2 million Twitter users

On January 6, 2008 I predicted that Twitter would reach 1 million users before April 1, 2008. The source for the number of Twitter users was (and still is) Twitdir. Twitdir finally reported 1 million Twitter users by the end of April. Twitdir announced that their was a flaw in their algorithm to count Twitter users, so the algorithm was changed. The backlog of Twitter users to be detected was caught up several weeks later. Yesterday evening I noticed that Twitdir reported just below 2 million Twitter users. Today the number reported exceeded 2 million.



The oldest Twitter accounts still active were created on March 21, 2006. It took Twitter over 550 days to get to 500,000 users (around the first half of October 2007). 150 days later (around mid March 2008), there were 1 million Twitter users. 50 days later (beginning of May 2008) there were already 1.5 million Twitter users. Another 50 days later Twitter had over 2 million Twitter users (end of June 2008). All these figures are based on the number of users reported by Twitdir.



The question of course is the reliability of the Twitdir figures. I performed a little test. Both Twitter and Twitdir offer the possibility to execute a location based search, returning both the number of Twitter users for a given location. I looked up the number of Twitter users reported by both sources for several locations.



For the 9 search arguments shown above, the number of Twitter users found by Twitdir is 20% to 30% lower than the number found by Twitter itself. It is likely that the number of Twitter reported by Twitter is also an underestmation of the real number. It is possible that there could be at this moment already over 2.5 million Twitter users. Who is capable of providing more insight on this issue ?

Failwhales

With the arrival of Twitter, the English vocabulary has gained several new words, Twitter-speak. The Twitter Glossary at the Twitter Fan Wiki is impressive.

I just discovered a new Twitter related new concept, a failwhale. I noticed that several Twitter users who strongly dislike the whale picture informing them that Twitter is not working as expected, changed their profile picture. Their current profile picture is now a failwahle.


Some clever guys have already set up a Twitter account and a website. And furthermore, at Zazzle you can buy failwhale related objects. If Twitter is down again, Twitter users should consider sending out letters or postcards to their followers, each marked with a failwhale stamp.

I'd like to see my replies, but I did learn something

In the never ending quest for performance stabilization, twitter is staying up, but we have lost the capability to see replies via the web or any of the desktop clients like Twhirl. How annoying! 

Clicking on the replies tab in twitter will return a pop-up,

"Twitter is stressing out a bit, so this feature is temporarily disabled".

One benefit has been the use of summize which provides a much richer experience. All you need to do is type your twitter name into the summize searchbox with the @sign in front. If you don't put the @sign in front, then you will see your own tweets.   This is equivalent to the archive tab on twitter, which does work.  Not only does summize work, but I think it works better than twitter.  It finds your name, even when it is placed in a series of names which twitter has trouble with.  Also, I realized that many times your name is misspelled in a reply and you can find these situations very easily with summize which you couldn't find in twitter.  For example, I found the following misspellings of my simple twitter name, warrenss: 

1. warrens


2. warenss


3. warremss


4. warens

Have you ever tried that?--you may be surprised.  Hopefully the replies tab will be working soon, but in the interim, take advantage of the summize features.

First State of the Twitosphere in France

On this blog I already published several posts with a detailed analysis of the twitosphere in a specific country. From time to time people ask me to have a closer look at their country, e.g. France.

The first question in such an analysis is the number of Twitter users in France. Twitter locates 4371 Twitter users in France (Twitter users who explicitely mention France in their location), Twitdir reports 3367 Twitter users.

Based on the location info in the Twitter profiles, I was able to find 6229 Twitter users in France, still active users. Persons who have closed their Twitter accounts are not included in this number. Because the number of Twitter users not mentioning a true location in their Twitter profile is estimated at around 50%, the actual number of Twitter users in France will probably exceed 6229. With a population of 64.473 million people (source : Wikipedia), the Twitter user density for France is one Twitter account for every 10350 inhabitants. Other European countries have an higher Twitter density, e.g. in Norway there is a Twitter account for every 1350 inhabitants, in The Netherlands there is a Twitter account for every 2800 inhabitants.

History of the Twitter accounts in France
The graph below shows the history of the Twitter accounts from France. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Twitter accounts. Twitter users who haven't published any messages and Twitter users with a private profile (their messages are only visible for their approved followers) are not included in this graph.


