I Don't Feel Comfortable about this TWITTER business.....

[FrenchieCat]

Now, I may be quite wrong, but there is something about "Twitter" that feels wrong to me. :tinfoilhat:

I just watched a panel on C-Span in where the CEO of Twitter was on talking about how great Twitter is and what it does. Frankly he put me to sleep. The audience were middle aged folks, and many looked like Republicans to me.


I noticed that Twitter came out of nowhere, and quickly became the new Tech on all of the commentators on Chatter Cable Channels. Folks from Anderson Cooper to Rick Sanchez love Twitter! There has been a flurry of promotion of this Twitter capability, and quite a few articles written, but frankly, it makes little sense to me.

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or through applications such as TwitterMobile, Tweetie, Twinkle, Twitterrific, Feedalizr, Facebook, and Twidget, a widget application. Four gateway numbers are currently available for SMS: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, and a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email. Estimates of the number of daily users vary as the company does not release the number of active accounts. In November 2008, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research estimated that Twitter had 4-5 million users.<2> A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranks Twitter as the third largest social network (behind Facebook and MySpace), and puts the number of users at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visitors at 55 million.<3>

Twitter messages may be tagged using hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a #, such as #beer.<4> This enables tweets on a specific subject to be found by simply searching for their common hashtag, provided that the user has tagged their tweet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

Republicans claim to Twitter more than Democrats. http://microblogbuzz.com/details/15127477

It smells like to me; http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=6730613
kind of a set up to be "in" on the new internet technologies, and catch up with the tech methods that Barack Obama used in his campaign.

Lawmakers all a-Twitter

Some members of Congress have been communicating when they’re supposed to be legislating.

How do we know? A little bird told us.

The microblogging tool Twitter has become a popular way for members to stay connected to their constituents on an up-to-the-second basis. Sometimes, however, members have been tapping out tweets, as Twitter messages are called, at times that some might find ... surprising.

“In my first committee meeting ... Judiciary,” reported Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

“On the Senate floor for my first vote,” crowed Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).

While it may be nice for the folks back home to receive these you-are-there dispatches from the field, the messages also seem to suggest that legislators are not always fully immersed in their work — or are not being fully forth­coming about who’s writing their posts.

Some members acknowledge that staffers sometimes tweet on their behalf, even when the posts say “I” or imply that they are being written by the member. Warner’s office, for example, says he did not actually post from the Senate floor, noting that the use of BlackBerrys there is banned. (It is permitted in the House.) Others find truth in technicalities. Chaffetz’s office says the Judiciary Committee meeting he mentioned hadn’t actually started yet — even though his post saying he was “in” the meeting implied that it had.

Some, however, are definitely doing their own tweeting, like Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.), who reported via Twitter: “i am managing the floor. Steve King is up.”

Or South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis, who Twittered seven times from last Tuesday’s GOP meeting with President Barack Obama — a record bested only by the running commentary of Texas Rep. Michael Burgess, who sent 11 updates during the discussion.

Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, a conference and website focused on the intersection of technology and politics, says it’s all for the good. He believes that “real-time constituent communications” soon will become “the norm rather than the exception” — a development that will lead to “more transparency and more citizen participation, hopefully resulting in a better democracy.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18316.html

Rough day on Twitter
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Rough_day_on_Twitter.html

oh, and Twitters too!
http://twitter.com/thepolitico

others....
HuffPo Luncheon All A-Twitter About New Media

Today we attended HuffPo Luncheon: RNC Edition, which was actually one of the most feisty and interesting panels we've witnessed (though this morning's Politico breakfast was fairly feisty in its own right). Here's who was there, via Twitter, which is how we will tell this story (c'mon, Old Guard, it'll be fine):

