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A comment on How we created a Twitter viral: the ePenis story.

Re:How we created a Twitter viral: the ePenis story by jballanc on Saturday March 28, 2009 @11:56PM (#537083)
Is it just me, or does everyone else get the feeling that there are two Twitter communities out there? Personally, I follow friends, one or two announcement streams, and an influential figure or two in the Ruby community. Essentially, I use it as a quick tool to keep up to date on what's important to me.

Then it seems like there's everyone else who just discovered Twitter in the past month or two. These people seem to be either one of "I can follow my favorite celebrity! It's like I'm almost touching them..." or "I'm going to be huge and have lots of followers and feel important for it..." For them, Twitter is just the latest fad like Facebook, MySpace, Geocities, etc. before it.

I guess, even though I've been on Twitter for a while now, I still don't get it. Maybe I'm elitist? Maybe I'm becoming out of touch?

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Re:How we created a Twitter viral: the ePenis story by ahoyhere on Sunday March 29, 2009 @12:22AM (#537102)
Your perception is wrong - there are not two Twitters, but a million Twitters. It's been that way for a couple years almost, altho it is now achieving critical mass.

Since "friend" relationships are only one way, everybody builds the Twitted they want to see. That's part of its appeal and why it's so interesting to an experience designed like me :)

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Re:How we created a Twitter viral: the ePenis story by jballanc on Sunday March 29, 2009 @10:16AM (#537355)
There's that too. If I were a social researcher rather than a biology/computer science researcher, I think I would be banging down the door of Twitter headquarters for unfettered access to their raw data.

In some respects, Twitter has become the human social genome project.

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Re:How we created a Twitter viral: the ePenis story by ahoyhere on Sunday March 29, 2009 @04:20PM (#537739)
There's not a whole lot of "private" data that Twitter keeps locked up. Their API and search are very good, with few exceptions.

Have you seen this project of mine? http://twistori.com

Or the PepsiCo Zeitgeist, which I designed & developed with my husband for the SXSW conference. The conf's over now so the experience isn't the same, but videos of it in action are here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/pepsicozeitgeist

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Re:How we created a Twitter viral: the ePenis story by jballanc on Sunday March 29, 2009 @07:31PM (#537993)
I had actually sen the pepsicozeitgeist bit...very cool! It reminded me a bit of http://www.wefeelfine.org/
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