Oldest Twitter accounts from France
twitter.com/jdenoy - Johan Denoyer - first message on 18/07/2006
twitter.com/nicoguyon - nicolas guyon - first message on 19/07/2006
twitter.com/danielito - Daniel Gergès - first message on 12/09/2006
twitter.com/tewfiq - tewfiq - first message on 27/09/2006
twitter.com/hakonlo - Håkon Lorentzen - first message on 26/10/2006
twitter.com/i_randulo - fake-randulo - first message on 27/10/2006
twitter.com/zelig - Rafi Haladjian - first message on 5/11/2006
twitter.com/cnicules - ciprian - first message on 6/11/2006
twitter.com/ghotspot - Guy - first message on 16/11/2006
twitter.com/MathieuCoste - Mathieu - first message on 19/11/2006

Private or public
769 Twitter acounts from France or 12% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 997 Twitter accounts from France or 16% do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from France follows 29 Twitter accounts.


Top 10 following
twitter.com/arnaudrobail - rnud Robil - 7.379 following
twitter.com/jeanlucr - Jean-Luc Raymond - 6.313 following
twitter.com/stellafrederic - stellafrederic - 6.260 following
twitter.com/wallpapers - Wallpapers Zone - 5.255 following
twitter.com/neo_igs_police - neo_igs_police - 3.573 following
twitter.com/MMartin - Martin Menu - 1.842 following
twitter.com/HenryMichel - HenryMichel - 1.560 following
twitter.com/LucMandret - Luc Mandret - 1.387 following
twitter.com/valerefagot - valerefagot - 1.213 following
twitter.com/betapolitique - betapolitique.fr - 1.131 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 279 Twitter users from France or 4% have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. The messages published by these Twitter users are only read by themselves (and by search engines). An average Twitter user from France has 32 followers.


Top 10 followers
twitter.com/arnaudrobail - rnud Robil - 2.204 followers
twitter.com/jeanlucr - Jean-Luc Raymond - 2.134 followers
twitter.com/pressecitron - Eric - 1.688 followers
twitter.com/MMartin - Martin Menu - 1.319 followers
twitter.com/FredCavazza - Frédéric CAVAZZA - 1.293 followers
twitter.com/fubiz - Romain Colin - 1.061 followers
twitter.com/MonsieurDream - Monsieur Dream - 1.035 followers
twitter.com/rodrigo1971 - Rodrigo SEPULVEDA - 1.034 followers
twitter.com/fuelmyblog - Kevin Dixie - 909 followers
twitter.com/guim - GuiM - 887 followers

Updates
An update is the term refering to Twitter messages published by a Twitter users. These are also called tweets. The average number of updates for a Twitter users from France is 239. 296 Twitter users (or 5%) are still waiting for their first message to be published. Below you can find two top 10 lists, one with Twitter users where messages are published in an automated way, the second one with "real" Twitter users.


Top 10 updates from "real" Twitter users
twitter.com/Ravana - Ravana - 12.603 updates
twitter.com/strangeblackh - strangeblackhole - 12.163 updates
twitter.com/Bechamel - Jibé - 11.923 updates
twitter.com/Charles_Liebert - Charles Liebert - 9.901 updates
twitter.com/princesszeni - ? zeni - 8.568 updates
twitter.com/dimic - Dimic - 7.747 updates
twitter.com/SimonRobic - Simon Robic - 7.649 updates
twitter.com/jegoun - jegoun - 7.165 updates
twitter.com/seestribe - Jonathan Bonzy - 7.009 updates
twitter.com/stagueve - stagueve - 6.965 updates

Top 10 updates from non human Twitter accounts
twitter.com/lejddfr - lejddfr - 101.639 updates
twitter.com/lci - La Chaine Info - 25.305 updates
twitter.com/fonzz - fonZz - 23.069 updates
twitter.com/xanapa - xanapa - 15.698 updates
twitter.com/FRANCE24 - france24 - 11.831 updates
twitter.com/eddymitchum - Eddy Mitchum - 11.033 updates
twitter.com/funkastik - funkastik - 8.242 updates
twitter.com/pomemail - pomemail - 7.833 updates
twitter.com/le_figaro - le_figaro - 6.755 updates
twitter.com/LeMondeWorld - Le Monde - World - 6.421 updates

Tweet frequency
The tweet frequency is het average number of Twitter messages published on a unit of time, calculcated from the first message published. Twitter accounts created in the last 30 days and Twitter accounts without a Twitter message in the last 30 days were not taken into account.


