This is most likely the reason first time users of Twitter stop, give up and bad-mouth it. I can’t blame them after watching this.
A message to the people who think Twitter sucks – You ARE FOLLOWING IDIOTS. If you followed the right people, Twitter is Awesome.
Technorati Tags: Twitter, College Humour
Peace.
Just read a great post by Adrants on Twitter still seeking a business model and still getting slammed two years on. The getting slammed part came particularly from Simon Dumenco who is a definite non-believer in the benefits of Twitter, especially if its a project which fails to make any money.
While Twitter has said and continues to say it has every intention of creating a business model which will support it beyond seed money, reading the revenue-generating notion “one idea is to charge companies th at want to use Twitter as an official channel to talk with their customers and monitor what they are saying,” causes one to ROFLOL to the point of gut-busting pain.
Charge companies? Charges companies? For what? Any company with half a brain already has access to an endless supply of free “listening” tools that offer fairly deep insight into Twitter usage and what’s being said about a particular brand.
Dumenco concludes not so inappropriately, writing, “I don’t think every tweet or blurp or bloop or fart that emanates from a human can or should have ads sold against it or be otherwise monetized.”
Of course Twitter is far more than any “blurp or bloop or fart that emanates from a human” , but still the man has a point. Twitter could charge a yearly fee to use the service, but then what should they charge? I certainly wouldn’t pay to follow a bunch of people talking about what they had for breakfast, or if they just came out for the shower, refreshed. Then again, if you’re paying for the service, maybe people who are really interested in adding value would buy into it and utilise it instead of it being just another social media plaything for the ever-growing population of digerati.
Another benefit of charging for it is that it would save us all from a barrage of useless advertising should Twitter opt for the advertising route.
I don’t know… maybe there is some creative way in which Twitter can make a good business model out of what they provide without totally pissing us all off. I hope they find it!
What do you think they should do?
While I’m here… 
:)
Mandy de Waal, one of our esteemed judges has recently coined the phrase “twiction” to represent micro-stories, especially those created within 140 characters on the micro-blogging platform, Twitter. I found it extremely appropriate to put this new term into use for this competition.
What a ride! The South African “Twiction” competition has now come to a head with the winners in sight and the prizes ready to be sent off. Thanks once again to all the contestants, the beautiful and intelligent Judges and, of course, the sponsors!
Okay… Let’s get to it.
First Prize: @JasonEsch
“He was both at a loss and lost, staring at the road sign that seemed more to describe how he was feeling than where he was going: Bakgatla.”
Judges comments:
“A journey at a crossroads, with a real sense of character. The ending wins it for me.”
“Beautiful use of metaphor for such a short form, and strong expression on the archetypal journey and ability of humans to get lost on that journey.”
@JasonEsch wins a T-shirt from SpringLeap.com! Congratulations!
Second Prize: @yusufk
“Vuvuzela in one hand,phone in the other,he watched the cross float by 3 defendenders,deflect off a forehead into the net. Tweet:”SA Scores!”
Judges Comments:
“Sports offers up great narrative. The themes of struggle, perseverance and victory are timeless. The ‘tweet’ added a nice touch.”
“Another strongly descriptive entry, which conjures images of our strong sporting nation.”
“I am so excited about World Cup coming to SA, and I think it will be great for the country spirit. And every goal will help. So this captures that hope beautifully!”
Yusuf’s entry was a close contender for no. 1
@yusufk wins a $20 Amazon.com voucher from the guys at Qatarliving.com! Well Done!
Third Prize: @samanthaperry
“A writer entered a story competition, lost, and killed herself. The judges denied guilt, claiming the writer had terminal Bulwer-Lyttonitis”
Judges comments:
“ For the benefit of those who don’t know the reference – click over to http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ Clever entry; complete and concise.”
“Smart. Funny. Self evasive. Another complete story in 140 characters.”
Samantha’s entry was very close to snatching second place. She wins 40 Minutes Free wi-fi access which she can use anywhere in South Africa. Great Work Samantha!
Runners Up:
These were entries which were contending with the three winners and made some great efforts which put them onto the list…
@takilla786: Innocent window washes, innocent sells, innocent begs, innocent smells.Innocent pleas, innocent harps,all so that Innocent Jnr never starves
@blacktiemedia: Thembi stood contrasted against the sky of hungry fire. Smoke filled her lungs, blood stained her clothes. “Ubuntu” she whispered tearfully.
@nicharry: We’ve lost our ubuntu. 14 years gone and we are too scared to stand for our countrymen. Instead we fall for anyone carrying a knife or a gun.
