Ever since the Twitter launch, people have been trying to convince me that the service is important – some go so far as to say it’s a vital part of the internet community. While I agree that it is somewhat of a phenomenon, I’ve never come around to see the real point of Twitter. The only thing that’s good about Twitter is that it’s free, and it seems even the Twitter-using population agrees.

The story comes courtesy of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s 2010 Digital Future Study, which found that a mammoth zero percent of Twitter users would pay for the service. Zero. Now, part of that is certainly that it’s tough to transition users from a free service to a paid model. In the same vein, though, users that truly care about a service will pay to keep it alive. Ninja Video, a video site that was recently raided by the feds, had sizable donations from its members, even though it wasn’t required for use of the site. The fact that Twitter is ZERO percent – not 0.8, not 0.6, not 0.005 – says a lot to me.

No, this post is not invitation for your views on Twitter. I realize some people think it’s valuable. Some people Know it’s the greatest thing in the world. If it was that important, though, you’d probably be willing to pay for it.

A pretty serious bug hit Twitter recently that allowed users to “force” others to follow them. By typing “accept [username]” you could gain any follower you wanted. The bug apparently only worked on the web interface – not in any third-party apps – and may only have appeared to give you followers, meaning those people would show up on your list but would not receive streams like a real follower would. I say serious only because you could potentially achieve some very prominent followers, like, say, Barack Obama, through this little exploit.

Twitter is aware of the bug, but the fix is a little ugly in the meantime. It requires rolling back accounts that made use of the exploit to zero followers. That includes sites that were doing any kind of testing. Sites like TechCrunch.

The zero count is only temporary, but it was probably a bit of a shock for Twitter’s heaviest users.

Fred Wilson laid out an interesting post at the Business Insider this morning. For those who don’t know, Wilson is a partner at Union Square Ventures and one of Twitter’s top investors. Wilson’s basic point was that current Twitter development focuses on plugging holes in the service, not creating new things with what the service can offer.

Consider this – not terribly long after Twitter launched people realized they needed a way to share long URLs in a compressed format. Along comes bit.ly with its URL shortening service. How bout TwitPic for sharing pictures. The examples continue from there. Point is, though, that none of these things take any sort of interesting advantage of the Twitter platform or concept. They’re just methods by which people share the shortened versions of information encourage by Twitter. As Wilson says it, these are things Twitter should have had built in to the service at launch.

Maybe you didn’t hear him correctly. These are things Twitter is going to do. Just like Facebook did with all of the crazy apps that just filled the gaps, Twitter will be rounding out its own feature set to compete with and provide the services of third-party developers. In some cases, as was the case with FriendFeed, that could mean acquisitions. Wilson didn’t say it overtly, but his message is loud and clear.

It’s time for developers to do something great, like the social gaming apps for Facebook. Analysts estimate social gaming will hit $1.6 billion in revenue next year, and Wilson thinks that number is too low. That’s a pretty nice pie to slice up.

Source: Business Insider

I was a little alarmed when I opened my Google Reader and found eight new followers. Nearly everyone I know has used Gmail for years, and I’ve had a few followers since Google rolled out more social networking features, but eight in two days? Madness.

When I opened Google Buzz I understood. The service creates a profile for you and automatically follows the people you have conversed with in the past. Thankfully, it’s transparent enough that I realized what I was doing and cancelled a few follows that I just don’t want. It’s strange, though, since your followed profiles can be viewed publicly unless you mess with your privacy settings. Not a bad thing, unless you have particularly jealous friends/roommates/significant others.

Just remember to dig through whatever Buzz automatically sets up for you. It could save you a lot of “and who the hell is she” arguments down the road.

If you haven’t heard of the Twitter account “shitmydadsays,” you should check it out. Written by a guy named Justin Halpern, the site is supposedly just what the account name suggests – a running list of anecdotes from this guy’s grumpy old curmudgeon of a father. According to the bio on the account, Justin says, “I’m 29. I live with my 73-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says[.]” Things might change around the Halpern household, though, unless Justin is in desperate need of new material for his TV deal. Yes, the Twitter account has turned into a TV deal for Halpern.

The deal for the show came from CBS, with Warner Bros. set to produce. Halpern is actually going to write the show, and will be working with Will & Grace creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick. I’m still so shocked I feel like I should rewrite the whole thing to see if it makes any more sense. The weirdest part is that the account doesn’t even have that many followers. Sure, it’s grown exponentially, but exposure on sites like TechCrunch will do that. But 700,000 followers = TV deal? CBS must really like the content.

Maybe that’s the part that isn’t so surprising, and actually turns out to be kind of reassuring. I think Halpern’s funny – damn funny, in fact – so it’s kinda cool to see a network pick up something with a little potential. Now, if we could just get them to stop cancelling shows like Arrested Development.

