Twitts

Link of  th Day – We tried it – Bistro MD

Hugo Chavez, president of the socialist utopia Venezuela, has announced that a team of 200 workers would help him manage his new Twitter account. Chavez said of the new hire: “I’m creating a team due to the avalanche of requests, and some grievances”.

Socialism: worse products and services, 200 times more expensive. And I bet he’s telling his subjects “in America, they don’t even hire hundreds of people to manage social media”.

A website that provides minute by minute updates on people who are not at home has sparked concern that it will encourage burglars. The site, called Please Rob Me, launched this week and has been criticised for being the perfect tool for any self-respecting housebreaker.

But the three brains behind the website insist they’re not helping criminals, but highlighting the dangers of the latest social networking craze of announcing to the world where you are at any given moment via the internet. Social networking crazes such as Foursquare, in which users post their location online, are a goldmine for potential burglars, the website’s founders said. The Please Rob Me website says: ‘Our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burglarized.’

Instead they are trying to alert people to the danger of putting too much information on the world wide web. The Dutch website channels information from other networking sites like Twitter into one place, listing ‘all those empty homes out there’ and providing a running total of ‘new opportunities’. The information it provides on people’s movements is searchable by city or by their Twitter username.

‘We’re leaving the lights on when we’re going on a holiday, but we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home,’ said co-founder Frank Groeneveld, 22.

******

How to build your career in b2b

A quip on Twitter by a snowbound traveller has led to his arrest and bailing on suspicion of communicating a bomb hoax…

Frustrated by delays at Robin Hood airport, near Doncaster, 26-year-old Paul Chambers keyed in: “Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” Police knocked on his door in Doncaster shortly afterwards and arrested him under the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Bailed after more than six hours of questioning, Chambers also had his computer and iPhone briefly confiscated and the message was deleted from Twitter’s website. Tweets of support and incredulity have since been posted by some of the 769 people regularly following his page, along with requests for interviews from journalists.

South Yorkshire police said that Chambers remained bailed because of the Twitter comment and added: “We advise members of the public to use such sites appropriately, as they are easily accessible to the public and any inappropriate use could cause unnecessary concern and lead to comments being reported to police…”

Chambers describes himself on his Twitter profile as a “film-watching, football-loving, rubbish-talking, hyphen-using idiot”. His tweets are kept locked, which means that only followers accepted by him can see them, rather than the public at large.

Twitter has had quite a year. Not only has it attracted worldwide attention and millions of new users, “Twitter” has been named the top word in the English language for 2009.

According to the Global Language Monitor, which examines language usage across the world, “Twitter” beat out “Obama,” “H1N1,” “stimulus,” and “vampire” to take the crown. Interestingly, “2.0″ came in at sixth place.

Click here to see a full listing of the top words, phrases, and names of the year–and of the decade.

A New York-based anarchist has been arrested by the FBI and charged with hindering prosecution after he allegedly used the social networking site Twitter to help protesters at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh evade the police.

Elliot Madison, 41, from Queens, had his home raided and was put on $30,000 (?19,000) bail after he and Michael Wallschlaeger, 46, were tracked to the Carefree Inn motel in Pittsburgh during the summit on 24 and 25 September.

The pair were found sitting in front of a bank of laptops and emergency frequency radio scanners. They were wearing headphones and microphones and had many maps and contact numbers in the room.

Official police documents allege the two men used Twitter messages to contact protesters at the summit “and to inform the protesters and groups of the movements and actions of law enforcement”.

[ via - guardian.co.uk ]

Twitter will not host adverts on its website this year, says co-founder Biz Stone.

Stone used the 140: Twitter conference in Los Angeles this week to reveal that the micro-blogging service has benefitted from substantial investment and funding this year, ensuring advertising isn’t a priority.

“Any kind of approach toward advertising is going to be a while… we’re not thinking about that just yet,” he said.

However, Stone didn’t comment on whether the ads would appear in 2010.

Stone said the company was focusing on rolling out new features, scaling the business and adding new services, such as paid-for commercial accounts.

He also revealed that these account holders would be given access to new tools that could analyse and gather data from their followers.

[ via - pcworld.com ]

Ahh, the Internet, where people will try anything to make $1 million.

Thanks to Twitter, we’re now aware of 1milliontweets.com, a Web site set up to sell 1 million tweets for $1 each.

“Promote your website, advertise your business or just leave your mark – you can send as many tweets as you’d like for only $1/each,” the site advertises. The tweets will later be organized into a book.

Will it work? That’s a lot of tweets to buy, even in blocks of 10 or 100.

Won’t it piss people off? The nice thing about Twitter is that — outside of the search engine — you’re only exposed to people you subscribe to on purpose. The Twitter account @1milliontweets only has 163 followers so far — down from 165 last time we checked. We’ll see how far this goes.

Blair Cummins, who is running the scheme, is not new to the Internet. He is listed as chief executive of SportsMates, a company that operates sports social networks, including Kournikova.com, “the official Website of Anna Kournikova.” Blair also used to sell domain names, including selling encryption.com to RSA Security.

A born entrepreneur who started his first business while he was in high school, Blair is the great grandson of diesel and automotive pioneer Clessie Lyle Cummins, founder of Cummins, Inc. (CMI), a Fortune 500 multinational and one of the world’s leading manufacturers of diesel engines and engine components.

This is, of course, the Twitter take on the “million dollar homepage,” which a 21-year-old British student cooked up in 2005.

[ via - BusinessInsider.com ]

Twitter Inc. changed its terms of service today to clarify that advertising on your Twitter page is OK and that users, not the company, own their tweets.

For months, ad services have flourished in certain circles of the social network. Twitter’s legal provisions reinforce those companies’ legitimacy.

