Sampling Twitter to determine client breakdown

sampling the public timelineThe arrival of promoted tweets on Twitter got me thinking about how people post their tweets, as the initial dipping of the Twitter toe into monetization will only impact users of http://search.twitter.com.
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So, how many people actually use the Twitter.com website to post their tweets? What are the most popular clients? Continue reading “Sampling Twitter to determine client breakdown”

Inflated Tweet Count: it’s not about the numbers, dude

On 25 Jan 2010, Twitter Support Team confirmed that some Twitter users had experienced an approximately three-fold increase in their Tweet Count; i.e. the number of 140 character posts they have submitted to Twitter.

As it happens, I myself am an Inflated Tweet Count Syndrome sufferer. I think my tweet count went from 3600-ish to 9600-ish overnight. To be honest, I don’t give two (or six) hoots about the numbers, but there are many on Twitter who are much more numbers-obsessed than me, so it’s an issue that’s causing ripples of irritation across the Twitter user-base.

Karen from GOAL posts tweet no. 50,000 for @mcawilliams
Karen from GOAL posts tweet no. 50,000 for @mcawilliams
Many users do keep an eye on their tweet count and treat milestone tweets as special events. Honourable mention here is due to the example of @mcawilliams who raised money for Haiti in the run-up to his 50,000th tweet. He invited a representative from Irish charity GOAL to post tweet no. 50,000 on his behalf. I note that John’s tweet count has now also succumbed to the hyper-inflation that’s going round…either that or he has passed milestones 100,000 and 150,000 in superhuman time.

The thing that irks me about this whole thing isn’t the faulty counts themselves but the low-priority status Twitter are giving to the problem:


UPDATE: 02/02/10
– This bug is a low priority issue because it does not prevent users from fully using Twitter. We do not expect to have this issue fixed in the immediate future for this reason. Please leave a comment below if you are affected by this issue. Thank you!

Continue reading “Inflated Tweet Count: it’s not about the numbers, dude”

Twitter’s new retweet feature: more good than bad?

Gerry sings out his RTsThanks to a conversation on Twitter earlier today with @thegurrier, I now feel the urge to express (in more than 140 characters) why I think that Twitter’s “new retweet” feature is A Good Thing™ on the whole. As a Tweetdeck user I was pleased to see it implemented so quickly and it is interesting to see that the new feature is being adopted by many users from what I can see in my own timeline. Posting a Retweet has been integrated into Tweetdeck very tidily, but a huge amount of confusion remains about how the new-style retweets are appearing (or not) in our twitter feeds regardless of client. Continue reading “Twitter’s new retweet feature: more good than bad?”

Things I Do Since I Took Up With You

Following a pleasant exchange of Tweets last night, @kenarmstrong1 pointed me to some lyrics he had written. Not that accustomed to such collaborations, I printed out his lyrics and took up the challenge today. Fortunately the first idea I tried seemed to fit okay….I think. What do you reckon?

It was a pleasure to try out my new Samson USB microphone – worked a treat straight out of the box. The guitar I’m playing is my son’s 3/4 size classical.

Lyrics: Ken Armstrong, Music: Gerry Mulvenna

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