Hashtags are dying. In mid-2009 it’s getting difficult to see a point for them. What started as a helpful tool for tracking news from events has descended into a combination of misguided overuse and outright spammy manipulation.
There’s a good argument for abandoning hashtags altogether. Here’s why…
Hashtags are manipulated
A few weeks ago a minor sensation was caused when WYSIWYG website creation startup Squarespace started offering vouchers for iPhones in a draw for people who mentioned #squarespace in their tweets. The result? The company’s name trended highly for days and everyone’s Twitter stream was filled with mentions of the company. (more…)
It seems that videos making fun of Twitter come out almost weekly – here is my personal favorite. The latest one to arrive is BootyTweet – sad but true I’m affraid :).
“I @reply the finest birdies I know but we never met in real life so I look like a creeper…”
If your looking for a way to find some hot birdies on Twitter try out flirt140 – a site that helps Twitter-ers find each other for dates and more.
Amidst the shock and grief amongst Twitterers in reaction to Michael Jackson’s death last week, a number of fake celebrity deaths started trending. One of the main victims of the rumours was Jeff Goldblum.
Now that the dust has settled and the rumours have been debunked, a Scottish blogger has stepped forward to confess that he was the one that ‘killed’ Jeff Goldblum.
In a lengthy ‘confession’, John Skelton details how the prank started. (more…)
Written on 1st July 2009
6 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Twitter has made a number of subtle changes to your following and followers lists. The changes make it easier to see information about the people you’re connected with.
You can view people in list view or expanded, and next to each profile is a settings option to disable or enable mobile phone notifications (or an option to follow the user if you’re not already) as well as links to mention, unfollow/follow or block a user.
Considering the very few changes Twitter generally makes, this is the equivalent of a design overhaul!
I am calling for a group subscription framework to be developed so that with “one click” you could create a group of Twitter users in TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop or whichever Twitter client you use.
This framework would allow companies to create a group of their employees and post the group subscription link on their homepage – just like an RSS feed. It would also give an individual user the ability to create their own ad hoc groups based on any criteria they chose. The creator of the group would maintain the master list and any changes they made to the group would be dynamically updated in the clients of those who subscribed. If this was available, creating the group in your Twitter client and following specific groups of users would be as simple as subscribing to an RSS feed.
Following specific groups of people, especially entire companies, can actually be quite a useful thing to do. ReadWriteWeb did a recent study of all Twitter employees’ Twitter accounts and was able to come up with some pretty interesting tidbits of information. I personally found the value of following an entire company on Twitter when I started following the team at Squarespace (the blog and website creation tool I use for my personal website). I started following a couple employees of the company and was constantly getting great tips that weren’t showing up on the Squarespace company blog. As a result I went through the manual process of hunting down the Twitter handles of all the Squarespace employees I could find and then added them to a group in Seesmic Desktop.
So if developers of Twitter clients are listening, please help! Until such a group subscription framework is developed you will have to do it manually. Below is a list of The Next Web Team and our Twitter handles:
Zee Kane – @zee
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten – @Boris
Ralf Rottmann – @24z Martin Bryant – @martinsfp
Keith Tsudo – @tsudo
Joop Dorresteijn – @joop
Mike Bracco – @bracco
The tweet, which read “Britney has passed today. It is a sad day for everyone. More news to come”, was accompanied by a Twitpic link. Britney Spears’ management and Twitpic both acted relatively quickly to resolve the issue. Approximately two hours after the initial tweet Britney’s account had deleted the message and posted
“Britney’s Twitter was just hacked. The last message is obviously not true. She is fine and dandy spending a quiet day at home relaxing”. (more…)
I’m constantly amazed at what developers are doing to leverage the Twitter API to add their compelling piece on top of it.
It would be no surprise than that someone out there would come up with a way to use Twitter to pay their respect for the late great Michael Jackson – enter Billie Tweets. While playing the music video for “Billie Jean” the lyrics are displayed down the side using tweets. Truly an innovative and cool way to use Twitter!
Written on 26th June 2009
2 COMMENTS Martin Bryant, Co-founder, Social Media Café Manchester
With news of Michael Jackson’s passing sinking in, the web has now recovered from the initial traffic surges it suffered as word first spread. As the blogosphere picks apart the way the story unfolded online, many are coming to the conclusion that the realtime web isn’t really the best place to get news accurately.
The first two sources to confirm Jackson’s death were online. TMZ and the LA Times suffered vast traffic surges that took them down, while Twitter (in between outages) was spreading misinformation about other celebrity deaths. Hours after the rumour began, people are still asking if Jeff Goldblum is dead (he isn’t).
So, when you can’t rely on the internet, TV’s the place to go right? Sure TV news is always there and it’s more careful with its facts; is it really any more useful though? Pictures for Sad Children makes a great point in this cartoon. The internet maybe unreliable, but at least it says something!
The election crisis in Iran has captured the imagination of the Twitterverse in a way that no previous event has.
With Social Media being used by a daring few in Iran to spread word of the atrocities being carried out there, a huge movement of support for the Iranian people has emerged online. Over the past two weeks it’s become increasingly common to log into your favourite Twitter client and be confronted with a sea of green avatars.
Yes, the green-tinted avatar has become the symbol of support for Iranian democracy. It only takes one click of an oft-retweeted link to give your avatar a green tint. While it’s great to see so many people engaging with global politics, the question has to be asked: what does turning your avatar green actually do?
It might sound callous but if we’re honest the answer is “Not a lot”. (more…)
Written on 4th July 2009
9 COMMENTS 
Hashtags are dying. In mid-2009 it’s getting difficult to see a point for them. What started as a helpful tool for tracking news from events has descended into a combination of misguided overuse and outright spammy manipulation.
Written on 3rd July 2009
Amidst the shock and grief amongst Twitterers in reaction to Michael Jackson’s death last week, a number of fake celebrity deaths started trending. One of the main victims of the rumours was Jeff Goldblum.
Written on 1st July 2009
Twitpic has patched a vulnerability that saw 
The election crisis in Iran has captured the imagination of the Twitterverse in a way that no previous event has.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
