http://beta.friendfeed.com/paulmccord.  The one thing that makes Twitter so popular is the SMS, or text messaging feature.  This would be virtually impossible on Friendfeed due to the enormous amount of information. 

Again, I would like to apologize for the incoherence of this post, because I have too much information going on at the same time.  I hope you give it a try and see how you like it.  I think you will be hooked in no time.

By Paul • Posted in computer, opinion, social networking • Comments
March 18th, 2009

Twitter “OFF”

I have been one of the greatest advocates of using Twitter.  I use them every day  for two years and loving it.  Lately they have been getting on my nerves to a point that I am yelling at them.  One of the major attractions to using Twitter is the ability to update via short messaging service (SMS), or text.  It is so convenient to send a text message and know that it is updating my Twitter page, my Facebook page, and my personal web site all at the same time. 

From my cell phone I can send a text message “on” or “off” to turn notifications on or off to my cell phone.  This way if I have to be in a meeting I can just send “off” and the notifications stop until I turn them back on.  Lately I have been sending “off” and it has not been taking effect right away.  In fact in some cases it does not take effect for more than four hours.  This is completely unacceptable.  Even putting my phone on vibrate does not help when I am getting continuous flows of messages when I am in a meeting.

Another thing that it does is keeps me from getting the messages from those that I do want to talk to.  When I am in a meeting for an hour and a half and I come out with 20+ Twitter messages on my phone, I tend to ignore them.  When someone in my family sends me a text message it gets ignored because of the endless messages coming in after I told it to stop.  A couple nights ago it was doing this and I got so mad that I sent “off” over and over and over again where I probably sent “off 20+ times.  The messages kept coming.  When I got up for work in the morning I had 40+ messages from Twitter and most of them were my “off” confirmations that I sent telling it to stop.

It does not take a rocket scientist to see this would get old fast.  Tonight it is doing it again.  I have already sent “off” a dozen times and I am STILL getting messages.  Am I the only one that is having this problem?  Unlike many people I use the “on” and “off” commands regularly because I have to work or sleep.  I leave my phone on 24 hours a day because most people I talk to call me on it.  If there is an emergency, that is the number that people will likely call me on so turning off the phone when I go to bed is not an option.

I just submitted a troubleshooting request with Twitter to see if they can find out what is going on.  I hate to cancel my service but if this is what it comes to then I guess I have no choice.  I am approaching 7,000 Twitter messages at this time so I use them quite heavily.  Twitter, fix  this problem!

By Paul • Posted in Technology, Twitter • Comments
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