Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

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 22, 2009 - by John

Boards.ie Are the moderators fair?

There is an update to this post found here

Being a moderator on any forum can be difficult – it is a hard job, but what about one of the most popular sites on the internet boards.ie.

I do think boards.ie is a wonderful site, one of the best in Ireland! This poll is to find out user views on the moderators. Feel free to take part, or not. You might ask why I am writing this? I noticed a few twitters with a big opinion on this, and I would like to see what people really think. I myself  have a few issues with they way things are handled, but I do realise that these people give their time to this, and the site is a vault of information!  It must be difficult to manage so many users.

[polldaddy poll=1899882]

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 May 6, 2009 - by John

Today on John’s Twitter (2009-05-05)

• Chinese stir fry night 18:24:00
• RT @lexia: naps are God’s way of hugging you 20:46:42
• just watching the Meaning of Life on RTE Player – check it out 23:29:03

Posted on May 4, 2009 - by John

Today on John’s Twitter (2009-05-03)

• I guess u have to be weird like me to like – The Sarah Silverman Program 00:50:55
• @Juliet17101 heheh – yea, I downloaded TweeDeck very cool, sorry Pats i’ve just gone thru a 6 packer! in reply to Juliet17101 01:02:57
• @Juliet17101 Yea my first beer in about 2 months believe it or not! in reply to Juliet17101 01:11:21
• Morning all – Green Tea breakfast too lazy and hungover to cook 12:14:53
• Might go see a film later – it is the bank holiday – any suggestions? 13:15:47
• @dbspin Thanks no heard of it – will google it in reply to dbspin 13:53:31

Posted on April 7, 2009 - by John

Twitter – Show me the money!

Internet reports are giving word recently that Twitter is in  “late stage talks” with Google over a proposed acquisition. It won’t be the first time Google has purchased something which is dominating the internet in recent years, such as YouTube. And interestingly enough like YouTube, Twitter, is also a service which has yet to produce any real monetisation strategy .

Could it be  be that a company like Google is seeking to control much of the popular content on the internet, regardless of a company’s future financial ability? Does  Google just like to have the most popular sites in its portfolio. Or is that too obvious a statement?

Twitter looks to me like a company which will prove hard to monetise, the only real possibility may be  a premium account model where people can have some bonus features for a fee of some sort. Such a model is in use by the Flick.com photo sharing site, owned by Yahoo and seems to be doing nicely.

What makes Twitter such an popular service is that  surfers are actively using it for a wide variety of reasons. There is the is the celebrity factor – Those interesting MTV (sorry that’s MTV ONE) celebrities on our screens – the Paris Hilton’s of the world all have accounts, and where these people go there will be a bunch of folks following them, sending Tweets to Paris and hoping that she – Paris Hilton herself will acknowledge their existence. There is the casual user who often  gives the cringely horrible updates which often includes  terrible tweets that track every moment from lunch updates to the trip to the toilet afterwards!

A more interesting part of Twitter which is tied into its popularity is that many organisations and groups are using the service to push updates and stay in contact with their users! That may be where Twitter can offer the  premium services. Interesting Twitter was the first with updates on the new Irish Budget, beating RTE and even blogs with the latest breaking news, from trivial comments on politicians clothes to more serious updates on the budget.

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