Twitter

The man who unfollowed 131,000 people

adamg — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:54:23 +0000

Local social-media consultant Chris Brogan reports on the reactions he got when he unfollowed the equivalent of much of Worcester on Twitter.

Klout? He spits on your klout

adamg — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:52:56 +0000

Ric reacts rather harshly to the Globe story that starts with the BU student who admits to checking out the size of would-be suitors' Twitter rankings, and rejects those who don't measure up.

These are the people who will have to deal with global warming, major economic dislocations, war, global hunger, predatory politicians, and all the rest of it.

The Lion senses some difficulty ahead ...

Orange you glad you don't live in Athol?

lex.galloway — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:48:28 +0000

Yesterday morning, the ever serious David Bernstein at the Phoenix noted Salem's attempt to get over the whole witchcraft thing with a new municipal slogan and wondered what other towns could adopt as their slogans. Suggestions continue to pour in; here are some of the best (so far):

[rollzroix] Somerville: Like the US, we have three branches of government: 1/3 Mayor, 1/3 Aldermen, 1/3 Pat's Towing

[bokeller12] Boston: lost if by car, late if by T.

Boston doesn't have enough twits

Kaz — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:22:10 +0000

Twitter introduced location-specific Trending Topics to give you an idea on what the recent zeitgeist in your area was based on common terms that show up in the stream of all tweets from your area. These topics often cycle in a matter of hours as new news and discussion take over for older topics.

Unfortunately, Boston's Trending Topics have been seemingly stuck on a handful of terms from the early June NBA Finals (with a shout-out to the Tony Awards too) for quite a few weeks now. For those wondering why it's not functioning right for Boston (but fine everywhere else), Twitter posted this on their Help Center:

Communilytics - Counting Community Activity at E 2.0 Conf

jeffcutler — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:36:19 +0000

Still at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference at the Westin Waterfront Hotel and I'm now in a Communilytics session. What are Communilytics? Well, it's actually the measurement of community numbers. So, how people in a community-based group, like Twitter or Facebook or even blogs or Expedia or other online areas-respond and react to each other and the platform itself.

Essentially, measuring communilytics is like finding out what people are doing on your sites and understanding how people are connected to other people and who the influencers are.

I may have mangled the description, so here is the slide deck from the presentation (this one was given 6 mo. ago at another conference, but the info hasn't changed).

Communilytics Slide Share Deck

Enjoy!

Tweet for Treasurer

massmarrier — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:33:57 +0000

Real-time politics, eh? I see that Karyn Polito got a tweet on her website dare to Steve Grossman's Twitter. He just responded to a debate challenge with:

@karyn4treasurer, I accept your invitation to debate. Let’s talk jobs, holding big banks accountable, & protecting people’s $. When & where? 16 minutes ago via web

Game on, boys and girls. Now, she'll have to come up with some substance to match his specific and elaborate proposals.

WGBH Twitter hacked

chrismatth — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:02:30 +0000

The Twitter account for WGBH's "Greater Boston" (@GreaterBoston) has been hacked. Either that, or PBS is finally offering some good loot when you donate money during commercial breaks.

Teaching teachers social media and technology

jeffcutler — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:12:40 +0000

It seems like each four minutes there's a new event happening in Boston proper or across the river where I sit typing right now.

These events range from knitting circles to test drive tweetups, and the thing these events have in common is that they're increasingly organized via social media tools.

So imagine my surprise when I found out this morning in one of the first sessions at the Social Technology and Education Conference at Harvard University, that this very conference was completely organized without any traditional marketing.

On being banned by Twitter

adamg — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:29:13 +0000

Susan Johnson was one of the people banned by mistake from Twitter over the weekend. She ponders what it means:

... emailed support begging them to restore my account and promising to be a better citizen of the Twittersphere (though in truth, I think I'm already a pretty good citizen). This morning, with just as much warning (meaning zilch), my account was mysteriously back to normal. There were no signs of a hacker, and Twitter didn't even bother to send me an automated email (Dear Twitter: I know you know how to send automated emails because I get several per day!).

I'm happy to have my account restored and I realize that Twitter is a free service (for now, at least), but I'm also a little miffed that they can suspend someone with zero warning and without even an automated courtesy email explaining why. ...

Another banned Twitterer, Tom O'Keefe, reports, in the comments here that without Twitter, he was forced to use a phone to call a friend to meet for some ice cream at JP Licks.

U.S. Attorney Deval Patrick? No.

Kaz — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:11:48 +0000

Today's New York Post Page Six gossip column stated that Deval Patrick was about to be offered the US Attorney position in MA amid sagging poll numbers as Governor. In a public Twitter mention similar to an exchange between the Governor and R.D. Sahl of NECN back in February, reporter Mike Sangalang at WBZ (@MikeSangWBZ) asked the Governor (@MassGovernor) about the validity of the rumor. About two hours later the Governor's press secretary, Kyle Sullivan, responded on Twitter that there was "absolutely no truth to this rumor".

Previously: News is made on Twitter?

Boston_Fireman explains the Boston Fire Department Twitter Confusion

RightSedRed — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:43:11 +0000

As many of you saw yesterday, there was confusion on the Boston Fire Department Twitter feed. I am a Boston Firefighter, and not knowing that the city was intending to set up an official Twitter feed, I set one up to keep those interested informed of fire department happenings around the city. Upon learning that an official Twitter feed was set up, I shut mine down.

Deval is all atwitter

Innismir — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:38:28 +0000

This floated across my Twitter stream this morning via @bradsaccount, who is the Director of New Media at the Massachusetts Governor's office:

Massachusetts Governor Patrick's Office has an official twitter feed now. Follow away! www.twitter.com/massgovernor

Interesting, to say the least.