@FishbowlDC At huffpo lunch: ruth marcus, matthew cooper, cindy adams, sam stein, nico pitney, byron york
@tvnewser More At HuffPo: Jeff Greenfield, Joe Klein, Peggy Noonan.
@FishbowlDC At huffpo lunch: barbara comstock, peggy noonan, lynn sweet, tony blankley, jeff greenfield
@FishbowlDC At huffpo lunch: john fox sullivan, tucker carlson, arianna huffington, laura ingraham, joe klein, margaret carlson, mickey kaus
@FishbowlDC At huffpo lunch: david corn, john fund, ron brownstein, ted johnson, jeff dufour, chris licht, joe scarborough, mika brezinski

It was interesting — Peggy Noonan noted that something was going on where the young got their info from one source and the old got their info from another; Tucker Carlson bemoaned the dumbed-down (and uber-nasty) state of the discourse between commenters and flame-throwers who were — wait for it — hurting America; Laura Ingraham pointed out that there were people in the audience that would be inheriting the kingdom, even as they were changing it (meanwhile, in the audience the young guard was furiously tweeting and snapping pics for uploading to blogs; note, however, that none of us young bucks had made it to panel status quite yet).

Here are some highlights, as noted via Twitter from Ana Marie Cox, FishbowlDC's Patrick Gavin, TVNewser's Chris Ariens, and yours truly, each in 140 characters or less — interspersed with some photos, because even Twitters, when taken in the aggregate, can add up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/01/huffpo-luncheon-all-a-twi_n_123066.html

Can you talk me down? :tinfoilhat:

[camera obscura]

1. Me and my friends have been using Twitter for months - but we just use it like Facebook statuses

I did add BarackObama's Twitter to my watched list, but otherwise, I try to avoid the political side. I don't need to know what Tucker Carlson is thinking about at any given moment.

[FrenchieCat]

3. Knowing what Tucker Carlson thinks might make one want to jump.....

Twit twit!

[BlooInBloo]

2. So don't use it....

It's just like a mass-email. If you don't like it, don't sign up for it.

I signed up for it - I think it's dumb.

[FrenchieCat]

4. I'm just trying to find out more about it.

Like I said, Republicans seem to be "excited" about this tech capabilility,
and of course, the Corporate Media is jumping in with both feet.....and promoting
the shit out of it! Quite interesting to watch.

[BlooInBloo]

7. Lots use it. I follow Maddow, Yglesis, and Atrios, for example.

republicans breathe oxygen, too. Doesn't mean oxygen is part of a conspiracy.

[FrenchieCat]

10. Anytime Republicans use something more than Democrats,

I have to ask questions. :shrug:

I heard that even McCain Tweets!

[BlooInBloo]

11. McCain doesn't tweet. Possibly one of his staffers does...

As for republicans's CLAIM that they use it more, more power to them:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/virginia-gop-chairmans-blog-outreach-massive-fail.php

[FrenchieCat]

19. Funny!

can they do anything right other than being to the right and calling themselves that? :rofl:

[BlooInBloo]

20. Not so as I've noticed. :)

[sandnsea]

5. I twitter web site updates

Events and other stuff related to the west coast. It's way faster than blogging. I avoid the political stuff, not enough info to make a judgment on quality reading.

[mockmonkey]

6. ?

"Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets)"

Shouldn't they be (known as twits)?:think:

[FrenchieCat]

8. Well normally.....but looks like they saw the problem with that....

:rofl:

[Hissyspit]

16. Haters of Twitter are known as "twaters." Seriously.

Mods - This is an informational post.

[global1]

29. Why Didn't They Call It "Tweeter" vs "Twitter"? .......nt

[firedupdem]

9. I guess I don't get it. My friend bugged me about getting a facebook

page...I did it but I don't get how people have so much fun with it. I'm talking to the same people that I talked to via email. :shrug:

I put my maiden name up and now I'm getting friendship requests from old high school buddies and college buddies, but those are the one's I didn't keep in touch with for a reason! LOL!

I have no desire to know what these politicians are doing. Just get it done and I'll read about it.

[shellinaya]

14. Your real name?!

Like with most stuff online -- don't use your real name!!!!