@Sznq: He said: 1.Like it or 2.Hamba Kahle.When he wasn’t looking,she left.Now why can’t he buy her back ? Such bitter sweet things,ultimatums.
@qudsiya: One day she clicked on his nick and typed “hi”. A year later, she shook his hand and said, “Nice to meet you.” On 19/01/07 she said, “I do.”
@ismaild: its dark and she misses him, hears a sound in the kitchen! “WTF? Should she check? slowly tiptoes, damn those skelm tokoloshe with munchies
@shaunoakes: ! I said “Fok, Chyna” said a frustrated God, after another misunderstanding with an apologetic Mother Nature. “Now look what you’ve done!”
The competition overall showed the great variety of experience and expression in our great nation. Different stories, varied perspectives, emotion and intellectualism all in 140 characters. A tremendous example of creativity :) I was humbled at the outstanding creativity in each entry and I know for a fact that it made the judges’ jobs all the more harder to choose the overall winners.
Last Word from the Judges:
Saaleha Bamjee-Mayet – “Such stellar entries made the judging process really difficult. To facilitate the process, I tried to look for the most complete story in a twitter format, ones that gave a sense of a beginning, middle and end. SA twitterers have a wicked way with words, and I hated to let some really poetic entries go.”
Mandy de Waal – “For me the biggest skill in the short form is not only the concise concept and the writing, but the re-writing. The ability to shave off everything that’s not necessary, leaving only the bare bones of the story. Short form is essentially fiction that tells a story in anything from five thousand words to a couple of paragraphs. Imagine then how ruthless one must be with Twiction, which surely must be the shortest form of fiction ever written.”
Eve Dmochowska – “Overall, I think that the entries were fabulous, creative, inspired and mostly a whole lot of fun. And It was wonderful to see so many entries .. it shows that the twitter community is quite a cohesive one in this country. Well done to all the entrants!”
Winners, please contact me to collect your prizes :)
Till the next competition, Keep Tweeting!
: Twitter Story Competition, South Africa, Winners
Welcome to the South African Twitter Story Competition!
Here’s how it works…
1) You need to write a story that’s exactly 140 characters long.
2) Being that it is South African, you need to include at least one word from any of the 11 official languages excluding, ofcourse, English.
3) Post a link to your story tweet in the comments section of this blog post. (You have to post a comment with the link because if you just replied on twitter “@mkarim” it wouldn’t be 140 characters :P)
Example: “Who took my bloody biltong?” Oom Jan shouted at no one in particular, knowing for sure those bloody monkeys had invaded his home yet again. Twitter Link
The stories submitted will be judged by a panel of seasoned South African writers/bloggers
The Judges
Saaleha Bamjee-Mayet – Blogger, Writer and Journalist
Mandy de Waal – columnist, writer for hire and freelance journalist.
Eve Dmochowska – Writer, Blogger and Web Strategist.
The Prizes
1st Prize: Up for grabs is a SpringLeap T-shirt proudly sponsored by the guys at Springleap.com – Check out their site for awesomely designed T-shirts by some of South Africa’s Brightest Designers :)
2nd Prize: A $20 Amazon Voucher from Qatarliving.com the biggest social networking site in Qatar and owned by a South African Startup!
This should help with shipping costs now that Amazon has Banned the SA Post Office for theivery and fraud *sigh*
3rd Prize: The winner gets a 40 minute free wi-fi access voucher from Telkom Business which will allow access at any wi-fi hotspot in the country.
The competition was to end on 21st June 2008 at midnight, but has been extended to Thursday, 26th June 2008. All submissions after this time will not be considered.
COMPETITION OFFICIALLY CLOSED… WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON :)
: Competition, Twitter, Social Media, Web 2.0
Kwippy.com is basically an alternative to Twitter and Plurk.
The functions are simple enough featuring the main aspects of Twitter… Microblogging, with permalinks to the various posts (called “kwips”) and the ability to reply. As per my previous post which put Twitter against Plurk, I have no idea if kwippy.com’s API is being shared or released. Also, it has the same downfalls as that of Twitter when compared to Plurk, where the design is not very Web 2.0 and it’s limited to passing links and is hindered by functionality to include pictures and videos. It does have IM updates via Google Talk though, which makes it a bit easier to post and deal with. Twitter used to have this before it started experiencing its problems…
So far, kwippy.com functions as Twitter, but without it’s API being widely available and having it’s functionality widely dispersed throughout the open source community and the web 2.0 community. Open Source is a major ingredient of web 2.0. Functionality in this regard and the ability to pass content easily between desktop and web applications is paramount.
