140Char

Twitter and Facebook integration has come to two of the big three consoles of this generation with both the Xbox 360 and PS3 now allowing you to keep updated in between games.

Although your Playstation will automatically update Facebook when you earn a new trophy in a game, apparently that functionality is missing for Twitter (I own an Xbox 360 instead so can’t test).

But Dirk Olbertz has come to the rescue – he emailed me to say that PS3Heroes.com now allows you to update your Twitter status with your new PS3 trophies.

You’ll need to register with PS3Heroes.com, add your Twitter username, and allow access via OAuth.

And that’s it done.

I’m surprised the official auto-updates favour Facebook rather than Twitter – in terms of auto-updating accounts, you’d assume the focus would be reversed – but this will solve the problem for the time being.

I remember suggesting something along these lines a while back to a friend – so it’s great to see you can now track commercial flights via Twitter and Facebook social networks.

Lufthansa has launched MySkyStatus which automatically posts the current position of your flight to Twitter or Facebook. Aside from the vicarious thrill of following people on their travels, it has a definite practical application if flights are delayed, for example. And that could mean potentially skipping waiting times of several hours, particularly in winter when clearing snow can definitely affect timetables.

Updates are posted around once an hour, which could mean 20+ tweets on a long-haul flight.

Updates simply state that someone ‘ is flying over xxxx,xxxx in Geramny on Lufthansa’

First an official Google account appeared on Twitter:

But now Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been uncovered, having had an account for almost a month.

Definitely some validation for Twitter – which also hit 8 million U.S users.

It’s fun to hypothesis that Google, perhaps, is on Twitter as a customer service exercise – after all, they owned Jaiku, and the differences between the two services are fairly open and obvious, so it isn’t a research mission.

But Zuckerberg is even more interesting – Facebook already had an offer turned down for Twitter, so it’s unlikely he’s trying before he buys. And Facebook has also unveiled changes that seem to be partly in response to the real-time nature of Twitter.

Perhaps he sees it as an additional communication channel that is worth spending some time with, or perhaps he just fancied some fun by trying to see how long he could be anonymous?

Personally I’m just excited (and surprised) by the fact that for some strange reason, he’s decided to follow me!

An interesting post on the Twittown apps and widget community blog suggested Twitter ‘Took on Facebook’s Zuckerberg and Won‘.

It tracks the timeline between Facebook updating the Terms of Service for the social network, and rolling back to the original terms due to the outcry over ownership of content uploaded.

And while I don’t believe that Twitter outcry alone led to the decision to move back to the original terms and consult users about updates – Google blog search shows the outcry through full length blogging – the Twittown post does suggest that Twitter opinions had a significant effect.

And I would expect the Facebook team to be monitoring Twitter alongside all other channels – especially as FB considered Twitter important enough to try to buy it!

And it shows how monitoring and responding to probably the largest, and certainly the quickest online focus group makes sense for adding value and monetisation, whether it’s by Twitter, or third-party applications like Tweetdeck.

Since the tragic events in Mumbai, there has been a lot of coverage of the role of Twitter in breaking news, with both advocates and critics referring to the speed of microblogging in providing updates but raising some questions about validity and honesty.

But to be fair, Mainstream Media (MSM) has been increasingly paying attention to Twitter over the last few months:

• LA Times: SoCal earthquake has everyone a-Twitter
• The Rocky Mountain News twittered from a funeral When Twitter goes bad: newspaper tweets a funeral
• Newspapers that Twitter – October Figures (Ignore the strange header message on the blog at the moment!)
• CNN incorporates Twitter into live shows, e.g. with Rick Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn)
• CNN and the BBC both refer to Twitter for updates on Mumbai.

There are plenty more examples around, so it’s almost incredible that a mainstream UK publication can still create something quite so inept:

Is Twitter the new Facebook?

You can hear millions screaming in pain as they collectively answer ThisisLondon – ‘No, you buffoon’.

12 negative comments have already been posted, including mine. Sadly they edited out the link to www.140char.com, and others have had comments edited, with no public acknowledgement. Tech journalist Kate Bevan (@katebevan) has also been expressing her disapointment on Twitter, and having her comments edited. Also got negative comments from Amanda Rose (@amandita), who has researched Twitter extensively for academia (including interviewing yours truly!).

I’m not sure it’s worth the energy to deconstruct all the disasters yet again, so here’s my brief comments:

• Badly researched, angled and written.

• It’s 140 characters on Twitter, not 160.
• Barack and Britney are manned by PR people, unlike real celebs ranging from Stephen Fry to Shaquille O’Neal.
• The latest figures show about 5 million users per month.
• The ‘brevity breeds banality’ issue has been debated, disproved and forgotten for months – brevity can lead to impact or banality depending on the person and content.
• Twitter started becoming a news source with events like the UK, LA and Chinese earthquakes, and LA forest fires.
• The ‘gimmick’ isn’t following people – the ‘gimmick’ is interacting with people via the reply functionality.

And there’s more. From the article:

‘after several false starts (“Error on page!”) I manage to log on to MoodyShell’s feed. “I hate it when I burn the roof of my mouth and then it starts to peel. Ew!” she says. Fascinating. Another click, and I am officially “following” her. It feels queasy and wrong.’

No wonder it feels wrong, when @nickcurtis hasn’t managed to follow anyone, and has only managed a solitary tweet. You’d also think if you’re posting something about Twitter, it might be worth popping back to check the response? Maybe it would make for a better article?

Maybe someone should point him to the appropriate Twitter search. Or just pointed him to all the similar articles from 18 months ago that were at least defensible by the fact that it was a new service with an initial familiarity hump to get other – everyone struggles with Twitter the first time they log in, and it’s only when they return and start following and using @replies it becomes an essential tool for research,interaction,news gathering, customer service and more.

Could the current financial situation force Twitter to start monetising microblogging with a newfound urgency?

Yes?

• Within the $20 million in VC funding, there is bound to be an element feeling a little twitchy at the moment.
• Would anyone buy a service for the valuations Twitter has had, without a working financial model?

No?

• $20 million can go a long way, if you’re careful!
• If Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg is being honest that the social network is concentrating on growth over revenue for three more years, then as the pre-eminent microblogging site, Twitter could follow a similar plan. The only flaw is that Facebook is already making money, just not as much as it could!

These are some initial thoughts, so it would be great to hear some opinions and ideas! Personally I think that we may see some of the smaller microblogging sites, perhaps Plurk for example, need to find revenue generation before Twitter, simply due to the lack of funding reserves. Twitter has the advantage of being able to sit back, and perhaps see some of the experimentation take place before acting.

Blimey, things are definitely starting to happen outside of Plurk. First came the first Plurk Facebook app, Plurksync, which updates your status with your most recent Plurk. Unfortunately it’s likely to suffer the same problem as status updates via Twitter, when you end up seeing the same message across every service an individual uses.

Although my favourite incident with linking microblogging and Facebook saw friend and colleague David Cushman in a surreal, endless loop of updates between Twitter and Facebook.

And now comes the unofficial, reverse-engineered, not supported by the Plurk team API, RLPLurkAPI provided by Ryan Lim.

Oh, and from the official Plurk blog comes the news that they’ve tweaked the Karma points.