{"id":377,"date":"2009-04-04T11:31:45","date_gmt":"2009-04-04T15:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/?p=377"},"modified":"2013-06-01T10:08:44","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T14:08:44","slug":"twitter-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/2009\/04\/04\/twitter-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been about a month since I dipped my toe in the Twittery waters<\/a> and I still don’t quite know what to make of it. Statistics tell me that traffic to my personal Web properties has increased rather dramatically. That’s a good thing, right?<\/p>\n

I should mention that I quickly learned that there’s little\/no restriction on creating new IDs, and it’s very useful to do that in order to experiment with stuff. It’s nice that they allow you delete your ID, too, so if you play that way it’s just nice to clean up when you’re done. That dopey ID you made for testing might be the one someone else is seeking.<\/p>\n

So let’s take a look at few Twittery things I’ve noticed, shall we?<\/p>\n

Tools <\/strong> Twitter’s API is lots of fun to play with. There’s so much you can do with it and zillions of folks are hard at work trying to figure out how their pet hack can bring them fame, fortune and, yes, money. I’m not at all crazy about the hosted tools that need you to enter your credentials before they’ll function. It’s a trust thing. (Test IDs can come in handy here.)<\/p>\n

Advertising <\/strong> Like everywhere else on the Web, everybody’s trying to sell you something. The current worldwide economic climate has spawned a kind of desperation that’s driven some to every imaginable online get-rich-quick scheme. And Twitter’s incredible popularity and growth attracts ’em like poop attracts flies. In fact, there are more Twitter users expounding on how to make money with Twitter than you can shake the proverbial stick at!<\/p>\n

Loneliness <\/strong> There’s an air of sadness, loneliness, melancholy. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s definitely there.<\/p>\n

Celebrity <\/strong> Lots of celebrities of all levels are on Twitter. Some are even personable and cool. You’ve really gotta take it with a grain of salt, however. Who’s real? Sure, it’s uncool to impersonate, but uncool isn’t a crime. Who’s got staffers writing for them? Who’s just there for shameless self-promotion?<\/p>\n

Risk<\/strong> Many tweets include URLs, and most of them have been shrunk to fit the 140-character space using one of the many URL-shortening services. Unless you take steps to preview – and it seems like nobody does – you just don’t know where you’ll end up. And that can be double-plus-ungood. You really need good client-side defenses – you just know<\/em> you’re gonna end up clicking that link.<\/p>\n

Twitter reminds me alot of the CB craze back in the ’70s (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth). This time around, though, you get the fickle tides of Internet trendiness instead of an 11-year sunspot cycle to interrupt the fun. (Internet trendiness is not unlike that surging feeling in your stomach as your Scrambler<\/a> car changes direction, or the wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon<\/a> on a hot Wednesday afternoon.) Technically, there’s nothing really new here; all of the technology behind Twitter has been around for quite a while. Doesn’t matter, its popularity is on fire now, and the big question is how it’ll make money. I’m not going to speculate.<\/p>\n

I’ll leave you with this cartoon<\/a>. It’s silly, but it also pretty much sums it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been about a month since I dipped my toe in the Twittery waters and I still don’t quite know what to make of it. Statistics tell me that traffic to my personal Web properties has increased rather dramatically. That’s a good thing, right? I should mention that I quickly learned that there’s little\/no restriction … Continue reading Twitter Report<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[73,53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}