Remember that first tweetup?
Here we have @sizemore speaking about why he organised the first London tweetup. I will upload some of the other interviews soon but I’m just checking the player embedding first
Once more twitter has shown it’s value. An earthquake occured earlier this morning and people started to twitter about it within half an hour. people like Robert Scoble started linking to the story. It took at least an hour for most of the major networks to start speaking about this news.
There’s a lag of course, as journalists have to do some research, get some reports and distribute them. I did a search on the twitter search engine flaptor and here is a little taste of the content of those tweets.
Here is another source of tweets.
It’s Day Five of ORCA in Switzerland. Next time we discuss shaking hands we should stop, and go into self-isolation. We had all the signs that a pandemic was coming. We knew about China and we saw what was going on in Italy. We knew that a virus was infecting people at a rapid rate.
When I chose not to go to the Graduate Institute because I knew a Pandemic was coming I was right. It wasn’t worth the risk. If everyone had had the common sense, and forethought to start isolating we wouldn’t have seen such a rapid increase in the spread of the virus.
When I saw people discussing whether to shake hands I thought it was alarmist and stupid and to some degree, I wasn’t wrong. I was wrong to think we should shake hands but I was right to start avoiding large groups. The trick, to avoid pandemics is to follow international news, and see what is happening in other countries, and to see what actions they are taking. we should then take the same actions pre-emptively.
If everyone outside of Italy had taken those actions sooner the virus would have struggled to spread and society might have fewer affected people.
The lesson we should have learned is that when we see a pandemic is coming we should discuss whether to go into self-isolation, rather than whether to shake hands.
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.
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
Hello Twitter-ers!
As you may already know, Obvious is the parent company of Twitter
and it’s never a dull day around here. Today our little building
is abuzz with activity surrounding an announcement that Odeo
(another Obvious product) is ready for a new home. We’re
entertaining offers from potential buyers because Odeo deserves
the same love and attention we’ve been heaping on Twitter these
days. Have you been by lately? http://twitter.com
More about Odeo: http://tinyurl.com/2yoy84
Defamer Brings The Oscars to Twitter
Popular Hollywood gossip blog Defamer.com is going to the Oscars
this Sunday and they’re bringing Twitter! Sorta. Follow Defamer on
Twitter and you’ll get live from-the-scene updates. Who won what?
What’s happening in the seats? What are the stars doing? Get the
updates on your phone while you watch on TV to make things more
interesting or if you can’t watch, just get the updates.
Text FOLLOW DEFAMER to 40404
or, Visit http://twitter.com/defamer
Oscars: http://oscar.com
If you haven’t set up your phone to work with Twitter yet, now is
a good time! You can do that here: http://twitter.com/devices. The
Oscars are broadcast live February 25 at 5pt/8et on ABC. Speaking
of coveted awards, you can still vote for Twitter and help us win
the SXSW People’s Choice awards. We will be so psyched if we win.
Vote Twitter! https://secure.sxsw.com/peoples_choice/
SXSW Update
There’s going to be lots of folks from three industries
represented at the SXSW Conference in Austin next month. We’ve
heard from people in the Interactive, Music, and Film industries
who are excited to get on Twitter during the week-long event.
We’ll have big screens set up in the hallways and we’re setting up
a special, easy way for folks to get their updates on the screens.
Once we set that up, we’ll tell you more. Even if you can’t make
it to SXSW, you’ll still be able to catch all the buzz.
Office Full of Great Folks
Obvious employs less than ten people but the building is filling up
fast since we’ve opened our doors to some other really cool
companies working on interesting projects. Two of the projects are
still top secret, there’s a couple Y Combinator startups sharing
space with us, and the other folks are 30boxes.com, Boso.com, and
the illustrious Niall Kennedy. (Hi Niall!) When the secret
projects launch, we’ll tell you about them–they’re cool!
http://30boxes.com
http://boso.com
http://www.niallkennedy.com/
http://ycombinator.com/
Okay, back to work. Lots to do this week!
Happy Twitter-ing,
Biz Stone and the Twitter Team
http://twitter.com/biz
As serendipity would have it I have been a wordpress blogger for at least 11 years. As I was looking through notifications on worpdress.com I came across the notification below yesterday. As I searched for ideas for blog posts for today I came across an e-mail.
On this day, eleven years ago I set up this blog. Since then I have written about one thousand two hundred posts, tens of thousands of tweets and many many facebook messages. I mention this because blogging and social media are two different challenges. With blogging you spend the day thinking about a topic. You’re searching for something that you can write about for 300 or more words. Compared to nanowrimo where you try to have an average of 1666 words per day this is easy, until you add the public dimension. Writing for the world wide web is different to writing for yourself, with the knowledge that you will go back and edit it, eventually, if ever.
Writing for twitter and facebook is easy. Twitter is a conversation so the more you socialise with other people the more dynamic your posting can be. The same is true of facebook except that facebook is a “silo” of people you vet and trust. Twitter is in essence a chatroom.
A blog post is more time consuming. I like to write about technology and about the adventures I have. That’s when inspiration is easier.
Imagine for an instant that Wordpress.com was more popular than Facebook or twitter. Imagine for a moment that people decided that instead of spending a few seconds per update they spent half an hour to an hour per post. Imagine that people read long form posts rather than short updates. Imagine that we go back to a blogging social media landscape where people write reflective posts. Imagine that we read rather than skim.
The beauty of the long form, of writing blog posts is that we create content that people search for and read. Emotion is involved, but so is thought. Through blogging we generate an income for our content. More people should blog, and more people should share their posts.
The media is in a time of convergence and that’s what some people find fascinating. i’m listening to a number of podcasts about technology, the media and computing in order to keep informed on developments.
Today I will be working once again with footage that has been shot in another country. What makes this particularly interesting is that the footage is coming from Hungary whilst I will be in Switzerland. I will see the races take place, then I will cut the video, add some text and upload it to a website. This is similar to what you’d expect to find on a variety of websites.
Once the event has been finished for a week or two I may take one or two of the edits and upload them as part of my showreel.