Josh Holland from Joyengine is heading the anti-Twitter movement (sort of).
I can not wait until Twitter goes the way of the slap bracelet and they’re talking about it on VH1’s “I love the 2000’s”. Wait, is that what it’s called? The 2000’s? Hold on, let me tweet that and see what my idiot friends think.
The brilliance of Twitter is that you choose your audience. If you have idiot friends, I think it’s time you find new ones, Josh.
Via Josh Spear.
If Microsoft can ever get around to releasing a decent 21st Century operating system, maybe this will be realistic. Or just ransack Bill Gates’ house, because it seems that he already has this technology in his living room.
Via Monoscope.
Over the past year or so I’ve heard about Yelp’s extortion tactics. If you have bad reviews, they can make it go away. If you need some help, they can put your listing at the top of all relevant searches as a recommended business. For a cost.
Several business owners likened Yelp to the Mafia, and one said she feared its retaliation. “Every time I had a sales person call me and I said, ‘Sorry, it doesn’t make sense for me to do this,’ … then all of a sudden reviews start disappearing.”
Last year, I ran into an old acquaintance who had been working for Yelp, and he was definitely not aware of this tactic when I brought it up. Tack this onto the completely skewed system of a five star rating, and you’re left with a pretty useless site, since anything below a four star isn’t really going to be considered good. Why not just have a thumbs up or thumbs down system? Either you like it or you don’t.
Also, you get these really antagonizing reviews from keyboard warriors.
Thanks, @selfedge.
Rands in Repose takes a good look at the art of the tweet.
There’s another type of tweet that I want to talk about briefly and that’s the conversational tweet. What does this tweet tell you?
@commanda No clue
Not a thing. As you’ll see with the three following guidelines, my Twitter expectation is that each time I glance at my Twitterstream that I can something of value in any tweet. While conversational tweets are interesting for you and the recipient, they leave the rest of us in the dark.
More of a side note to this observation is the fact that @replies are generally confusing to begin with. Yes, you have to be friends with both parties to see their @replies, but what about referential tweets that aren’t necessarily a reply, but rather a roll-call of sorts?
If someone @replies you—note, this means they start a tweet with @yourusername—you will see that in your main timeline ifyou follow the person.
Twitter doesn’t really clarify beyond this tidbit, so I’m still left wondering what audience remains depending on how I reply to tweets. This seems to be largely a byproduct of audience demand, so the chatter can be inane but works for many to get more mileage out of Twitter.But ultimately, Rands in Repose makes a good point about the content seekers versus the personal touch.
Twitter is you. I’m a big fan of the retweet, but I have the same fundamental problem with it that I have with literal answers to “What are you doing?” My question about the zero-add retweet is, “So what?”
I, too, wonder about my tweets and their relevance or necessity in my network’s stream of 140char data. I’ve also been guilty of making superfluous tweets that don’t encourage or project my online persona. Being more conscious of tweeting as of late, I am starting to understand that gaining an audience will inevitably shape Twitter from being a very friends-only-mass-text-message service to a more accessible form of communication to people who find value in your opinions and thoughts (on the Internets, of course).
If you’re amped for Watchmen and have been excited for past comic book adaptation films, Wired features a bunch of comic book employees with their favorite heroes and biggest pet peeves about the culture.
Via Gerry Canavan.
Much like the rumored shutdown of the San Francisco Chronicle, Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, experienced the same in December. After 149 years and 311 days, the Rocky Mountain News published its final edition on February 27th, 2009. If you can, watch through the entire video. It’s heartbreaking.
Your friendly Friday public service announcement.
A list of things it is not ok to ever say. I agree completely with ‘za (which my friend back in New York would always say), vaycay, and convo. When I talk to some people it feels like an e-conversation…outloud.
Via Daring Fireball.
Find out what would happen if you dropped a fat man on your city with this google nuke mash-up from Carlos Labs.
Snacks and shit is a blog dedicated to absurd rap lyrics, taken out of context, but really taken into context. Here’s a good one…“Finger near a nigga asshole like ‘WHOA!’”.
Via Meta-Filter.
Gmail adds undo feature
Gmail has implemented an undo button for e-mails. It actually just holds your outgoing message for five seconds to give you a chance to hit the panic button. It would be magical if they could somehow arrange something like a real undo, though. Works well with gmail goggles.