DISQUS

I disagree Chris.
You haven't seen the research, yet.
We're slow to publish, sure, but give us a chance to give you the real data.
And these five points are not exactly what we seem to be seeing.

18 somethings don't even use Twitter. Read the research. So, I hope they don't intend to market it at Gen Y's....

Thank goodness they're not making any money.
Because it's this kind of 'owner do everything' strategy that loses companies money.
This woulnd't have happened if they had someone in Communication.

And additionally, 'room' and 'stream' are very off the mark if that is your differentiator.

Having Trillian for IRC open and having Twhirl for Twitter open look almost EXACTLY alike. They are both streaming.

I think you need more experience with these mediums before purporting to find a supposition and writing about them in depth.

Sure wish the logo wasn't freaking huge on the back.

I'm the kind of person who hates logos on their tshirts too...

I like your site in general Eric, but this is the most asinine posting I've seen on the whole internetz in at least the last couple of weeks.

Makeup=promotion?!

That is seriously, seriously messed up.

They look rad.

So sad, no play for me. You assume everyone keeps a blog. ;)
I quit in 2001. Ah well.

Really great to see such an action, and how people felt on the event. I like how the NYT's has said they are amused with it, and honoured to be copied as 'credible news source'.
Oh, and it's simple: Lili's a New Yorker through and through, eh?

Interesting idea. However, it is well known that Twitter is still in the beta stage - often will unsubscribe folks from other folks randomly. With no intent or interaction from user. So the data culled by the proposed service may easily not be accurate.

Hmm...gutterpunk was a well known term on the streets of New York and Seattle from my recollection.

And 7 Year Bitch...damn, hello my youthful years. I think I still have them on vinyl somewhere.

You can track it, if you know what you are doing. And by that, I mean, it has to be qualitatively researched along with quantitatively. Not a lot of people get that.

Oh good lord. *Please* don't include Clay Aiken in your discussion about gay adoption. The guy just came out of the closet! The thing that most social science research has concluded is that gay and lesbian adults in committed relationships are likely to be very good parents, because they have had to get to 'know themselves', more so than mainstream society. And by including Clay Aiken in this conversation you poison that research. He has biologically fathered a child with someone he is *not* in a committed relationship with, AND he just figured out he was gay. Not a good role model at all.

Clay Aiken is not a Gay Dad. He is a coming-out individual who has biologically fathered a child.

I'll let anyone follow me if they fit any one of these parameters:
-I know them.
-They live in my state.
-We have similar interests.
-Are good Twitter writers.

Otherwise, I block the rest.
And, except for a few exceptions, I follow everyone right back.

This means invariably, that I tweet with people from all over the world that have my interests or are very eloquent, I learn and keep up with what is going on in those interests, and I keep up with my local community.

And my friend to follow ratio is pretty close 1:1.
I find that I am as networked as I want to be, and conversely am able to keep my sanity.

It started out fabulous. Great sound and edits and content.
And then it went a little too long...and lost the point.
Why is it called history hacker when it's a show only about electricity?
Confusing.

'AI with a mechanical body'?

We already have that....that's not the hard part....

You people from the United States are weird.

A bar, a pub, a place with alcohol is a central place to see and interact with your community. Your community has children, like it or not.

SW Lucky Lab has been great for beer, food, kids, dogs...accepting of the -whole- community.

I hear you about Twitter - it's the community, the people that drew me here and have kept me here.

I disagree however about Windows - I require my ground to be stable and Windows just hasn't given that to me - I'm an OS X freak fer sure. The car can be crazy outta control (Twitter up and down time) but the ground can't move for me (operating system.)

I live and die by AIR apps, for Twitter whether it's Twhirl or Spaz, because of the real estate simplicity.

Now that Twitter has real funding (Bezos) and real expectations (users and Seesmic), we shall see some improvement. I, as another reader did, also give it 6 months for change.

The PR biggies get this; they hire people with a good sense of social skills and communication, and -interest- in their field focus.

What Tom did is what most people who communicate for a living would consider to be basic 101 smart common sense. Good for him.

Nicely done in calling this out Chris. Perhaps some of the folks out there, will change their standard spam and slam modes and try this approach instead.

How in the world does Twitter make money? Because maybe if they made some, they would have a more sustainable backend.

And yes, someone could start something else and could get a migration - but it would depend on timing. Could you get the top 10-20 people with most followers over to your new service? That would be Scoble, Brogan, etc. Is there a time in which they all would be sick of Twitter because of the broken functionalities that would actually end up in a mass exodus to something extremely similar?

Facebook is no Twitter. It's an application thang. People don't want a whole browser window to be open all day; take up too much screen real estate. People like their little AIR apps in the corner of their screen sitting open all day to check in from time to time.

That's awesome...they check themselves on Twitter - good for them!

I'm more of a believer now in big companies 'getting it' about social media as a whole.

I think that the Flickr scenario is highly different than the Doubleclick one. Flickr, a couple cool folks in Vancouver - so many of the above points -did- matter to them (lifestyle etc.)

Doubleclick, have no care on these points as they are equity house bound. So I think it was all about profit. I think Doubleclick was not just looking at immediate profit, but future profit; and they just -cannot- see Microsoft stock going up. I think this is the important point. They can however see the future profit in a building corporate Google.

This wasn't 'who is cool, who is evil etc.' This was profit driven. And I believe that we should pay attention to the choice they made. What can we infer given their choice, that assumes that Microsoft stock will never be getting any higher? Hmm, what do they know?