Counting follower mass by absolute tweet number

Byrichard

Dear developers,

As the number of people on twitter increases and as people get into the thousands of followers I would like to demonstrate that those thousands of followers does not amount to much. Instead I would like to count follower mass by the absolute number of each follower, added to the number of followers.

In other words if you have ten followers with ten tweets the number would be 100. If you have 1 follower with a thousand tweets then the value would be a thousand. If you have five followers each with five thousand tweets then that would give 25,000 as a value.

The point of this application would be to demonstrate that your follower mass may not be as great as you excepcted it to be. The more active your followers the higher your value on this scale.

If you develop this application let me know 🙂 I’d love to use it.

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Re-tweeting demonstrates that twitter is broken, here’s why

Byrichard

Having used Friendfeed intensly for the last two days and through reading this post I believe that twitter is on it’s way out for early adopters for one fundamental reason. The re-tweet.

Twitter is over simplified for anything but IRC like conversation and as a result of this for passionate users such as myself we bounce from the walls of twitter without an opportunity to escape it. We see links but know nothing about them. We see retweets but don’t understand them. We get replies of which conversation they were part of and in general twitter is a two message medium.

The two message medium is the way I think best illustrates how people use twitter most of the time. Too many people worry about productivity and wasting time and because they feel guilty for having a conversation on twitter they cut it off after two messages on average. As a result the twitter user often feels that they have wasted time.

In Friendfeed however you write a message, link to an article and if people like it you see how many people, including you liked the article and you can see the comments. As an effect of seeing their comments you may exchange more messages with them. It doesn’t matter when you join the conversation because the flow is still there.

This saves so much time and technology that I am really thinking of moving away from twitter to Friendfeed because it has finally come of age and is more reflective of the way people disseminate and share information for at least a few more weeks.

Anyone else feel the same? Let me know.

Monkey Thieves, Great in HD

Byrichard

Monkey Thieves is a documentary about the Gulta Gang, a gang of monkeys in India wreaking havoc. What I love about this documentary is that it’s a great topic in HD. You see all the details. You see the faces, you see how they eat a grape but throw away the skin for example. You see wide shots of the city and you see other animals.

It’s all about the visual wealth that documentaries can offer you. It’s just a well shot and humorous look at monkey behaviour. You see smiling faces in the background. The scene is monkeys stealing ice creams and eating them. They hold it with the stick, take little bites and more.

Geneva Tweetup during the LIFT09 Conference – Who’s Interested?

Byrichard

One of my biggest frustrations at the moment as a user of twitter is that I can’t meet with the people I chat with on a regular basis. As a result of this I am trying to find as many Geneva based twitter users as possible to organise a tweetup.

There are two options, the first is to do it at the same time as twestival but that is one event that I personally want to have nothing to do with. I was disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm that people at that event had for twitter. As a result I would prefer not to repeat that experience.

What has been suggested by Sandrine is a tweetup at the same time as the LIFT09 conference is taking place in Geneva.

For those that are not familiar with LIFT09:

Lift09 (Geneva, 25-27 Feb. 09) will look back to look ahead, exploring topics like change, solidarity, love, or design, during three days of intense networking and inspiration themed around a simple question: “Where did the future go?”

This means that quite a number of the social media scene, innovators and more should be present. As a result it will be more practical for those living in other cities.

At the same time Geneva is an international city. From the airport down to the Palais Wilson on one side and the UN plage on the other you have a multitude of International organisations. It would be an interesting opportunity to see how the International community could use and take advantage of such a simple yet ubiquitous form of communication.

Geneva based twitter users.

If you’re interested in this event just leave a comment below with your twitter username and let’s see what we can organise. You may also want to join the Switzerland tweetup group on facebook

Twhirl and video recording

Byrichard

Loic Le Meur yesterday released Twhirl to anyone willing to give their name and e-mail address. As a result I am using the latest version of twhirl and it finally offers the ability to record straight from twhirl. That means you can record video straight from twhirl. No more web interface.

Of course some credit should go to Critter and Seesmicair. His project became a reality.

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High Definition Pleasure

Byrichard

I love high definition because it reminds me of those massive paintings you see in art galleries. You know the ones. It’s those that have things happening in different parts. Look to the top right and you see one set of people, look at the centre of the image and you notice something slightly different. Look to the right of there and yet another story is told.

That’s because high definition is a large canvas where everyone that appears in the shot tells a story. Look at that shot. You see Obama in the foreground and you see the faces behind. You see the family, you see the faces of those that are having a good time, those that are there because they have to be and more.

It’s also about eavesdropping in the visual sense of the word. You look at the action in the foreground but you can also look at the book shelf, you can see which titles are present. You can see the marks on the walls. You can see that person sitting, and from the facial features see whether they are tired or full of energy.

I just love high definition. I’ve been watching high definition content and I must admit that documentary is the type of content that may be the most fascinating. You see reconstructions of historical battles, background actions and it’s just a full image. If it was audio it would be high fidelity. It’s just complete.

It doesn’t require fast cutting, it doesn’t require close ups. What it does require is a process of thinking of how to provide a frame, an image, a canvas that’s interesting to look at. It’s getting closer to photography in a sense.

The Forbes Intern is not wrong about twitter in Europe

Byrichard

Saw this post on techcrunch and the intern is not wrong. I left a comment on the blog. I also decided to leave that comment here.

Get out of London, get out of Paris. Get to the provinces and the small towns. get into the french speaking, Lithuanian speaking, portuguese portions of twitter and the social media. Let’s see whether people really are interested in twitter.

As an english person of course you’d be led to believe that twitter is popular. You have over 10,000 people in London alone using twitter. Now step out to Portland, Dorset and see how many twitter users are active there.

Twitter is not popular outside of the microcosm yet. Just because big names like ross, branson and others are on twittter doesn’t mean you’ve got an active group of users. It just means people heard about twitter, created an account but then not followed it up with actual tweeting, especially not in sufficient quantity for it to be considered anything more than a fad yet.

I say this as a former London twitter user now living in Switzerland where people are still rather pessimistic about twitter and it’s value.

Of course people have heard about it but it fails to have any relevance until the time when their friends in the physical world come and participate.

The intern isn’t wrong in what he/she says.

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Zurich twitter dinner and the Inauguration in Geneva

Byrichard

For the moment I am planning on going to Zurich for the twitter dinner. It’s the first Zurich twitter event I go to and it will be interesting whether I need to speak swiss german or whether my English and French will help make conversation a little simpler.

I don’t exchange messages with many Zurich twitter users so it will be quite different from the London events where I had exchanged so many messages. There’s another one in a month’s time in Paris although with the label I don’t enjoy much. I like the word tweetup because you have to smile to say it.

Video of the event may arrive online.

As a side note I should be going to one of the Geneva Inauguration event to get some footage of how the international community/facebook users of Geneva react to the event.

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Arte have a twitter channel for their programs

Byrichard

A few days ago I noticed that twitter was tweeting their programs as they were on in German and this looked like a good idea. I commented it was a shame that they didn’t have the same in French. Within a few days it’s there. This morning I saw Arte’s tweet for one program and so I’m watching a guy play some Chopin on the Piano.

I spend quite a bit of time watching the twitter stream so if someone gives me their program details, as an opt in then there’s a good chance that I will tune into the program on the spare of the moment.

If I had intended to watch the program at 2038 in three days time I would have forgottten about it. As things are that’s what’s playing on the right side of my screen now.