The human face of online politics
I love Twitter, the teeny tiny blogging platform. You get just 140 characters to post a link, a one-line joke, your mood, or whatever. The need for brevity and economy of language is a useful little mental exercise that can sharpen your writing and also produce a nice turn of phrase.
You can follow other Twitterers and interact/chat/argue with them. My Twitter feed is a one stop shop for nearly everything I do on the web. It amalgamates my posts from this blog, the photos on my moblog, and my link dump from del.icio.us, as well as being my miscellaneous brain dump, scratch pad and bullshit bucket.
As well as being a microblogging tool and a instant messenger doohicky, it’s also a great resource. You can sign up for updates from BBC News, Downing Street, and even the local weather. Third party software tools like Twhirl or Tweetr will squeak at you when new updates are posted by those feeds you are following.
I also follow the updates from Lib Dems. I suggested today that their Twitter feed was an automatic service or ‘bot’. Twitter is being rapidly infiltrated by spammers - who can easily be beaten - and I was rashly suspicious that the Liberals has resorted to similar nefarious tactics.
I’m glad to say I was wrong - I was sent categoric proof. The Lib Dem Twitter feed passes the Turing Test with flying colours.
Unless their publicity budget stretches to producing frighteningly realistic human simulacrums, that is.
Anyway, you should go and give Twitter a go. Let me know if you do and/or recommend me some good Twitter feeds. I’ll recommend Donald Strachan, Mike Power, and Robert Mugabe. And the very nice man on the end of the Lib Dem feed who isn’t a robot.
Posted on April 22nd, 2008 at 8:42 pm
| See also • There went the day • Twittering again • Back |
Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe By Email • Print This Post • • • |
|
Filed under Bloggerdom, Science and progress |
You’ve really cracked Twitter and are using it incredibly effectively, if I may say so. We need more UK users who are not just interested in Tech. The group function has got great potential in the future, i think, Thanks for the link. I have already added both Mr Strachan and the great Mugabe
I think a lot of people still don’t ‘get’ it and think its a ‘got out of bed/brushed my teeth/arrived at work/ kind of pointless journal of trivia. But, as I tell people, it’s a tool and it’s up to the user how to best use it.
Mike Powers last blog post..In Spite of Ourselves
Cheers Mike, you’re not so dusty with it yourself. I think the best approach is to try and add a bit of value to Twitter posts rather than just ‘I burnt the toast this morning’.
It’s certainly what I look for in the feeds that I follow - what’s in it for me if I follow this guy?
I’ve been using Twitbin - integrates Twitter with Firefox so you have updates appearing as a sidebar in the browser. Twhirl and Tweetr sound interesting though, I’ll have a look. Twitter Tools is also handy for integrating your tweeting with your Wordpress blogging - aren’t you using that as well?
I do use Twitter Tools which I like very much but it’s just been upgraded and has stopped posting the Twitter daily digest to the blog which was what I mainly wanted it for. Now I put my links on del.icio.us which posts a daily digest for me.
I tried Twitbin as well but couldn’t get on with it - it was continually asking me to sign in which got annoying eventually.
Same problems here with Twitbin. It’s logging me into some other feed completely. Password and login details shot off into the ether somewhere and I get Mandarin (or maybe Cantonese - not qualified to say) spambots in return. So I’m binning it.
I also can’t find a desktop client that works with my ancient (i.e. >3 yrs old; .3.9) version of Mac OS X. Twhrl and twitterrific aren’t compatible that far back. Any ideas anyone?
And thanks for the recommend. I love robmugabe. He Is Legend.
/liverpool is also pretty good for fans. Though, oddly quiet this morning….
Any ideas anyone?
Mike Power or Chris Applegate might know.
You could try Tweetbar for Firefox. http://mikedemers.net/projects/tweetbar/
[...] This proved not to be the case. [...]