Twitter Twitter - and Google have a mashup I'm quite enjoying - I noticed it today and also read about it on Bloggers Blog - Google, Twitter and Twittervision Launch Super Tuesday Google Maps Mashup.

And what's nice is that Twitter - by its nature, is democratic (I don't mean by party lines - I mean, it's of the people - it's uncontrolled, level playing field).

"… We've joined forces with Twitter to give you instant updates on Super Tuesday. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, you can send a simple text message about your voting experience. Huge turnout? Taking too long in line? Did you just vote for the first time? We want it all, if you can keep to 140 characters or less. (And if candidates can keep their posts to 140 characters, anyone can.)

Throughout the day, you can watch Twitter updates from across the country: You can also keep track of the election at @Politics (run by the Media Cynic) and at Politweets. There is also a list here of political candidates with Twitter accounts.  "

Also, check this post out Twitter Super Tuesday + Google and the map I made. 

I guess it would only be a matter of time till reporters figured out how to use Twitter - and now they have, according to the New York Times in an article today on Campaign Reporting in Under 140 Taps

Thor Swift for The New York Times

Twitter, the tool of microblogging journalists.

 "….Microjournalism is the latest step in the evolution of Mr. Dickerson, who worked for years at Time magazine, and has moved from print to online articles to blog entries to text messages no longer than 140 characters, or about two sentences. “One of the things we are supposed to do as journalists is take people where they can’t go,” he said in an interview. “It is much more authentic, because it really is from inside the room.”

First we had "microblogging" and now we have "microjournalism" - I guess the way we 're taking in information is faster and faster chunks of a small amount of information.

In fact, I find it's much easier to take in small chunks of data - that's why I have problems reading long blog posts - I'd almost prefer them to be separate posts if it's going to be longer than 3 or 4 paragraphs - but that's just me.

Maybe it's just ADD, or maybe we've all got ADD now. 

Noticed a post on Analyzing Twitter Usage on FleetStreet PR Blog that looked interesting, so I tried it, and actually, I liked the charts more than other services I've seen that report on Twitter - but that's just my opinion.  Here's what Twitter Stats looks like:

Twitter Stats

This is a totally ugly engine to produce some stats from your Twitter feed and present them with the Google Charts API, including Tweets per hour of the day, total Tweets per day/month, top @replies and top overall @s.

The code was adapted from http://dcortesi.com/2007/12/27/twitter-stats/. None of your Tweets or other data is stored on the server once the statistics are produced.

Note: Once you enter your username below and click submit, it can take several minutes to produce your statistics, especially if you have a large timeline. Please be patient.

If you have a protected timeline, you will have to temporarorly unprotect it for this to work.

Update: Twitter Stats now has a Google Code page.

Lovingly made by @bck

 —- Tweets per Hour —-
—- Tweets per Day —-

Excellent Post on 10 Ways Twitter Can Boost Your Social News Profile in Read/WriteWeb where a couple of tips are new to me but I should be following such as:

"…Search Google for Profiles on Your Favorite Social News Sites Mentioning Twitter

This is similar to the last trick, but this time, go to Google and type in: site:digg.com/users "Twitter" "StumbleUpon" and you'll see a lot of Digg users with Twitter accounts, who have linked to Twitter in their user profile. Follow the link to their Twitter profile, see if they're still active and follow them. The reason you're searching for StumbleUpon as well is that it increases the likelihood that Google will return results where Twitter appears in the About section of a user's profile — try substituting StumbleUpon for other social networking sites to change your results set. You can try this trick with any social news site."

Though it doesn't seem to work with any other site than Digg.com - still, it's interesting.

"..Twitter-jack" Active Social News & Twitter Users' Friends

When you find a popular Twitter user who's also using your social sites a lot, go through the list of people they're following and follow them too, look especially close for names and avatars you recognize from those other sites. This can be a recursive process, take hours, and ultimately lead you to a lot of new Twitter friends."

Not actually sure how to do that….. for example, how do you know whick twitter users are looking at Webmetricsguru.com?  Talkdigger?   In other words, the idea is good, but how do you do it?

 "…Consider Using a Social Media Specific URL Shortener

If you're trying to get more popular on multiple social news sites, the tendency may be to post a link to the story on every social site you want it submitted. This will annoy your friends and followers. Instead, try something like Votrs.com which will not only create a short URL for tweeting long links, but the landing page will also include buttons and badges for easy submission and voting on various social sites of your choosing."

Interesting… I bet most people using Twitter don't do this  

Original Link: Is Ning Traffic full of Porn? Shortened URL: http://votrs.com/c381cf4e

Not submitted to Digg yet, submit it now. Not submitted to Reddit yet, submit it now. Not submitted to Del.icio.us yet, submit it now. Not submitted to StumbleUpon yet, submit it now. Not submitted to Mixx yet, submit it now. Not submitted to Sphinn yet, submit it now.

 Except for the possibility for submitting the url to various other social network sites … I don't see how the Tiny Url is optimized for Social Media - but, still, it's worth adding this step as it could generate more traffic.