Top 10 tweet frequency real Twitter users
twitter.com/strangeblackh - strangeblackhole - 52,20 tweets/day
twitter.com/Ravana - Ravana - 30,59 tweets/day
twitter.com/dimic - Dimic - 26,00 tweets/day
twitter.com/rade - radeville - 23,73 tweets/day
twitter.com/waden - Thomas Guillot - 23,55 tweets/day
twitter.com/madd0 - Mauricio DIAZ ORLICH - 22,61 tweets/day
twitter.com/marcvasseur - marcvasseur - 22,07 tweets/day
twitter.com/cpafo - Christopher Rousseau - 20,26 tweets/day
twitter.com/geoffreydorne - Geoffrey Dorne - 18,55 tweets/day
twitter.com/UlrichFR - Ulrich - 18,41 tweets/day

Top 10 tweet frequency non human Twitter accounts
twitter.com/xanapa - xanapa - 71,03 tweets/day
twitter.com/pomemail - pomemail - 49,26 tweets/day
twitter.com/eddymitchum - Eddy Mitchum - 30,14 tweets/day
twitter.com/le_figaro - le_figaro - 21,86 tweets/day
twitter.com/LePoint - LePoint.fr - 19,19 tweets/day
twitter.com/LeMondeWorld - Le Monde - World - 16,51 tweets/day
twitter.com/lesechos - Les Echos - 16,41 tweets/day
twitter.com/GeekMusik - GeekMusik - 15,52 tweets/day
twitter.com/EMSC - EMSC - 13,41 tweets/day
twitter.com/rcstrasbourg - rcstrasbourg - 12,95 tweets/day

Degree of activity
30% of all Twitter users from France have publised at least one message in the last 7 days.
36% of all Twitter users from France have not published a message for more than a month.
17% of all Twitter users from France have published at least message on in the period between 7 and 31 days (older than a week, but in the last month).

12% of all Twitter users from France is private, so no information on their degree activity is available.
On 5% of the Twitter accounts from France not a single message has been published.

Conclusion
The graphs show that there is an active Twitter community in France. It is still growing day by day. The penetration of Twitter in France is however lower than in other European countries. This can be caused by the fact that the Twitter web interface is only available in French (and in Japanese ...). Knowledge of English is not widespread within the French population and people from France tend to stick to their language.

Compared to other countries already analyzed, I was not able to detect many "non human" Twitter accounts, Twitter accounts on which the messages are automatically generated. Examples for such "non human" Twitter accounts are Twitter accounts for news services.

If the Twitter web site would be available in other languages, Twitter would be a greater success, especially in European countries such as France.

Twitter Survey: The one thing

Mark Carter has developed a successful Twitter fan page on Facebook called Twitter Strategies and Connections. Today he sent out a provocative survey, "The One Thing Everyone Should Know about Twitter is..." I said that the power of the community is enormous. What would you say?

Tweetburner - clickthrough rates

Tweetburner lets you track what happens with the links you share on Twitter. Links can be recognized as "twurl.nl". Tweetburner is an initiative of two entrepreneurs from The Netherlands.


One of the nice features of Tweetburner is that it generates a lot of statistics. Most of these statistics are even public available to everyone interested. As of this writing, Tweetburner has generated 274418 Twurls (shortened URLs), which have alltogether been clicked 2192254 times. This means that on average each shortened URL has been clicked about 8 times.

I had a closer look at 60 Tweetburner users from The Netherlands, the home country of Tweetburner. The full details of these users can be found in the list below. This list contains probably the most active Tweetburner users from The Netherlands combined with several less active users.

The global average clickthrough rate for Tweetburner shortened URLs is about 8 times. The average clickthrough rate for the observerd Dutch Twitter users varied from 4 (@iPieter) to 54 (@erwblo). The clickthrough rates have to be linked to the number of followers for each of the observed Twitter accounts. If a Twitter user has only a limited number of followers, the number of clicks will be probably low. If on the other hand a Twitter user has very high number of followers, the number of clicks will be (very) low. The ratio of average clicks per number of followers varies for the 60 observed Dutch Tweetburner users from 2% (@pixites - 803 followers) to 91% (@tuecursor - 7 followers).


As the graph illustrates, there seems to be a power relationship between the average number of clicks per follower and the number of followers. Twitter users with a very limited number of followers have very high clickthrough rates. Almost all their followers click on the links in their Twitter messages. Twitter users with a high to very high number of followers have a low clickthrough rate (less then 5%).

