Posts Tagged ‘twitter’
What is a Tweetup –
Last Updated on Sunday, 1 November 2009 02:30 Written by Mike Saturday, 31 October 2009 11:00
A tweetup is a Twitter meetup. Every city has them, they are pretty much ubiquitous. There is no escaping them. The @ nametags everywhere. The sometimes awkward conversations that take place when you have more than 140 characters in which to say what is on your mind. Tweetups take a great service like Twitter and turn it into something bigger, something even more social.
Bigger? Why is it bigger? Because you are able to meet people you have only met online. IRL or in real life you can talk about whatever with the people you associate with on twitter. You can also meet new contacts to enhance your career, and maybe even have a few drinks.
This casual observer believes that using more than 140 characters to talk to people is what makes tweetups so popular. Just imagine you can say something without cropping it short, and get a reply in less than six and a half minutes. Amazing concept to socialize without the constraints of a text box or @ reply.
If you are thinking of attending a tweetup, by all means do it. You won’t know what it is like until you attend one. I have attended several, and always come away with a feeling of accomplishment. If anything you will at least have some new found friends to tweet with on a regular basis.
That is what social networking is all about isn’t it. Meeting people, networking, business, pleasure, laughs, new places. Get out there and try one out. You will love it I swear!
Twitter People – What kind of people use twitter
Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 October 2009 10:28 Written by Mike Wednesday, 28 October 2009 04:38
This question is often asked by people after hearing about twitter for the first time. There is no simple answer to this. There are plenty of self-absorbed marketing types, oodles of celebrities, sports players, and musicians. There are also people from all walks of life. Demographic studies show that more users are women, from the 18-34 age group. Primarily African American, with incomes under 30K/year.
Graph of Twitter Users
Being a 42 yo Caucasian I don’t see that, but then again I am not looking for that either. I have on a few occasions noticed this demographic within our company JobShouts twitter stream.
Twitter is real time information. In fact it is so loaded with information, Google and Bing decided to index and attempt to make some sense out of the continuous flood of information being shared. In the world of real time search, what happened a week ago on twitter, may as well have happened during the civil war. Anything shared in real time grows old moments after it happens with the exception of Michael Jackson and planes on the Hudson.
Basically this all boils down to one thing. It all depends on what twitter means to you. It could be a way to keep up with friends while you are on the go. It can also be a source for news. It can be a great networking tool, or a little black book. The possibilities are endless.
With so many people on the twitter bandwagon, it can mean many things to almost as many type of people.
I think that is one of twitter’s main attractors, for those seeking knowledge or to gain more from the human/social experience. That is what twitter is to me. What is it to you?
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Twitter Image Sizes
Last Updated on Monday, 28 September 2009 12:09 Written by Mike Sunday, 20 September 2009 09:17
I had to do some research on this for a project I am working on. I am calling twitter search in a javascript. The results are used to display timeline search results for the hashtag associated with a tweetup.
It is designed for live broadcasts where a live feed is needed on a projection or large LCD/Plasma display.
One of the obstacles I ran into was the size of the images returned via the API. There are technically 2 size images available for linking from a twitter profile. Those are 48×48 and 73×73.
I just added another line of code to the mix to replace the url from the JSON results with the bigger one.
var profileimage = this.profile_image_url.replace(“normal,’bigger’);
The URL for a normal sized image:
HTTP://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/257791952/Mike_bucs_profile_normal.jpg
The URL for a ‘bigger’ image
HTTP://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/257791952/Mike_bucs_profile_bigger.jpg
This might not seem like much but when you are dealing with a large room nearly doubling the image size, helps a lot.
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Tags: Images, Size, twitter | Posted under Geek Tech | 3 Comments
The Florida Aquarium – A Tweetup
Last Updated on Saturday, 31 October 2009 10:48 Written by Mike Monday, 25 May 2009 01:54
Let me start out by saying thanks to Josh Carrico (@sigpejedi) and Julia Gorzka (@juliagorzka) for organizing another awesome event. You guys make it happen! To The Florida Aquarium, they deserve a hap tip for letting us twitterers have free run of the facility.