Read a pretty good post on The Evolution of Personal Publishing in Read/WriteWeb that suggests the Twitter and Tumblr were part of a natural evolution of Personal Publishing:

The image above is by Fred Wilson.

"…..The personal publishing market evolved from cumbersome web sites to online diaries called blogs to social networks and more recently to microblogs. Each form of personal publishing is different and each has its niche and audience. While social networks have been the most wide spread, the content creation there feels different from publishing. Because traditional blogging platforms are powerful and still require technical know-how, microblogging has evolved as an intermediate form of self-publishing. Microblogging has a shot of spreading blogging further into the mainstream as well as swaying some professional bloggers to start personal blogs.

It will be interesting to see what will to happen to microbogging in 2008. Do you think it is going to take off? Do you have a Tumblr blog today? Are you likely to get one soon? Do you use Twitter?"

I also just posted on Twitter Traffic.

Found out about a post from Jeremiah - Some Conversations have shifted to Twitter where information that would have, in the past, gone on a blog, is going onto Twitter and generating traffic.

"….Twitter is one of the top referrers of traffic to my blog, over 2000 referrers from twitter to my blog in the last 30 days…there’s something happening there.

I’ve also noticed and increase of new users over the past 30 days, feel free to add me as a friend, I will add you back.

Twitter is becoming a major communication tool for me lately. There are more intimate conversations being held on this next-generation chat room, and it’s filled with early adopters and those who are trying to reach them."

And Jeremiah has 1982 people following him in Twitter - so if he puts a URL in his Twitter feed it could generate hundreds of referrals almost immediately - and that- infant, is what seems to have happened today -

"..Holy SIHT we're past 100 comments in just a few hours http://snurl.com/1v3ur. "

But, clearly, this only works if you have a "large" following.

In one of my more playful posts - I'm wondering if Twitter can be part of an actual post - for example - if anyone ever displays the this post it will give updated information on what I just did (provided I updated the Twitter feed regularly, something I'm doing more of lately)

Because I don't control the Template of Webmetricsguru.com, I can't put this Widget on the blog navigation - but there's nothing to stop me from putting it into any post - or for that matter - every post, if I wanted to.

Or I could just show the whole widget in my post - me and everyone else I'm following - and every time the post is displayed - the content will be partially updated due to the Widget being updated.  I tried that but it doesn't seem to work - maybe I can only do one Widget per post.

I've been having a hard time with really using Twitter effectively - several have been tracking me - and I think I'm tracking a couple of people - and I am trying to occasionally update my Twitter stream and Tweet - maybe once or twice a day.

However, here's some blogging tips and I'm going to start reading them - maybe it help me use Twitter more.

Interesting, if long, post in ZDNet today about the Twitteriztion of Media titled Get ready for the ‘Twitterization’ of mainstream media by David Berlind.   The part I related to was this little gem:

"…A couple of days ago, I noted how Twitter is the sort of technology that could completely up-end subscription-driven outfits like Bloomberg or Reuters. Investors subscribe to these services and sit in front of giant consoles as editors from these organizations spit out one-liners at them — one-liners with material information to investors — in near real-time. In other words, if there’s a reporter at a financial briefing for some public company and an executive of that company makes an important forward looking statement, that statement will appear on the consoles of thousands of investors within seconds of it being uttered.

On the investor side, there’s a stream of these one-liners about everything that’s important to them flowing by their consoles like a river. The secret sauce is not just in the business process (a chain of talented writers and editors who feed the system), but also in the infrastructure that facilitates that process: a proprietary infrastructure that, as far as I can tell, has been completely cloned by the likes of Twitter and Twitter-competitor Pownce.

Publishing one-liners takes only as long as it takes to type the one-liner. Subscribing to a source of one-liners the way an investor might subscribe to Bloomberg’s information services takes only seconds as well. Whereas Bloomberg puts a sophisticated system in the hands of an exclusive group of people on a private network, Twitter and Pownce make such a system available to everyone on the Web. Bloomberg gives subscribers a means of instantly offering feedback to publishers. For example, as it was once described to me by a Bloomberg editor, “If we don’t get the information into the system in time for investors to make key decisions, it could cost them millions of dollars. When they lose millions of dollars, you hear about it right way. They’re very quick to tell you you’re late.” I haven’t played with Pownce yet (I’ve reached out to the folks at Pownce but have yet to hear back), but Twitter offers precisely the same private feedback capability."

That's a bombshell. No doubt, there's more behind The Bloomberg or Reuters services than the infrastructure - but, within this year, within the last 6 months, all of that infrastructure has, more or less, become irrelevant.

"…it isn’t hard to imagine a world where experts who don’t work for Bloomberg or Reuters (ones who are just as good at feeding one-liners to investors) start to publish useful, timely, and material information using a tool like Twitter. It’s equally unimaginative to picture investors subscribing to those feeds. They’ll do anything and consider any information that comes their way in an effort to beat other investors to the punch."

It just goes to show how building an advantage on Technology, is vulnerable to further advances in technology.