On Twitter you can call yourself anything you want. And upload any picture you want.

I don't know about Twitter, but Facebook is monitored by the CIA and who knows who else in government, so I'd get off Facebook....... It's mainly used for spying on people.

Seriously, using your real name online is asking for big trouble.

[Posteritatis]

22. At least pretend to know something about FB before you freak out

Yes, people use their real name on Facebook accounts, because that's the point of the damned site. You might as well be telling people to use aliases in the phone book these days.

Yes, I know that DUers tend to be incredibly conservative about a lot of the net these days - yes, I went there, and I use that word on purpose - but it couldn't hurt if folks would get their information about things through something other than third-hand forwarded emails or whatever scarefest the media's kicking up this week. (I mean, those are the same dumbshits who got people thinking that there's an organized hacker gang named Anonymous, for crying out loud.) If you're acting all surprised that Facebook of all sites assumes real names for its accounts, then you're in one of those two camps and are thus catastrophically ignorant enough not to really be able to contribute anything useful to the discussion.

As for me, I've used my real name online for most of my main net activities for about seventeen years now. There's a couple of exceptions where I use an alias; DU's one of those, as I joined it in one of my more paranoid phases during the Bush administration and have been using the site to feel out my own political views with a bit more detachment. But I'm still convinced the whole "if someone knows even part of your name they'll kill and eat everyone you love!" panic tends to err on the side of absurdity.

[NeedleCast]

41. LOL

Insanity.

[TreasonousBastard]

12. Some people weren't happy with this newfangled thing...

called the "telephone" either.

Or email. Or blogging. Or instant messaging. Or those damn fruit-named things.

Granted, 99% of the tweets clogging whatever circuits they use are silly wastes of time, as are most phone conversations, emails IMs and blogs, but that's the unfortunate nature of things. Even as we speak, people are finding productive uses for twitter. I don't have a use for it at the moment, but I could see how I could have used it if it existed in the past.

Politics seems to be one of the less objectionable uses and just makes it marginally easier for the pest wing to add their two cents wothout having to open their laptops in the bathrooms.

[Posteritatis]

23. Folks here do like condemning everything slightly new/different in that sense

There's a whole lot of "What is this? It clearly sucks" or "I don't know what this is, it clearly sucks" or, well, the OP's "I don't know what this is, but it's clearly a conservative plot" on DU lately.

I know there's a kind of echo chamber where a lot of people get their information on net activities exclusively from other people who get their information from net activities exclusively (...and it's the ignorant alllll the way down), but it does seem more annoyingly common lately.

[shellinaya]

13. Not Republican

Twitter is just hot right now, it's not conservative, it's been around for several years. It's a fad, mainly an advertising board.
People swear by it but it's kinda ridiculous. I don't feel comfortable with it either, but I have an account. I barely use it.

There are a lot of Republicans on it but just as many liberals, Democrats, etc.

[treestar]

36. What is it even useful for?

Knowing where your kids are, mainly?

Other than a few work situations, who needs to know what someone else is doing on an immediate basis?

[Hissyspit]

15. Here's more: "Twitter Nation Has Arrived: How Scared Should We Be?"

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/127623/twitter_nation_has_arrived%3A_how_scared_should_we_be

Twitter Nation Has Arrived: How Scared Should We Be?

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted February 21, 2009.

Can it be long before the entire country is tweeting away in the din of a giant turd-covered silicon aviary?

Ed. Note -- Twitterers invited to respond to this article in the comments or on AlterNet's Twitter feed.

Welcome to Twitter Nation. What was once an easily avoided subculture of needy and annoying online souls is now a growing part of the social and media landscapes, with Twittering tentacles reaching into the operations of major newspapers, networks, corporations and political campaigns.

Suddenly, our skies are dark with brightly colored cartoon birds. As in a nightmare, they are everywhere.