Source: TechCrunch

I’m not sure why Peek decided to make a device specifically for Twitter users but it did, and the thing is finally for sale at Amazon. The TwitterPeek adds nationwide Twitter access to the standard email/texting device for all those Twitter users who don’t currently have a smartphone. The device runs $99 with 6 months of included service or $199 for unlimited lifetime service.

The unlimited plan sounds alright, but even feature phones are starting to add Twitter service, so it seems a bit redundant to carry around yet another device for the simple service. If you need Twitter that badly, just upgrade your current plan or get a limited plan on a smartphone. It’s really not so big a price difference.

Since its beginning, Twitter has tried to make it clear that your tweets are your property. You make them, you control who can see them. Problem was, the micro-blogging site couldn’t make good on that promise until recently, when it finally figured out how to keep deleted tweets out of search results.

Up until the end of this week, users could type your name into the search box and get every tweet, even those you deleted. If there was something you didn’t mean to post or wanted to correct, that little bit of info was there too. Thankfully, Biz Stone & Co. fixed that little problem. Now that problematic material is gone. Permanently.

Now all you have to worry about are the scores of sites cropping up to index tweets. Depending how those sites gather and store info, your deleted material may be a little more public than you’d hope. Yeah, drunk tweeting is still probably a terrible idea.

According to an article in the Telegraph, Twitter plans to add video tweeting service to the site. Startups like Tweetube and Twiddeo have tried to do the same but with little success. Up until now users had to exit Twitter proper to see the vids. With the update they wouldn’t have to.

It sounds like Twitter is hoping to use new features to bounce back from bad press surrounding celebrities leaving the site. I mean, Hannah Montana is gone. You gotta do something to get back on top, right? Seriously, if content is vapid enough that even Miley Cyrus would leave, I’d say skies look stormy in Twitter’s future.

Video tweets sound so painful I would be forced to immediately unfollow anyone making them. Of course they could make those daily recording devices extremely popular. I do love me a good privacy scandal.

What’s Vivox? You may be using the service without knowing it. Vivox currently delivers in-game voice chat for EVE and Second Life a boasts more than 15 million users. But the service is looking to expand into a much bigger market: Facebook.

Yes, live voice chat is coming to Facebook, and I just have one thing to say: Thank god for Facebook Lite. I hate to sound curmudgeonly, and no one likes a broken record, but voice chat is the last thing I want from people on Facebook. I realize this is great news for people who use Facebook as a primary method of communication. For all of you this could be really fantastic news.

I will say, the service actually sounds really cool. It offers conference support, and users outside Facebook will be able to call in to participate in real-time chat, which could make keeping in touch a whole lot easier. One of the most interesting moves Vivox is making, though, is releasing the source code to other third-party app developers.

Vivox will run on Facebook as a plug-in, so it’s not technically part of the core set of Facebook features. By opening up the source code, Vivox is giving voice chat to anything from games to utilities. It’s pretty easy to see how Facebook is swallowing up other social services at an alarming rate. It’s nabbed chat from AIM, integrated Twitter-like features, and now looks to go after Skype. Granted, this isn’t Facbeook proper doing the last, but it’s pretty close, and this kind of integration could turn Zuckerberg’s eyes to Vivox, and potentially open his wallet.

For now Vivox is testing in closed beta, and probably won’t go public for a while. When it does, I’ll be sure to let you know, probably by mentioning once again just how much I hate Facebook.

T-Mobile’s Sidekick got the smartphone treatment today with the addition of Facebook and Twitter applications to the Sidekick Download Catalog. As one of the most prominent phones to implement a full keyboard and some proprietary messaging features, it’s really been a long time coming. The applications work with the Sidekick 2008, the Sidekick LX, and the Sidekick Slide.

The Facebook application is free but the Twitter app will run you $2 a month. I gotta say, $24 a year for Twitter use seems a little out of hand. It’s also strange considering the Sidekick 2009 comes pre-packaged with free apps for both Facebook and Twitter. Was Twitter really that much harder to integrate into the old phones than Facebook? Did they just not have as much developer support? Is the app just that cool?

If you have an older Sidekick and the time to drop a comment, let us know. This is a strange one.

A recent story on Reuters claims airlines may be struggling against a new foe in their never-ending PR war: Twitter. Where people were once making phone calls and composing strongly worded letters from the cramped discomfort of a landed airline seat, they’re now blowing off unmitigated steam on social sites like Twitter.

