Just made a twitter group (twibe) for Davis Square...

[lysistrata.livejournal.com]

In case anyone wants more social media inundation:
http://twibes.com/DavisSquaria

Comments

[ron_newman]

Is twibe the same thing as a twitter channel? What is the difference between a channel that begins with @ and one that begins with # ?

Someone pointed me at this twitter channel last week, but it doesn't begin with either @ or # : http://twitter.com/02144now

(am I right that twitter is basically IRC?)

[ifotismeni]

@ is a reply tweet directed at a specific twitter user.

# hashtag is a way of tracking a term in twitter when you search. so if you tag a tweet with #boston, your tweet gets tracked with other tweets marked #boston if someone searches for "boston" in twitter.

[ursamajor]

Not exactly. It could be, depending on how you (and your friends) use it, but it doesn't have to be, and # (hashtag) and @ (replying-to) on Twitter mean completely different things from # (channel) and @ (op) on IRC.

The Twitter you pointed at (02144now) is one Twitter account; most accounts only have one person actually doing the updating for that account. (If you're a celebrity, or you're running a Twitter for your business or political campaign or government agency, YMMV.)

People reply to each other on Twitter by prefacing the account name they're replying to with @; thus, if I were replying to 02144now, I would address them as "@02144now".

# is used to denote a particular subject. People watching the Red Sox game and tweeting about it will often include "#redsox" in their tweets. People attending a given tech conference will tweet about it and include #name_of_conference in their tweets. It's not always a location or event-based thing, though; you can add a hashtag to any word in your tweet. Also, you could still search for "Red Sox" and find updates, so I'm not personally sure what the benefit of hashtags is.

Whether or not it's like IRC depends on how you use it, who you follow, how often you send out tweets, how often you send out original tweets vs. tweets that are just responses to someone else or RTs (retweets) of someone else's news.

I don't know how Twibes* work, though. I'm guessing that if you associate your Twitter account with a specific tribe - er, Twibe - on this third-party website, that (some of?) your Twitter updates (also called tweets) will show up on the Twibe Davis Square page?

* Twitterers are pathologically fond of portmanteaux. People on Twitter are "tweeple." When Twitterers meet up, it's a "tweetup." If you update your Twitter from the bathroom, it is, yes, a "shwitter." I wish I were making this up. There are apparently enough of these word mashups for a twit-ionary.

[ron_newman]

So why do some of the tweets in http://twitter.com/02144now have "@02144now" in them but others don't? How did the ones that don't have it end up in the channel?

[ifotismeni]

if 02144now wrote posts starting with @02144now, they would be talking to themselves. you use the @ tag when talking to OTHER people.

[ron_newman]

But let's say you wanted your tweet to show up in the 02144now channel. How would you get it there if you didn't put @02144now in it?

[ifotismeni]

02144 is not a channel, it's one user. think of it in LJ terms -- it's an individual user account. @ designates replies to the user, but the replies don't show up on the user account's home screen. on a user home screen you only see what the USER writes, not what is sent to the user.

[ron_newman]

OK, what's confusing me is that on the web, 02144now appears to consist of tweets by many different people.

[ifotismeni]

that's the user 02144now manually copying and pasting those other tweets into their feed.

[ron_newman]

Ahhh! That's what I did not understand.

One of the other mods here was also confused, since she put that twitter link into the davis_square profile as "Davis Square Twitter Group".

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

I don't understand that either. Does Twitter offer scripting? It's pretty bizarre that somebody would manually paste other people's tweets into their feed.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

i know there are folks out there who have written applications that will search for a given hashtag and then repost everything it finds with that hastag to a single account in near-real-time.

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

Twitter has an API, so it's probably not manual cut-and-paste

[ifotismeni]

they might -- i wouldn't know, though i imagine it doesn't take that long to post, probably akin to a simple RT

[ursamajor]

You can't make your tweet show up on 02144now's Twitter. That's their account. Whoever is behind it can choose to copy and paste and reply to your tweet publically, but they don't have to.

I *think* the way Twibes work, you could make a tweet from your own Twitter account (let's say you sign up for ron_newman for the sake of argument), associate your ron_newman Twitter with the DavisSquaria Twibe, and then (some of?) your tweets would show up on the DavisSquaria Twibe page.

[ursamajor]

Honestly, they're doing it weirdly. IMHO. *G* Their posting model seems to be basically retweeting others' tweets? (Except they say "by $user" instead of the more universally known "RT $user.") But a tweet like that where they're retweeting someone else's reply to them while including the self-referential reply characters is, well, a waste of characters when you only have 140 of them per update to begin with.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

What's with all the apps? When you do a search on Twitter, all the tweets say they come from web, txt, twitterfeed, TweetDeck, OutTwit, twitthat, Tweetie, WP to Twitter, or Ping.fm. ( that was just the Red Sox search )

If I'm only interested in, say, things posted from cellphones can I search for a specific type?