This is an analysis of 60 Tweetburners users from the Netherlands. These 60 users have only generated less then 2% of all shortened URLs. It remains to be seen if these conclusions can be extrapolated to all Tweetburner users and even further to all Twitter users using URL shortening services (e.g. tinyurl).

This is the full list of the analyzed 60 Tweetburners users from the Netherlands.

Podcamp Seattle

Saturday I presented an introduction to Twitter at Podcamp Seattle. Podcamp was a great event with speakers covering all areas of social media including: podcasting, video, blogging, community and of course, Twitter. Some of my favorite presentations were: Eric Weaver gave a provocative presentation entitled, Your Customers Have Left the Station; Paolo Tosolini talking about Enterprise Podcasting, and Marc Schwartz who demonstrated the linkage between Social Media and Direct Response.

Sponsors, Eric Weaver and Kathy Gill put on a fantastic event at the University of Washington and the 150 lucky attendees had a fun, educational, stimulating day. You can see my presentation here.

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Tweet of the month!

Isn't this the coolest tweet you ever read? From the Mars Phoenix spacecraft which made the Twittermaven a few weeks ago. This Wired article fills in the details.

Tuned in to Twitter

Earlier this week I discovered @amazonmp3, a twitter account that offers 2 daily deals--album downloads on sale each day. For example, today Coldplay’s Parachutes is on sale for $1.99. We all love music, so wouldn’t the twitter platform be a great way for artists to engage in conversation with their fans. It turns out that there are quite a few musicians of almost every genre that have a presence on twitter.

Assuming there are no identity issues, you can find:

simonlittle, cage9, ylove , rogermcguinn, dallaswtaylor , mchammer, snoopdogg,
jimmyeatworld

Also, a couple of industry notables, Ethan Kaplan, VP of technology at Warner Brothers Records and Bill Palmer, Publisher of iProng Magazine.

In addition to the artists, some of the online music services are active on twitter. Pandora has an active twitter account with over 1300 followers run by Lucia, their community manager. Last.fm does not have a twitter account, but they do have a twitter group on their community site with over 450 members. And finally, Songza enables you to share a link on twitter to the song you are listening to.

Some big milestones

This past week, a few of my Boston-based Twitter friends had some significant milestones. No, I’m not talking about the Celtics 17^th, although that was a great victory and Twitter was rockin’ with the Celts on Tuesday night. Seriously, Gradon Tripp and Aaron Strout, each passed 5000 tweets. Aaron was very conscious of this milestone and as a result was pretty cautious about what he would say on his 5000^th tweet. However, a prolific tweeter like Aaron could not stop the twitter flow. To prepare for his milestone, he started sending out direct tweets and which don’t count in the tweet stats and went on a “Twitter fast”. But the vow of silence only lasted about 18 hours and now Aaron is well on his way to 10,000! Gradon was a lot more circumspect about the milestone. He writes about it on his new blog. Gradon lists his 10 things that he learned on his way to 5000 tweets- great advice that we all can emulate regardless of how prolific a tweeter we are.

But there were two bigger, more significant career milestones this week. John Cass joined Forrester as Community Manager. John will be working to develop further the company's existing social media strategies for community building, dialogue and customer feedback. With analysts like Jeremiah Owyang, Josh Bernoff, Peter Kim and Charlene Li, I think they are well on their way, but I am sure that John will make a strong contribution.

Social Media Maven, Scott Monty, announced that he was leaving Crayon to become Head of Social Media for Ford. Many of us who know Scott have been fans of his writing, insights and music choices for awhile. As testament to that, Scott received over 70 comments to his blog announcement and numerous tweets of congratulation.

What’s your milestone? And how will you approach it?

Join me on Saturday

This post may be a little OT, but I promise a twitter connection. On Saturday, June 21st, PodCamp Seattle 2008 will be held at the University of Washington Communications building.

PodCamp is a free, informal "unconference" event where people come together to connect, learn and share about online social tools, such as blogging, podcasting, videoblogging, Twitter, wikis, virtual worlds, etc. Our Seattle event is aimed at new media enthusiasts, marketers, PR and ad people, and technologists. PodCamp is a free, informal type of event where you get to meet a bunch of cool people and hopefully come home with a few new tricks. The planned presentations are split by topic: tech, marketing, social good, and intro/101.

This event is co-sponsored by Seattle Ad Club, Puget Sound AMA, the University of Washington, Edelman Digital and the Seattle Podcasting Network.