This has all happened very fast. It was less than three years ago that Twitter hatched as a harmless Web 2.0 curio modeled on Facebook's status-update feature. Twitter offered people a forum devoted exclusively to short blog entries known as "tweets," most of which answer the company's tagline question, "What are you doing?"

By mid-2008, the San Francisco-based site was garnering feature coverage in national magazines and batting away $500 million buyout offers. With nearly 6 million users and counting, it is now on a Plaguelike pace to obliterate last year's growth clip of 900 percent. Twitter is growing so fast that 2009 may come to be known not as the year America swore in its first black president or nationalized the banks, but the year America learned to think and communicate in 140 characters or fewer.

Over the last several months, the bird has flown the coop and begun flitting madly through the wider culture. For some, the breakout came with the site's role during the Mumbai terror attacks in November. For others, it was the Dalai Lama's decision to start Twittering. Some might point to Twitter feeds featured on cable news, or the dozens of Fortune 500 companies now Twittering their way to better sales and mitigated PR disasters.

Avian flu turned out to be a bust, but not Twitter. Use of the site is now mainstream standard practice for everyone from national politicians to editors at highbrow publications like Harper's. Sites are popping up that discuss music and economics using the Twitter formula and size. Not a week passes without another creepily overeager New York Times trends piece about the site.

Earlier this month, a Twitter styleguide was released, and the first national Twitter awards ceremony, known as the Shorties, was convened in New York. Hosted by Twitter's own Walter Cronkite, CNN's Rick Sanchez, the awards ceremony featured acceptance speeches limited to 140 characters.

Can it be long before the entire country is tweeting away in the din of a giant turd-covered silicon aviary? And how scared should we be?

[BlooInBloo]

17. It's funny because the author mention the avian-flu fail...

but then blithely goes on to wonder how scared we should be.

:rofl:

[Hissyspit]

18. Twitter Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwGzdbLweUI

[ecstatic]

21. It seems like Twitter exploded around the "B girl" incident

Her tweets got her busted!

[Undercurrent]

24. Maybe I'm not paranoid enough, but

I think Twitter is the latest faddish way of people connecting/sharing.

There have been a many along the same lines, each providing something slightly different. The old BBSs, ICQ, Napster, MySpace, Flicker Facebook, and many more.

Something new will come along. No doubt.

[girl gone mad]

25. It's a form of Newspeak.

Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year". Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the language are explained. Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking — "thoughtcrime", or "crimethink" in the newest edition of Newspeak — or speech impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on. One character says admiringly of the shrinking volume of the new dictionary: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."

...

The basic idea behind Newspeak is to remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple dichotomies (pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, goodthink and crimethink) which reinforce the total dominance of the State. Similarly, Newspeak root words served as both nouns and verbs, which allowed further reduction in the total number of words; for example, "think" served as both noun and verb, so the word thought was not required and could be abolished. A staccato rhythm of short syllables was also a goal, further reducing the need for deep thinking about language. (See duckspeak.) Successful Newspeak meant that there would be fewer and fewer words – dictionaries would get thinner and thinner.

In addition, words with opposite meanings were removed as redundant, so "bad" became "ungood". Words with comparative and superlative meanings were also simplified, so "better" became "gooder", and "best" likewise became "goodest". Intensifiers could be added, so "great" became "plusgood", and "excellent" and "splendid" likewise became "doubleplusgood". Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix "-ful" to a root word (e.g., "goodthinkful", orthodox in thought), and adverbs by adding "-wise" ("goodthinkwise", in an orthodox manner). In this manner, as many words as possible were removed from the language. The ultimate aim of Newspeak was to reduce even the dichotomies to a single word that was a "yes" of some sort: an obedient word with which everyone answered affirmatively to what was asked of them.

