140Char

I’m just about to restart my PC to see if the error continues, but at the moment, it appears I’m only seeing Tweets posted 40 minutes ago - and all my updates are being displayed in order at the top…
If it continues after a restart, I’ll grab a screenshot and start trying to get some more details…

Strange Twitter error occurring

Update: 19.52 GMT

I’ve also just noticed that the Twitter warning about the recent phishing attacks which was visible on the main page has now mysteriously vanished for me.

There’s nothing on the official Twitter blog, but it comes strangely soon after the first major Twitter hacking of 33 celebrity accounts, and the first large scale Twitter phishing attack.

Update: 19.56 GMT

Checked the @Twitter account, and there’s a simple sentence on the Twitter Status Blog.

‘We’re experiencing some delays in the amount of time it takes for updates to appear in timelines. Working on this now.’

It was apparently posted an hour ago - I do wonder why messages are split between the official blog and the status blog.

The ability to instantly update was highlighted at the weekend, when Mike Wilson (@2drinksbehind) tweeted ‘Holy fucking shit I wasbjust in a plane crash!’

As he continued to post updates it emerged that it was the second crash he’s experienced, some of his experiences and possible causes (flagged up as such), and the fact that Continental Airlines wouldn’t serve drinks to the passengers once they were all safely away from the plane.

Silicon Valley Insider has screenshots of the whole thing, and there’s interesting commentary from Loic Le Meur, Jeff Jarvis, Mashable, Laurel Papworth, and The Blog Herald -  and that’s just sources from my RSS feeds!

What’s interesting is how Loic, for example, points out spokespeople weren’t able to give out any details on live TV news, despite the fact we could all follow Tweets from somewhere going through the experience - and Pete Cashmore at Mashable points to the changing roles of news and newsrooms.

Apparently Mike has now been interviewed by Fox News. And apparently the chairman of Continental Airlines was on the replacement flight!

He’s also gained a lot of new followers as a result of the experience.
The implications for news reporters and news sources are becoming more and more important with every piece of breaking news on Twitter. Mike was able to send messages and images from the crash site - and could have also shot live video, all from his mobile, and all distributed instantly online.

For the visceral experience of an event, nothing can compete with that.

Where news sources still provide value is in finding the context of those individual experiences - for instance, when a spokesperson appeared to say they couldn’t say anything, where was a reporter asking about Mike’s messages?

We’ve already had

• Mumbai
• The U.S Election
• Earthquakes

I wrote about how news sites have to change back in July. At that time, the LA Times was the first new source I’d seen to reference Twitter. The fact it’s got a Twitter account probably helps. During Mumbai, both the BBC and CNN were referencing it alongside Flickr.

And there has been plenty of reaction by readers of traditional news sources, as well as from the blogosphere. Many have questioned whether instant updates can be trusted, and whether they’re the sort of thing we expect from traditional news sources.

Part of this, I suspect, is from people who don’t use Twitter and therefore don’t have the human filter as a way of referencing trust. (Incidentally, David Armano’s diagram is one of the most succinct and effective ways of explaining Twitter I’ve seen!).

The Human Filter by David Armano (Logic+Emotion)

And the other part is that news sources are still slowly developing from their coccoon and haven’t fully worked out how to implement Twitter and the meaningful context and analysis on top of it in a readily apparent way.

The sooner websites integrate Twitter, Flickr, Qik, etc, the sooner we can see the value they layer on top.

It occurred to me the other day that i tend to read the blog posts from those i follow on twitter - who ‘tweet’ new articles via twitterfeed or suchlike - more often than the others in my google reader (which i check once or twice a week at the most).

Wouldn’t be good if there was a twitterfeed - that i can control - that tweets me selected blogs - from my reader - as they happen?
This would save a lot of dicking about between twitter desktop client and browser/feed widget.
Yeah, this kinda happens with friendfeed but I don’t control that - I’m not necessarily friends with most of the authors in my rss reader , whereas with a custom google reader feed into twitter, spec’d by me… is that bit more personal.

Or maybe this functionality already exists? Any thoughts?

UPDATE: I also posted this over at never get out of the boat theres been a couple of comments if you prefer to chime in over there.

When I wrote about my first week of using Magpie to monetise my Twitter account, I wondered if there was the inventory to even get close to the ratios of 5 posts to one advert.