I plan to speak on Twitter (see, there’s the connection). On the agenda, my topic is positioned as Twitter for beginners, but depending on the audience, I hope to expand the conversation to talk about some of the cool ways businesses have been using twitter as well as some great tools.

It runs from 9am to 3:30 in the afternoon, but you won’t have to listen to me for six hours! There are 18 great sessions. You’ll also get to hear from Eric Weaver, from Edelman (who is organizing the event) has the provocative topic, Your Customers Have Left the Station, Kathy Gill, a super energetic communications professor at the University of Washington will discuss Beginning Podcasting, Jason Preston of Parnassus Group will be presenting some basics of video editing and distribution, Patrick Byers of Outsource Marketing, will talk about Using Social Media to Create Social Good, and Leigh Fatzinger of On Message Ventures will talk about Social Media and PR.

If you’re planning to attend, you should register on the eventbrite page - and you can learn more from the Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6284941092. See you Saturday!

Introducing, The Twebinar

Innovative CMO, David Alston of Social Media Monitoring company, Radian 6, has created a partnership with Twitterati Chris Brogan to present a series of social media webinars this summer that integrate the webinar format with Twitter. What is a Twebinar? According to Alston on the twebinar site,

A twebinar is a webinar and Twitter mash-up where conversations take place in real-time before, during and after the webinar, on Twitter.

How Does a Twebinar Work?

It’s easy. Just follow the steps below:

1. Sign-up for a webinar on a topic that interests you.
2. On the day of the webinar, watch the presentation from your computer and receive information visually and verbally from the presenter(s).
3. During the webinar, a parallel conversation takes place as participants comment, ask questions, and/or discuss the webinar series on Twitter. Follow the webinar participants on Twitter and join the conversation.
4. Gather ideas and/or resources from a community of people with interests that are similar to yours.
5. The result? A twebinar.

During the series, over 30 top social media experts and authors, Twitterati like Personality Not Included Author Rohit Bhargava, Forrester Community Manager and author of Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging, John Cass, PR Guru and creator of the Social Media Press Release, Todd Defren and The New Influencers author Paul Gillin will be interviewed by Chris Brogan to get their best thoughts on how tools like blogs, social networks, wikis, and podcasts are changing the way companies do business.

To me, it looks like the first effort to integrate the Twitter backchannel where we use hashtags and Twemes.com, directly with a live webinar format. FANTASTIC IDEA! The first twebinar is June 26^th. I hope to see you there!

From the late show last night

Last night Deb Micek and Warren Whitlock of Twitter Handbook held a webinar on the Blog Talk Radio Show:

Topic: Twitter Applications (AKA: “Twitter Apps”)
What’s YOUR Favoriate App?

Blog Talk Radio Show on Twitter

It was a very informative show for new twitter users who learned a lot about some of the nuances of twitter such as the use of the @, direct messages, and hashtags. In fact, a hashtag was set up for the call, #th3, where you can see the twitter transcription. Notable contributors to the webinar were Corvida of ReadWriteWeb and noted twitter power user, Wayne Sutton.

Attendees learned about some of the more useful twitter tools that we take for granted like the aforementioned Twemes. Summize which was mentioned on Twittermaven last week was also discussed in some detail as well as several of the desktop and mobile twitter clients. My favorite, Twhirl, was described quite a bit.

It was a great webinar for beginning twitter users to learn more about how to get much more out of the tool and community. Unfortunately, the start time (8 PM Pacific) and duration probably limited the number of east coasters who could attend.

Enjoy the conference

A lot of great conferences took place this week: WWDC, TechEd, MarketingProfs B2B, Enterprise 2.0 and a lot of twittering to help enhance the conference experience. Some key essentials for me are to append the conference recommended hashtag to the end of your tweets and to take notes in your own voice. By using the hashtag, the tweets are all trackable chronologically on tools like hashtag and my favorite, twemes. Remember, if you choose to tweet conference notes, it is primarily for your own use. You are not a reporter, so write about your own thoughts and what you think of the speaker’s words.

Notable bloggers (and twitterers) Rachel Happe, Rohit Bhargava, and David Armano have written great advice on how to maximize your conference experience with twitter. In his blog post, Twitter like a Rock Star, Armano lists 5 tips for better conference twittering:

1. Filter the signal from the noise – Cut the fat from the steak and just tweet about the stuff that is impactful.

2. Color your commentary – As I mentioned above, express your point of view.

3. Talk to your audience – As you take notes, you will get responses to your tweets. Respond, answer questions, or ask the speaker the question.