[ursamajor]

If I'm only interested in, say, things posted from cellphones can I search for a specific type?

I don't think you can search by "was this posted from a cellphone, any cellphone." Nor does it seem to let you search the metadata that says what application a specific tweet was posted from; looks like it only searches the tweets themselves. However, using the iPhone Twitter app "Tweetie," you could search for "from Tweetie" and see some people talking about posting from Tweetie.

There's also location-based search, whether for "happy hour" near:Somerville,MA, or there's a client that lets you see tweets from people you're not following that are located nearby? I forget which one, though.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

The "near" operator isn't bad. Searching for "helicopters" within 10 miles of Somerville we get
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=&ands=helicopters&phrase=&ors=¬s=&tag=&lang=all&from=&to=&ref=&near=somerville%2C+ma&within=10&units=mi&since=&until=&rpp=50

But it seems most tweets don't specify a location, so it must be using the location people specify on their profiles. Plus there's no good way to separate people watching what's going on outside from people at home watching reruns of Airwolf.

[ursamajor]

Ah! Looks like I can use "source:$app" as a supplement to a search - can't *only* search for "posts posted by someone using this app," but I can search for "posts with the word 'hungry' made from TwitterFox." Or 'hungry' posts that weren't made from the website.

Plus there's no good way to separate people watching what's going on outside from people at home watching reruns of Airwolf.

Clearly, Airwolf watchers need their own hashtag. ;)

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

> People reply to each other on Twitter by prefacing the account name they're replying to with @; thus, if I were replying to 02144now, I would address them as "@02144now".

People must check each other's tweets pretty compulsively if the customary way to reply to someone is to leave the message on your own account.

Plus isn't "@-the-persons-entire-username" kind of cumbersome while texting?

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Think of twitter as the bastard child of LJ and IRC. You have a friend's page of the twitter channels that you read in chronological order by entry. Just like you don't have to constantly watch your friend's page on LJ to read all the posts, you don't have to watch twitter all the time to see those entries. But like IRC tweets are flat (rather than threaded like LJ) so you need some means of making it clear that you're commenting/replying rather than posting something new; the @username convention serves that purpose.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

I don't get that either. Is 02144now a community that people post to, or is it an account that aggregates other people's Tweets if they have tags like 02144, Davis, etc?

I like the idea.. would be great for our "whatwasthat" type of forums, but almost all of it is come see my band or look at this restaurant...aaargh.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Ah, so that what all the @ and # shit is all over Facebook's status updates. Guess I have some people to put on Hide.

[cos]

twitter is very very very much *not* like IRC.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Does the target audience for Twitter even know what IRC is?

[cos]

I think twitter is too big now to talk about "the target audience". Certainly there are people who IRC, who also twitter. Certainly a majority of people using twitter have no idea what IRC is (just like a majority of people on the net don't, these days).

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Well, wasn't Twitter originally conceived as a taxi dispatch system? The idea of group texting sounds very convenient for something like a neighborhood watch group where people had to be mobile, but it wouldn't be practical to get radios for everybody.

Somewhere along the line it got marketed as a "tell your buddies all the trivial things you do all day" tool, amid all the buzz about social networking. Much silliness followed, but most people really aren't interested in that kind of thing.

Short answer: Generation Y, and some talking heads on CNN trying to look hip.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

wasn't Twitter originally conceived as a taxi dispatch system?

i don't believe so. the guy who wrote it had done routing and dispatch systems previously, but twitter wasn't intended as such afaik.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Good, then maybe you can explain to us what all the tw-terms are.

I have some feeds from Twitter in my RSS reader, but about 50% of it looks like gibberish to me.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that you seem to be strongly poo-pooing a tool you've never used while insisting other people tell you all about it. Dude, go check it out for yourself already - I'm sure you'll get it all figured out once you see it in action ;).

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

There's pooh-poohing, but there's also curiosity without drinking the Kool-Aid. I've been reading Twitter for a few weeks, as per the comment about pulling RSS feeds from Twitter searches. But from the outside looking in, it's not as straightforward as, say, seeing Livejournal for the first time.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

There's looking from the outside in, but there's also using it yourself. It's the difference between flicking on the TV in the middle of a match for a sport you've never seen before and playing that sport yourself. I assure you, it doesn't come with Kool-Aid - I gave it a try and decided it wasn't for me. But having done that I understand why someone might want to use it, why those RSS feeds are useless to people who don't use twitter, and what twitter social etiquette is without bugging a community known for snarking the clueless. You're lucky this isn't b0st0n!

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

b0st0n?

Now that's IRC.

[ifotismeni]

cool! i joined, but my tweets are protected, so i'm not sure if it'll show me as a member.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

I joined, what the hell, I'm happy to expose people to my Twits.

Twitter is a stupid waste of time.

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

For people with pathological separation anxiety.