The second week appears to be backing up this theory - since then I’ve had just a couple of advertising messages, raising my earnings up to the 17 Euro mark, despite leaving the ratio at 5:1. At this rate it will be quite a while before I reach the minimum payout of 50 Euros.

But as I said before, this is a good thing in some ways, as one or two adverts a day seems to be an amount that doesn’t offend - and perhaps the number of advertisers will increase after Twitter co-founder Biz Stone picked the service over monetisation alternative Twittad in an LA Times article.

“I think any kinds of projects that focus more on the Twitter updates are more compelling,” Stone said.

For the record, Twittad is claiming 1600 sign-ups, 170 advertisers, and I’ve just finished my first month of allowing them to serve adverts on my profile page. (Feel free to book me for another month right now!)

Interestingly Ev Williams has recently said the economic climate means Twitter will seek to monetise in Quarter 1 2009.

From Cnet: “The revenue plans aren’t just ads or sponsorships. “We want revenues to be product-based. Google built something that can really scale, and that’s our intention as well.”

Still, in the meantime if you want to try Magpie, why not use a link that also helps to fund 140char? Strangely the Twittad affiliate scheme seems to have a form error at the moment.

It seems like every day reveals another celebrity using Twitter. Today I stumbled across two!

Lance Armstrong doesn’t really need an introduction as a 7-time winner of the Tour de France, and also an inspirational figure who overcame cancer. There’s also Livestrong, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, uniting people to fight cancer. He’s tweeting at @lancearmstrong.

Meanwhile Will Carling is the former captain of the England Rugby Union team, with 72 caps from 1988-1996, as well as playing for Harlequins. He captained England to two Five Nations triumphs in 1991 and 1992, the final of the 1991 World Cup, and a 1995 Grand Slam. He’s at @willcarling.

Add that to a list of sporting stars including:

• Andy Murray
• Shaquille O Neal
• and?

If you’ve spotted any other sporting stars, past or present, let me know in the comments. And don’t let it stop you if they’re on Plurk, Jaiku or Identi.ca instead!

These are my links for November 28th through November 29th:

• Wikinomics » Blog Archive » Twitter used for machine to machine communication - Another use of Twitter - machine-to-machine communication. It's been bubbling for a while - the interesting thing will be if the facility to do it becomes more popular and mainstream.
• Tweetsgiving: Raising Money out of Thin Air | Pistachio - Nice look at Twitter use for established charities, and the example of Tweetgiving
• /Message: Edmodo: Educational Microstreaming… And More? - Educational tool around microblogging/sharing/streaming, with 'Teachers' able to create Groups and Events, upload files, create alerts etc. Posts all stream in the group, and in personal account of group members.
• With Twitter, a Desperate Need for Context - GigaOM -

I think I may have found the culprit!

For some reason, I’ve been having some upgrade and access issues here, despite the fact I run an identical blog with no problems!

I don’t know why but trying to do anything with the admin is running incredibly slowly, so please be patient as I run through checking the database and isolating which plugin might be causing the problems!

Blog Action Day 08 takes place today, October 15th, to try to raise awareness and debate poverty.

If you’re interested in what Tweeple around the world are doing and saying for Blog Action Day, check out the Twitter Search.

Personally, I don’t want to patronise anyone with an ill-thought post. So instead, I’m recommending The Big Issue Foundation as a great way to help empower the homeless with improved self esteem and ways to stay off the streets, as well as financial earnings.

Forgive the round-up format, but sometimes there just isn’t enough time in the day!

