Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

Posted on August 25, 2009 - by John

One quarter of all tweets generated by bots!

It turns out that 24% of all tweets are not generated by people, but rather by bots! But not to worry, these are not all spam bots. You might even be using a ‘bot’ yourself! You know, those wonderful tools that allow you to send out a tweet when you post to your blog. That is a bot.

I have no problem with these updates; part of twitter is exploring the internet using shared information. A report conducted by sysomos.com had a number of findings, most interestingly:

We found that 32% of all tweets made by the most active Twitter users were generated by machine bots that posted more than 150 tweets/day. The actual percentage of machine-generated tweets among the most active users is probably higher than 32% because there many bots that update less than 150 times/day.

The report also outlines who tweets the most. There is a few of what you would expect such as @foxnews (no comment), @nytimes. An more interestingly @alyssa_milano!

Do you use a tweet bot to send out your blog updates? I know I do! The full report here makes for some interesting reading, sadly Ireland does not make the list of Twitter’s 5% of most active users.

Posted on August 20, 2009 - by John

Not on Twitter, maybe you are out of the loop?

It really is amazing how the internet has evolved. For a while it just sat there being the internet. Now it is so much more than just a pile of information. It is social. Facebook, Twitter and bebo have connected long lost friends and so much more.

Twitter has become such an important information stream, that if you don’t keep an eye on it you can miss some interesting  stuff, and have to wait another 20 seconds for it to appear on other websites!

Yes, many many times Twitter has the news before any of the blogs, and news sites. So if you want to be clued in keep an eye on Twitter.

I suppose this is not surprising, everyone and their mother is twittering. But what brought my attention to this is that I asked someone, how they heard about a very unusual piece of news that the posted on the O2 forum. And the response is, it’s all over Twitter! In the ‘where have you been’ expression.

So there you have it another life lesson.

If you feel like following me on Twitter follow@johnmryan.

Also that piece of news I was referring to above can be followed here.

Posted on July 5, 2009 - by John

Twitter: Do you tweet celebrities?

I expanded the list of people I follow  on  twitter lately, not being as strict about who I followed as before. I mean twitter can help you expand your social networking from the usual blogger types and tech nerds of the internet. But there is another – well established class of people using twitter, they hail from a land ‘Far Far Away’, aka the land of celebrities, who have invaded twitter in the past year or so. And where there are celebrities there will be hangers on!

What I have noticed is there is a large amount of people sending tweets to celebrities, fruitless tweets that are never answered or acknowledged. In the celebrities defence they often have thousands of followers so how could they answers every one.

Even worse I noticed people having one ended conversations with celebrities. Twitter is all about joining in the conversation, but is there a point of constantly tweeting celebrities when they never answer?

Without debating the reasoning behind this utter madness, I give you today’s poll.

Do you Tweet Celebrities?

[polldaddy poll=1759714]

Posted on February 23, 2009 - by John

Poll: Does Twitter have a future?

Poll stays open all week, feel free to add your own option to the poll!
[polldaddy poll="1393079"]

Posted on February 21, 2009 - by John

Automatic Direct Messages on Twitter

I am not sure about you folks but I find it a little annoying when you follow someone on Twitter, and you get an obviously automatic direct message (which also hits your mail box). This morning alone I had three waiting for me. I am just getting into twitter, so maybe it is something you get used to?

Is it not a form of spam? OK maybe spam is a bit extreme. I signed up to follow Sky News, and this morning I got a thank you with a direct link to their website. It is not enough that I followed them on twitter? They also wish to push their site at me.

It’s just my morning rant, but direct messages should not be automated. Does this bother anyone else, or am I alone here?

Posted on February 4, 2009 - by John

Famous and on Twitter

Britney Spears: # Bio Yes! This is the real Britney Spears! We’ve got updates from her team, her website and yes, even Britney herself!
Stephen Fry: # Bio Dancer, couturier, superheavyweight boxer, neo-plasticist and rapper
Barack Obama
Wil Wheaton: # Bio I’m just this guy, you know?
Jonathan Ross: # Bio Number One Twitter Detective.
More here