It was a pleasant surprise to find that the Associated Press did a profile on Sockington, a Twitter account for a cat. And not just any cat. A cat with over 500,000 followers. A cat that has funny tweets. Sockington is the cat of Jason Scott, who does all the tweeting for him as well.
Scott has created a character with a particular voice by tweeting messages from Sockington’s point of view like: “I must say no comment to the whole dining room incident. No questions please.”
In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. (Wikipedia)
A Bloomberg news report yesterday talks about how Comcast has risen in customer-satisfaction ratings because it is using twitter to deal with dissatisfied customers. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Comcast’s rating rose 9 percent in the first quarter, the largest gain among cable and satellite providers.
Comcast has always had an incredibly bad reputation for horrible service, for 3 of the past 6 years, Comcast tied for the worst place in the index. Now it’s been trying to climb its way out of the hole by proactively dealing with customers using communication channels like Twitter. Here’s how Comcast uses Twitter:
Threadless, a T-shirt company is offering to let Twitter users have top tweets printed on T-shirts. Users can nominate and vote for the tweets that will be printed on each shirt, much like how threadless currently produces its other t-shirts. Two new tshirts will be sold each week at $18 each.
You can sign in to your twitter account via Threadless and you’ll be able to vote on submitted tweets and earn $500 for submitting your own tweet (if it gets printed) or $140 for nominating a tweet that gets printed.
An Atlanta city councilman has used Twitter to save the life of a woman who had a seizure on the street. Instead of calling 911 for medical assistance, Kwanza Hall sent out a twitter message because his phone battery was low and he didn’t want to be stuck on hold.
“Need a paramedic on corner of John Wesley Dobbs and Jackson st. Woman on the ground unconscious. Pls ReTweet,” was the message he sent out on the social networking Web site.
Twitter’s business model has been officially confirmed by co-founder Biz Stone, which has said that Twitter is developing add-on tools and services for businesses and professional users of Twitter. These premium tools will be introduced by the end of 2009.
But Stone dismissed the notion of selling advertisements on the popular service at this time, even though ad revenue is the main way most Web start-ups manage to stay in business while keeping their service free for consumers.
“There are a few reasons why we’re not pursuing advertising — one is it’s just not quite as interesting to us,” Stone told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York via videolink from San Francisco.
A haiku is a form of Japanese poetry consisting of three metrical phrases of 5, 7 and 5 respectively. It’s an elegant and minimalistic form of expression, one that is perfect for something like Twitter. Which is why Twitter is hosting the first real-time haiku poetry competition, with judges Yoko Ono and poet Jackie Kay, picking the best verses from entries posted live on London’s Kings Cross’s biggest digital billboard.
Twitter is a mobile tool.. you can send out updates from your phone in just about anywhere you are. Typing out a single message can reach a few thousand of people who might be equally mobile, which is why Twitter is ideal for businesses on the move, particularly food trucks.
Twitter recently became the communique of choice for the popular Kogi BBQ trucks, roving Korean-style taco vendors in Los Angeles that use the 140-character microblogs to alert customers to their whereabouts and menu items.
This is a rather significant development on mainstream journalism. ABC News has created a new half-hour digital program called “NightTline” which allows viewers to discuss and debate the news of the day through Twitter. While other news sources have embraced Twitter as a news dissemination network, its good to see how networks are encouraging the use of Twitter as a discussion platform.
New, unique visualization of Twitter using Pixel touch screen technology will be employed for the first time on the site. The first episode of “NightTline” will be broadcast on Wednesday, May 13th at 12:30 p.m. ET. Episodes will take on the program’s popular “Face-Off” model, a live debate on issues being discussed on the national stage, which “Nightline” has made successful in its recent on air programming. (link)
A young man struggles against the pressure to Twitter his life away. From: “SuperNews!” An animated sketch comedy series airing on Current TV. I know some of you have already seen this but there’s a good chance that some of you haven’t so check it out! There have been a few Twitter parodies but I think this one is the funniest so far. It really does embody how some people think about Twitter, about its frivolous and silly from the outside. But we know better, don’t we?