• Al Gore is coming to Twitter (Mashable). Whether or not you want Al Gore microblogging, more prominent figures means more mainstream coverage and members. Which increases the reach and opportunities in microblogging, even as it might dilute some of the things that initially appealed.
• Twestival write-up (TechcrunchUK). Sadly, and despite some farily strong persuasion by one of the organisers, I couldn’t make Twestival, the London Twitter meet to be social for charity. But by all accounts it was a huge success (I will definitely make the next one). Mike Butcher’s write-up and comparison with another event the previous night highlights why it was so good. The Twitter account for the event appears to be dormant now, but I’m guessing the website might remain active for the possibility of another one.
• Social Actions + Twitter mash-up (Mashable). Are auto-tweets bearable if they’re in a good cause? Pick the cause which resonates with you from a drop down list, and the system will auto-tweet once a day on your behalf to all the postings on that cause.
• The U.S Senate can officially resume Tweeting: (Venturebeat).  A new protocol rule change means members of the U.S. Senate can now share with the public more easily via public websites, including microblogs. There are some rules about disclosure, and what data politicians can collect about users of their own websites.
• Executive Twittering: Blogging without the time suck: (Pistachio). Businessweek profiled 10 CEOs who Twitter, and Laura Fitton goes on to explain why it can be such a benefit.
• How did personal video eclipse entertainment video (Chris Brogan). Interesting piece looking at the rise of personal video, and related tools like Seesmic and 12seconds.tv

That should keep everyone going for a bit…

Well, 140char.com has been running for a while now. We’ve had some great articles written by various people, some interviews with some very interesting people, and some nice comments and links from other sites and people.

But I want to keep 140char evolving, and you’re the best people to give me advice on what we should be doing next!

We’ve already got some things underway, including some new contributors, and some new interview subjects. But what are you looking to read? News on the latest Twitter apps? Examples of businesses using microblogging, or how to monetise your microblogging account?

Are there pages we should add on new topics, or any that you think are utterly pointless?

And what do you think of the overall design?

Please do leave a comment below, whether it’s positive, negative or even expressing indifference! You’re allowed to go over 140characters this time!

What the experts say

Today, Joel Postman posted on corporate twittering at SocialMediaToday He makes some good points - the first being that we should know the site is official and another is that the corporate twitters must be empowered to help the consumers.

My experience of customer service via Twitter

I planned today to follow my previous post about the apparent pointlessness of corporate micro-blogging. One of the things I was going to say was that my experience of corporate twittering is negative. A rep comes back to you and says “what is the problem?” . I waste time replying and that is the last I hear of them. So certainly, if corporate twitters can do something for me, I am persuaded. Otherwise, I don’t think Joel’s suggestions go far enough.

Twitter as crowd sourcing

In the post I had prepared before I read Joel’s article, I was going to liken twittering to crowd sourcing. Crowd sourcing has three important features:

• Anything we do is small, easy and completely repeatable.
• Anything we do is redundant - the show will go on without us.
• Any useful outcome of crowd sourcing could have been generated from any one of the crowd.

Twiitter fits the crowd source model well. When people recount the benefits, they almost always say they get solutions to problems - not from specific people but from anyone who happens to the be listening. Sometimes you get a solution and sometimes you don’t.

Having a customer rep scanning for messages and trying to answer them quickly and effectively is a different model entirely.

Barack Obama’s nifty use of Twitter

Barack Obama’s use of Twitter exploits its broadcast facility. No one answers if you reply with DM! A normal reply takes you in one click to the speech that he is making at the minute. Next to the videocast are four buttons, encouraging you to take action for his campaign in one of four easy clicks. That is a good use of the “minute action” model of crowd sourcing.

Corporate use

I haven’t seen any other corporate use that is any good at all. We may love Twitter, but we won’t be thanked for trying to use it to do what it can’t.

What I would try if I had to!

If I was using Twitter for customer service, I would reply automatically to any Tweet about my company, with a link taking to the customer service line. Then would link up the customer service line to txting, email, DM, Skype, so my customer can communicate quickly with whatever medium they have to hand.

Twitter would come the opposite of ‘broadcast’. It would be a listening post where I can find customers having hassles and move them to a channel where I can help them.

Positive feedback

I might have one rep scanning for Tweet’s that are positive and reply publicly thanking them for the compliment! That should be contagious! It would be a great experiment if any corporate would like to try it?

PS Joel, when will SocialMediaToday fix its comments so we can participate. Notice 0 comments, so it is not just me, I think.

Dan’s Note:

Further to corporate Twitter accounts, there are some which have started working in the way Jo describes, using the likes of Twitter search to monitor for mentions of a company or product and then responding. They include Comcast, Dell, Zappos, Qik. There’s a list of all brands on the Fluent Simplicity blog, and we’re compiling our own list - hopefully building on this by separating the good and bad, and listing case studies which show how Twitter and microblogging should, and shouldn’t be used. You can see the Business Case Studies for microblogging and Twitter here.