4. Paint the scene – Describe what’s going on, so people can feel like they are there.

5. Do it for yourself – Use twitter as a notebook. If you are not getting anything out of it, then don’t feel tethered to your device and stop.

Happe presents 7 reasons how twitter transforms conferences:

· Prior to the event, twitter dialog creates demand for the event

· Share events with a broader audience

· Spontaneous planning of side activities at the conference

· Makes it easier to find people via location based tweets

· Audience participation

· Cementing the relationship bonds by meeting face to face

In How to speak at a conference without getting skewered on twitter, Bhargava gives advice to speakers:

1. Get a twitter account (of course, if you are here, you probably have one already)

2. Prep by checking out the event conversation

3. Focus on the audience reaction

4. Monitor mentions about you.

5. Respond to tweets

6. Learn for next time.

Great advice that if applied, not only will make you a twitter rock star, but will enable you to get a lot more out of the conference.

Seattle Breakfast with Jeff Pulver

Tweetups can take incredibly different forms from intimate 1:1’s for coffee to big parties like in Boston on Monday night after MarketingProfs B2B event as chronicled by Amanda Gravel and at all different hours. Seattle’s Twitterati had a Social Media Breakfast with Jeff Pulver this morning. Jeff Pulver’s social media breakfasts are not the usual business networking affairs. He seeks to apply Facebook concepts of tagging, the wall, and pokes to the face to face world using labels, and post it notes. Interesting concept and great icebreakers. For example, Amanda Wolfman’s status tag line was “Even my yarn belongs to a social network.” Carter Rabasa’s Flickr photos demonstrate the art of low-tech walls and tagging. Jeff Pulver’s breakfast are well known for the networking, and a unique approach.

Also in attendance were Michael Markman, , Ken Camp , Eric Weaver , Tara Brown , Leigh Fatzinger, Teresa Valdez Klein, Robert Scoble, Eric Bento, Lacy Kemp and Brian Eisenberg .

Seattle’s social media community has a couple of other upcoming events, Bar Camp Seattle organized by Tara Brown and the Podcamp Seattle on June 21^st organized by Eric Weaver. I hope to see everyone there.

TwitArcs

TwitArcs is a new tool to visualize content from Twitter. TwitArcs takes the latest 100 tweets for a twitter ID or term of interest and creates a list representation that has arcs connecting messages sent to the same users or that use the same primary term.

Have a look at the snapshot below, or try it yourself (here).

Will they be ready?

From the Twitter Blog: Twitter Apple!. Twitter is expecting up to 10X normal daily traffic tomorrow due to Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference. According to Biz, they have taken numerous precautions and prepared for multiple contingencies. So what do you think will happen?
Will they be ready? Will twitter crash? What will you do? Will you plurk.

Added: A few more links regarding Twitter and WDC.

ReadWriteWeb

TechCrunch

TUAW thanks to Beau

Fun at twitter's expense

Twitter’s recent problems have angered many users, but have also inspired many to add a little humor to the situation. Personally, I’ve gotten some mileage out of the Fudgie the Whale discussions. Eric Weaver posted an article that explained twitter’s outages due to the change in power from clusters of little birds to powerful but unreliable whales.

The inimitable Hugh MacLeod has published some great twitter drawings on Gapingvoid. My favorites are adventures in twitterville and twitter’s down again

Rodney Rumford has some great images here guaranteed to make you smile.

I think the Twitter Whore on YouTube is lame, but some like it.

There are four pages of twitter comics on Bitstrips, but this one by 5thHorseman is my favorite.

And of course, who doesn’t smile at Diesel Sweeties.

see more hipster robot webcomics and pixel t-shirts

How do you search twitter?

One of the keys to successful twitter use is tracking conversations and keyword search. Since twitter’s search feature is basically non-existent, we have to go outside of twitter to the rich ecosystem of twitter tools.

The first search tool dedicated to twitter is tweetscan. Although Tweetscan is reasonably effective, it is extremely limited in terms of its user interface and capability. Tweetscan does offer a nice feature of daily emails of your search results as shown in a search for word of mouth (wom).