This is what I see as a major stumbling block for this new Indian startup. They do have a feedback section though… so let’s hope we see some really good development from them in future… you never know, with the way things are going these days, they might surpass both Twitter and Plurk. Let’s wait and see.
Another major stumbling block at the moment – It’s invite only… I may have some available – just get hold of me if you want one – leave a comment or catch me on Twitter.
: Kwippy, kwippy.com, social media, Micro-blogging, Twitter, Plurk, Review
vs. 
With Twitter going down every so often, (reminding me of Eskom’s load-shedding), lots of people, including me, have been searching for an alternative. Well, we found it with Plurk. So after a few days of using it here’s my comparison of the two micro-blogging platforms.
Twitter, has amazing functionality and given that it’s API is freely available it’s very malleable and we can use it to do a million and one things. The only thing wrong with it is its periodic shut-downs and general irritability with some of its functions (like device updates via IM) working only on random occasions.
Plurk on the other hand looks very cool and puts all your “updates” on a time line so you can track who said what when (if you check the everyone list, this timeline is split by the second.) They have some other function a like a widget and gaining points called “karma”, which I’m not really sure how that works yet. I do like the reply function which is really easy and targeted towards various posts on plurk. The ease with putting up videos and photo’s is also a plus. You’ll find the little icons which you can represent yourself with are also a bit weird, cthulu-like thingies, with tentacles and spots and bones sticking out. Weird. Plurk’s downfall is it doesn’t share it’s API… so you get what they give you and that’s it. Their widget is only editable vertically which irritates me as it doesn’t fit on my blog sidebar and overall I just can’t seem to like it.
Twitter, however, could learn from Plurk’s visual standards, quirky nature and easier video and photo micro-blogging. It would also help if Twitter didn’t drop the ball so often.
Overall opinion… Plurk is very limiting compared to Twitter. If twitter sorts itself out, that’s where you’ll find me.
UPDATE: >Plurk is releasing their API! – Let the Micro-Blogging Wars begin! This will sway my opinion of which micro-blogging platform to use :)
Twitter is becoming increasingly irritating for such a popular social media application. I can’t believe the guys at the back-end of Twitter can be so increasingly incompetent. It’s text for God’s sake… people are not trading videos on a continuous basis. There are thousands of websites out there doing far more traffic than Twitter and with far more media applications and they also have FAR LESS PROBLEMS.
Come on… what gives? And these cutesy little pictures trying to make it seem like everything is fine reminds me of Microsoft’s “Blue Screen of Death” … what shall we call these Twitter Error Messages ??? “Twitter’s Turquoise Screen of Incompetence”.
To the guys @ Twitter… Please get your act together!
Technorati Tags: Twitter, Problems, Twitter’s Turquoise Screen of Incompetence, error messages, irritating
All entries need to be posted on twitter and the link put in a comment on his blog post page where he started the contest.
Contest ends on the 23rd May.
Here’s my contribution (although the punctuation is a bit off)…
Jack stumbled as he ran down the pathway looking back in absolute terror, he saw his girlfriend gaining on him with a dripping, bloody knife
Technorati Tags: Twitter, Writing Contest, Social Media, Twitter
Now this is a brilliant twist to the over-saturation of social media input into our lives. TwitterSnooze allows you to silence any member of your twitter community for a number of days. So when your friend has a bout of recurrent verbosity, and you don’t really feel like deleting them from your list, simply silence them with TwitterSnooze.
It’s amazing the amount of needs which spring up from our newly defined social habits in the Web 2.0 era, and the amount of web apps available to satisfy each need.
Maybe Web 3.0 will be a filtering of Social Media and provide all things relevant.
The Twitter Blacklist identifies all the idiots who Twitter spam and follow thousands of people in order to draw attention to themselves. I think it’s a really cool idea… I especially remember when I first joined Twitter and got all excited when so many people started following me, only to later realise what a bunch of self-obsessed, ego-driven idiots they are.
How do you know a person is a Twitter Spammer? The site gives a good ratio of identifying them by looking at how many people follow them vs. how many people they follow.
1:5 = twittercaster, 1:2 = notable, 1:1 socially healthy, 2:1 newbie or social climber, 5:1 twitter spammer. — evan
For those using Firefox, install Greasemonkey and then add in the Twitter Blacklist script.
There’s even an API for programmers so they can query if a certain user is on the blacklist.
Technorati Tags: Twitter, Blacklist, Twitter
karim.co.za
Fists in the Air…