I opened the story because I thought it might have a nice spin on making Twitter useful. I know the service has its uses, but I find them to be few and far between for the average user. As it turns out, it’s not Twitter that seems to be doing the talking to the airlines, it’s things like Dave Carroll’s YouTube song, United Breaks Guitars. The song, which Carroll wrote after United broke a guitar and failed to take responsibility, went viral, and urged a quick response from the airline. United donated some money in Carroll’s name to a music foundation.

So Carroll makes music, United breaks Carroll’s instrument of choice, Carroll can’t make music without his instrument of choice, United donates money to help more people get better at making music – is this really the course of action we’re after? Seems to me United is trying to say, “Oh we didn’t break that guitar because we hate music. We love music. We want more people to make music.” But making music was never the issue. The issue was how some United worker mishandled Carroll’s luggage. So why is United donating to a music foundation? Why not employee dexterity training? What about emotional intelligence courses to increase worker empathy? Hell, why not just pay your handlers more for not breaking your customer’s belongings? I would take anything, anything but a donation to a god damn music foundation.

What we need to realize as a collective customer base is that United is more like the detached, loaded father who still thinks we were one big mistake than a company that knows its business. See, Dad knows what bitching sounds like, and when it happens he throws a pile of money at it. Bitch some more, get a car. Bitch some more, get a new watch. Bitch some more, get a credit card. What dad doesn’t understand are the words coming out of our mouths. He doesn’t know, or more appropriately, doesn’t care to know the real problem, so he addresses it however he sees fit, which is usually some non sequitur of epic proportions.

I realize I got a little off track there, but all of this is to say that none of our complaints, whether they’re through Twitter or on YouTube or Facebook or anything else, matter one bit if companies like United can’t figure out how to handle them. Christi Day, the woman behind the Facebook and Twitter profiles for Southwest airlines, wants you to know one thing: “The main thing that our customers need to know is that we hear them.” And it seems they do. They hear the noise we’re making, they just fail to understand the words.

Most everyone has seen or heard of social networking sites affecting privacy in crazy ways. They’ve cost people jobs, ended countless relationships, and in the best cases, resulted in some bruised pride. As more people get hit, more users are choosing to remove questionable content from their pages, but the content’s not necessarily gone.

Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng put recent findings from Cambridge University researchers to the test with some unsavory results. Turns out your deleted pictures may not be as far gone as you’d like.

Jacqui tested Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Flickr with the same method. She deleted pictures from each site on May 21st and then watched the direct links for six weeks. Twitter and Flickr were both good, truly deleting the pictures after a hard refresh. MySpace and Facebook didn’t fare so well. Direct links from both sites still produce the “deleted” images, some six weeks after they were pulled.

Moral of the story? Continue to censor your drunken impulses, particularly with regard to the pictures you upload.

Everyone is looking to Microsoft after a few recent tweets on a Twitter account that’s run by the Office 2010 team. The tweets are as follows:

June 2009 will be an important month for Zune lovers.

New product launch, that’s all I’m allowed to say. Hold off from buying an iPhone/Pre.

Of course no rumor comes without its fair share of oddities. This one, for instance, comes from a marketing rep who claims the new version of word will integrate with social networking sites. Lolwut? Facebook in Word? Why?

Also, suggesting to hold off an a phone purchase for the imminent…announcement of a new MS product? That’s all this can be, right? An announcement. Which means months and months of waiting assuming we like what we see (and if it’s really a Zune phone, I doubt we will). Of course, recent Microsoft ads do suggest the company is both panicky and losing the better sense of judgement. Could this be the fallout?

QQ Queue is a special feature covering widespread weeping across the blogosphere. Crybabies beware: this feature is ruthless.

If you’re in tune with the tech scene, you’ve probably heard about the Kutcher/CNN race to 1 million Twitter devotees. The dashing celeb threw down the gauntlet when he noticed both his own massive following and CNN’s similar numbers. As you can see from the link above, though, the battle was not one-sided. CNN tried to keep pace with breaking news updates about the current standings. In the end, Ashton won, but not before sucking world-class companies like EA into the ridiculous scrim.

Enter Oprah. Billionaire, Cultural Icon, Celebrity so big She gets the words that describe Her capitalized. Oprah saw CNN and Ashton duking it out and decided to enter the fray. Today she’s hosting Kutcher and (gasp) joining Twitter! This is…ridiculous.

First of all, Twitter from people like, come to think of it almost anyone, is pointless. Yes there are stories of Twitter helping people out of tight spots (like Egyptian prison). Yes there are some journalistic benefits. For the most part, though, Twitter is just adding to the noise. Knowing that someone is eating a sandwich or drinking coffee or getting a haircut (all of which are being tweeted as I write this) is not relationship building, despite what Twitter’s promo video says. These little blurbs are no more real human interactions than a video camera cataloguing a person’s life would be.

So why do I care? Read the rest of this entry »