Tweet Scan for warrrenss on 2008-06-06

Your scan: wom

	dbinkowski : @vaspersthegrate as an online WOM guy, i can tell you that the major of WOM still happens offline. those are all con jobs too? <<
	LeaderABW : Never minding what kind of person types an URL into an SE, it shows that either my branding worked or it's an actual WOM sale! Way cool! <<
	bcarlson33 : @andrew_walsh I dreamt a WoM guest fell through and I was the standby. I worked out what I should say, then woke up while being introduced. <<

You received this email because you activated Tweet Scan for this email address. To adjust your searches, change when you get this email, or turn it off altogether, please visit: http://tweetscan.com/main.php

The next generation search tools are much more effective, with stronger functionality. Summize is an excellent tool that provides fast search. Additional features enable you to post the search to twitter or subscribe to RSS feeds for the topic that you are searching for. The search can be narrowed down by zip code which is great functionality. Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani is a fan.

Twist is the newest tool in the search arsenal. Not only will it show you the tweets that you are searching for, but it will graph your terms, so you can see the activity by date. You can compare up to 10 trends.

So what search tool do you use?

Who really cares about uptime.

We've all experienced twitter's spotty performance, but lately it seems contagious. Nick O'Neill wrote today about newcomer Plurk and its performance problems. Perhaps as O'Neill says reliability and uptime is not that important for a free and useful service. I think we've proven with twitter that a useful service, strong community and rich ecosystem of applications will keep people coming back again and again.

According to Pingdom's uptime overview, twitter's uptime peaked in March at 99.59% and has declined each month since. June to date performance is just 94.7%! Yet twitter is on a significant growth spike, approaching 2M users, according to Compete, up 14.7% in May. So maybe uptime doesn't matter, but it just gives us something to complain/kvetch about.

Would you pay $2 per tweet

Would you rent your Twitter avatar? Ian Schafer is selling a one month sponsorship of his twitter avatar and background image on ebay. I noticed Mark Hopkins’ Mashable article this morning that Schafer has decided to see if he can monetize his Twitter page.

Nick O’Neill also wrote about this topic of monetizing Twitter on his Social Times blog.

According to the ebay ad, “This is an auction for a one-month sponsorship of my Twitter feed and page that lives at http://www.twitter.com/ischafer. I've got hundreds followers, many of whom are amongst the interactive advertising industry elite, including numerous journalists.

This one-month sponsorship includes replacing of the existing background image with the image(s) of your choice, as well as replacement of my handsome photo with another image of your choice (ie. brand logo).

I average about 8-10 outbound 'tweets' a day, and your brand would be represented in each.
I'll be blogging this experience at http://www.ianschafer.com.
Lets experiment together.”

Ian’s motive is not profiteering, but to help twitter identify and test out monetization opportunities. In fact, he is donating the proceeds to the The David Wright Foundation. As a Met fan, I suppose I shouldn’t complain about that. Still, I doubt that Twitter asked Ian to help them identify and test out monetization opportunities. In fact, Evan Williams response on the Mashable blog, includes, “As a side note, and for the record, while we don't mind the community brainstorming, we're not in desperate search for a business model. We have some ideas we'll try out when the time is right, but Twitter isn't going to go away for lack of one any time soon (nor will reliability issues be solved with one).” So what’s the real motivation?

Let’s dissect the offer a bit. The current bid is $580. Since Schafer is planning to tweet an average of 8-10 times/day, that would be approximately 300 tweets in a month or $2/tweet. Is sponsorship of an avatar worth $2/tweet. Perhaps depending on the audience and how compelling the messages are, but it seems like a lot to pay for a small image. You can decide yourself from looking at Schafer's Tweet cloud according to tweetstats.

Another interesting Tweetstats fact is there is only one month, April in which Schafer tweeted more than 300 times. Yes, this is marketing and advertising, caveat emptor, but still let’s be realistic. The offer also states that “many of the followers are amongst the interactive advertising industry elite, including numerous journalists.” Schafer’s followers (as ranked by most@ replies- Tweetstats) include Brian Morrissey Digital Editor of Adweek, David Armano of Critical Mass, and Creative Strategist Alan Wolk. Thought leaders for sure, but why pay for the milk when you can get it for free.

This illustrates the lack of understanding and appreciation that mainstream advertisers and media have for twitter. Living in the fishbowl of twitter, we all know how easy it is to follow someone and ultimately, build our network and community. Yet there are those who think they have to pay for that access and impressions.

The situation sounds familiar to the April twitter account auction by Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron who also offered a two day “guest spot” of his account on Craig’s List. Both offer’s were ultimately pulled after the publicity tempest. Do you think Baron gave Schafer the idea? Well, two months later, the prices are better.

We were doing so well, too.

8:00 PST June 5.