Twitter also inserted sections to the user agreement addressing standards for third-party developers and intolerance for spammers, wrote co-founder Biz Stone on the company blog.

When Twitter announced the changes earlier today, I was having lunch in Hollywood with Ben Huh, chief executive of Pet Holdings Inc., the parent company of Fail Blog and popular kitty site I Can Has Cheezburger. Quite aptly, we were eating cheeseburgers at In-N-Out.

Huh and I joked about how Facebook had gone out of its way in February to say it owned all of the content you upload to your profile — and had to backtrack — compared with Twitter going out of its way to assert the opposite.

For the record, Huh prefers Twitter to Facebook but acknowledges that they both have their place — the latter being good for interactions with real-world friends. Oh, and actress Alyssa Milano agrees.

Facebook can simplify its interface and photocopy Twitter all it wants (cough, Facebook Lite). But it won’t convince the world to entrust Facebook with every bit of its personal content as long as the company keeps making blunders like the terms change, followed by the joke of a democratic legal page and the infamous Beacon.

– Mark Milian

Follow my commentary on technology and social media on Twitter @mmilian.

Original photo by ChrisL_AK via Flickr

In line with efforts to bring fans closer and truly make them part of the show, MTV is teaming up with leading interactive and social media companies Radian6 and Stamen to bring fans real-time online Twitter visualization experiences to complement the “2009 MTV Video Music Awards” airing live on Sunday, September 13 at 8pm ET/PT. Popular video blogger iJustine (Justine Ezarik) will be the official VMA “Twitter Correspondent,” and will be interpreting Twitter comments during the red carpet pre-show. The on-air component will be executed through a new interactive application created in partnership with social media measurement company Radian6 and design firm Stamen, and will bring Twitter to the television in a new and interesting manner.

“MTV is always looking to build on our strengths of creating and curating content that our audience will enjoy,” said Kristin Frank, GM of MTV.com. “We’ve found that by concentrating on our core competencies and regularly working together with third parties such as Radian6 and Stamen, we’re creating a truly complementary experience for our viewers that we know are multitasking as they watch events such as the VMAs.”

Twitter Visualization

The “Twitter visualization” tool allows MTV to track the real-time, aggregate activity and volume of buzz around what’s happening live throughout the show and report on how the fans are responding and feeling about the personalities at the VMAs. A tag cloud created by Radian6 tracks tweets about designated celebrities, including VMA performers, nominees, attendees and hosts, to create a visual interactive application hosted on MTV.com. The visual application and user interface created by Stamen expands a celebrity image as its respective Twitter tag cloud activity increases.

“MTV’s enthusiasm for engaging directly with their audience through Twitter is inspiring,” said Biz Stone, Twitter Co-founder. “It’s encouraging to see Television evolving into a more interactive medium.”

Radian6′s flexible dashboard and as-it happens alerts enable MTV to monitor and react on the fly to trending topics on Twitter with regards to the live show. MTV.com will also host a special page within the VMA site to house the Twitter visualization product for post-show fan interaction.

“Twitter is one of the fastest moving parts of the social web, and Radian6 helps communicators and media creators harness and engage in that conversation every day,” says Marcel Lebrun, CEO of the social media monitoring company. “We’re thrilled to work with MTV, Twitter, and Stamen to deliver real-time Twitter dialogue to the VMAs and create an awesome experience for the show’s audience – both live and online.”

“Data visualization sounds like something out of a dry and analytic college course, but we believe this kind of work can be fun and sexy too,” said Stamen Founder and Creative Director, Eric Rodenbeck. “Working in tandem with Radian6 we we’re able to create a simple and beautiful data design that extends these analytical sensibilities to the world of pop. All MTV had to say was ‘Live, Twitter, and Russell Brand’ and we were there.”

VMA Highlights on MTV.com

MTV.com will also host an interactive “Watch and Discuss” video feed, exclusively sponsored by Sonic, during the pre-show and main show through an embedded video player on its homepage. Alongside the feed, a Facebook “Live Stream Box” will allow fans to comment on what they are watching live, which also posts to their Facebook profiles, alongside comments by others watching the VMAs. The video player will stream a special multi-camera feed from the preshow and within the side-stage areas of the main show. MTV.com will also feature a Twitter module aggregating tweets about the VMAs and a “Headlines” module that will pull in MTV’s latest new stories and blog posts about the VMAs.

The messages are powerful and poignant: 160-character remembrances of where people were when they learned of the terror attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

As President Obama and his wife observed a moment of silence at the White House, many took to the microblogging site to share messages of hope, solidarity, and respect, leading 9/11-related terms to claim nearly all of Twitter’s top trending topics. Hashtags also sprung up, one of the most popular of which was “#whereiwas.”

Students remember being at school:

Heard rumors, then got to Physics class where the teacher had set up a t.v. I sketched the towers as the clips aired #whereiwas (@rotatingworld)

Senior year of high school. Getting ready for a homecoming week pepfest. Instead we all watched the tv in silence & fear (@anitalynns)

Mr. Stoutz’s 10th grade Algebra II class, fourth seat in the last row by the window. (@xanderbecket)

Walked into Art Class and saw it on TV. I asked what movie we were watching…”Real life” someone replied. (@seebabcock)

And businesspeople talk about going in to work:

At my first job. Got to work and all desks were empty. Everyone was huddled into one office watching the towers on TV. (@emilyyolks)

From my office I could see the plume of smoke from the Pentagon I had just passed . and fighter jets. I panicked. My boss worked. (@meitweet)

Saw it all from my office windows in midtown. walked downtown as far as i could. i remember it was very quiet down there. (@petersng)

Getting ready for work, heard it on the radio. Went in to the office, not thinking that it was 6 blocks from the White House. (@kathwertheim)

Share your memories in the comments, and on Twitter, where we’re @CSMHorizonsBlog.