If you’re wondering what a tweetup is, well in its simplest form its a meeting of people. People that have adopted to twitter as a way of connecting to others in the social web. In case you haven’t heard, and you live under a rock. The web we once looked to for information has evolved into this amazing social space.
Our local channel, Fox 13 ran a story on the local tweetup scene the night before the event. A special segment was aired during the 10 o’clock news. A record crowd of over 250 people gathered at 3 o’clock Saturday afternoon
If you have not been to the Aquarium yet. Make plans now. There is lots to see and do, as soon as you walk in there is a sting ray petting area. A variety of rays and small leopard type sharks? that will swim right up to you. On this Saturday afternoon, it was a welcomed break from the development work of jobshouts.
From the start, this event promised some excitement as a couple of tweetup resulars would get to swim with the fishes. Another brave soul could even dive with the sharks. Yes real live blacktips, whitetips, and I even think I spotted a blue shark. Blue sharks are not known to be social creatures.
Sharks!
I would have to say that @dandye is a rather brave lass. Swimming in the coral reef shark tank takes a bravado not found in many men. Even with the ‘body guards’ hovering over his position; there were a few times when a shark came a little too close for my comfort.
Even though there were about 10-12 sharks in the tank, they seemed slightly disinterested in the divers and pretty much swam about at their leisure. The sea turtle seemed to take a rather sporting interest in @dandye and was prodded away from him on a couple of occasions.
All in all it was a great turn-out that spoke volumes about the effect social media and twitter is having on communities across the nation. Next up I hear that the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, has requested to schedule a tweetup at their facilities. I have been to the Dali before it moved from the Bayfront location. Promises to be a fun time. Indeed!
One thing I think about is this. If these tweetup’s keep attracting so many people, at this pace we may need to find a larger venue to accomodate everyone. At some point there may be 500 people. Can you imagine that? I can, it is called social media for a reason.
So don’t delay, jump on board the twitter train. Come out to the next tweetup. Stop by and say Hello to myself or one of our many twitter friends. You won’t be sorry you did, Scouts Honor!
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Why you should use bit.ly vs. tr.im
Last Updated on Monday, 9 November 2009 12:36 Written by Mike Tuesday, 19 May 2009 12:30
There are a lot of URL shorteners competing for your attention. Still I fail to see a viable business model. Especially with so many of them not charging one thin dime.
Anyway keeping to the focus of the article, I feel the clear winner in the shortener war is bit.ly.
There service is clearly ahead of the rest. While both providers allow you to post twitter messages with shortened links, use tracking stats, allow you to build custom URL’s, and an API for developers to implement their features into existing apps.
One thing that really stands out with bit.ly is the ability to monitor the link in real time, as the clicks come in.If your marketing a website, product, blog, or service this really stands out. No need to refresh a page constantly. They are performing an AJAX style update every 5 seconds. If your tweeting links, and would like to see how effective they are, in real time. This service is clearly the winner.
In addtion bit.ly will tell you what country the clicks are coming from, if the link is conversed about on twitter, or friendfeed. It will also show who is talking about the link. Even if its reTweeted without your username you will see it in the link’s info stats. You can manage multiple twitter accounts, or share to facebook, gmail contacts, and email clients.
Want to see how popular a bit.ly link is? You can! even if you did not shorten it, you can still view every bit.ly shortened link. All you have to do is add a ‘+’ to the end of the URL as follows http://bit.ly/12tJvo+. Put that into your address bar and smoke it! You can see the stats to any bit.ly link. That’s just plain groovy.
I fully expect to see other services copy this clear leader in URL shorteners. Twihrl has built in a feature to allow you use your bit.ly API key to use the service as the preferred shortener. I expect to see this implemented in tweetdeck very soon. What say you?