Tuesday night, Twitter was the winner

Tuesday was a very exciting evening with the final primary results and all of the candidate speeches. But what made it so dramatic for me was the conversation in the twitter community. These national events demonstrate the value of twitter and strength of its community. There were over 1500 Obama oriented tweets according to Summize (over 100 pages). Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang wrote a tremendous piece in his Web Strategy blog today that includes several interesting charts and graphs of twitter activity all using a diverse set of free twitter tools (a subject for another day). Clearly, twitter land is Obama country. . But regardless of your candidate, it was a fun night. The banter, the insight, the blog links was fantastic. At the end of the night, most people tweeted that their hands hurt from too much typing. We’ve experienced this fun before during the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards, and even Super Tuesday. Each time, I’ve walked away, thinking wow, that was a blast. Twittering during a big national event, is like watching the event with your family, in your living room and as Jeff Pulver says, in your social media living room.

And even with the increased volume, twitter never hiccupped, Fudgie the whale never arrived. As described earlier, it was a great night--twitter was the big winner!

Reading is fundamental

I remember growing up those public service announcements called Reading is Fundamental that encouraged parents to get their children to read. I'm not sure if the program had an impact on my parents, but I certainly am an avid reader. Hey, this is a blog about twitter. Are we going OT already? Of course not! One of the joys of twitter for me is the fact that so many authors are active in the community. And it's not just technology or even business. This morning I learned that one of my favorite cookbook authors, David Lebovitz, has been on twitter. Of course, I started following him and sent him a note. And as a true member of the community, he answered. You can learn more about David on his blog or check out his latest book, The Perfect Scoop.

A few of my other favorite authors on twitter that I have conversations with:

• Cluetrain writer David Weinberger. Have you read his latest, Everything is Miscellaneous?
• Word of Mouth Marketing Guru Andy Sernovitz.
• Startup maven Guy Kawasaki.
  
• Citizen Marketers authors, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell.
• The New Influencers author, Paul Gillin.
• Personality Not Included, by Rohit Bhargava.
• Join the Conversation with Joseph Jaffe.
• Now is Gone co-authors, Geoff Livingston and Brian Solis.
  
• Groundswell authors, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff which I think is the best business book of 2008.
  
• And so you don't think that I am too single-threaded, World-renowned author, Paulo Coelho.
  

Of course, there are many other popular and prolific authors on Twitter, but these are my favorites. Who's yours?

It all started with a messenger bag

In case you didn't see it on the Twitter blog, here is a very interesting video from Jack describing twitter, the motivation for developing it, and some interesting stories of how it is used. According to Jack, the inspiration for twitter came from his Mom. His Mom's search for the perfect suitcase, resulted in Jack's fascination with bike messenger culture and ultimately, their dispatching. So dispatching and SMS, begat twitter.

Some interesting uses of twitter that Jack describes include:

• Japanese tamagotchi cats.
• Sensor that signals you to water the plants.
• LAFD fire alerts.
  
• Massively shared experiences like earthquakes.

Dorsey describes twitter as connecting people through realtime updates which spark conversations and expose trends. What do you think about his description?


Jack Dorsey Presents Twitter from biz stone on Vimeo.

Going, going, gone

The twitter community is full of very creative people. Jennifer Leggio is one such person. Jennifer or @Mediaphyter as we know her, is very focused on helping out a great cause, Team in Training, the fundraising arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which funds medical research for blood cancer cures and provides patient and family support programs. Rather than a bake sale or car wash, she came up with the great idea to auction off some of the top names in social media (and twitter). As Jennifer describes it, you can buy yourself a social media guru. Five top social media consultants will offer their time to the highest bidder on ebay. So who are these charitable leaders?

• Aaron Strout, VP of social media at Mzinga, and his blog
  
• Chris Brogan, VP of strategy and technology at CrossTechMedia and his blog
  
• Joseph Jaffe, president and chief interrupter at crayon and his blog
  
• Geoff Livingston, CEO of Livingston Communications and his blog
• Greg Verdino, chief strategy officer at crayon and his blog
  

The auctions expire on June 6th, so you still have time to put in a bid. Hopefully, we will deviate from standard ebay bidding behavior and not wait until the last minute to submit our bid. Remember, it is for a charity. The twitter and social media community has come out strongly in verbal support with many tweets, diggs, and blog posts. Perhaps all of the dialog is occurring in the social media fishbowl. Let's find a way to reach out to those outside of it, and make some big bids. It's for a worthy cause.