Some of the constructions in Newspeak which Orwell derides, such as replacing "bad" with "ungood", are in fact characteristic of agglutinative languages, although foreign to English. It is also possible that Orwell modeled aspects of Newspeak on Esperanto; for example "ungood" is constructed similarly to the Esperanto word malbona. Orwell had been exposed to Esperanto in 1927 when living in Paris with his aunt Ellen Kate Limouzin and her husband Eugène Lanti, a prominent Esperantist. Esperanto was the language of the house, and Orwell was disadvantaged by not speaking it, which may account for some antipathy towards the language.

To control thought

“By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

The underlying theory of Newspeak is that if something can't be said, then it can't be thought. (See Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.) There is substantial argument in favor of this notion, in that most humans think by carrying on a dialogue in their heads. They tend to subvocalize their thoughts as they form them and manipulate them; most thought is actually a dialogue with oneself. When new and complex developments come along, new words are invented (or old words adapted) to hold the meme as a gestalt. This is why specialist vocabularies are particularly common – if instead one shrank the vocabulary, one would substantially reduce the memes available to manipulate during this thinking/vocalizing process.

[Posteritatis]

26. Yes, yes, of course, text messaging bandwidth limits are an evil Republican plot (nt)

:sarcasm:

[girl gone mad]

27. What do Republicans have to do with it?

[Posteritatis]

28. Well, the gist of the thread *is* that asinine claim that Twitter's a Republican plot

And you still were claiming it's some form of mind control in one of the better ridiculous paranoid freakouts I've seen about the medium, instead of taking a couple of seconds to figure out why it's organized that way.

But, in the new thought-free society, we don't need to look into anything, just reacting to it is fine!

[girl gone mad]

30. It's the duming down of the English language.

By limiting the number of characters users can post, Twitter minimizes complex analysis and thoughtful dialogue. Remember when letters to the editor used to be several paragraphs long, delving and substantive? Tune in to Rick Sanchez's show on CNN this week and see what passes for meaningful media/audience interaction these days. It's shameful.

[Posteritatis]

40. .... Right

It's not "the dumbing down of the English language," it's bandwidth limitations on a ubiquitous and popular appliance. The letters to the editor I read (A) are still often long and substantive, (B) not on network television which has never been the pinnacle of brilliance, and (C) entirely unrelated to Twitter, which (D) doesn't prevent one from posting "complex analysis and thoughtful dialogue" anywhere that doesn't use a cell phone as the input medium.

Put the outrage away, you're just embarrassing yourself. Twitter annoys me, but I don't feel the need to make up grand conspiracies about it like people in this thread are.

[muriel_volestrangler]

43. It's a side effect of the SMS system, aka texts, as set up in the 1980s

when someone decided that 140 characters was a useful add-on to the cell phone system (with it expanded to 160 characters by using 7 bit encoding instead of 8 bit). To say this is something to do with Twitter, over 20 years later, trying to dumb the English language is ridiculous (it is, after all, possible to do it in other languages too ...).

And your attempt to link it to Newspeak seems to show you haven't read '1984' properly, or even the post you pasted from Wikipedia. That's not about the length of a message - it's about the vocabulary. The English language can be fully expressed in the character set available to Twitter, or SMS.

[girl gone mad]

44. Thanks for setting me straight.

lol.

[blogslut]

31. It's just another tool

I think repubs like it because they can post from their cell phones and each tweet can be no more than 140 characters. Twittering is a fairly brain-free activity.

I wouldn't be too concerned. My guess is the average Twitter user gets bored with the service after three months - GOP losers get bored after a week. In fact, I wouldn't worry myself with any social networking services in the hands of repubs. They don't have the attention span to do it right.

[droidamus2]

32. Seems perfect

For Republicans to use for their propaganda. Short statements with a lot of talking point phrases like 'war on terror','compassionate conservative', etc. No real in depth analysis or rebuttal.

[adamuu]

33. we just need to get more Dems to use it. n/t

[NYCGirl]

34. I love Twitter. I follow such prominent GOPers as Rachel Maddow, Ezra Klein,

Davis Shuster, the Dalai Lama, NOW on PBS, Joe Trippi, Claire McCaskill, John Lithgow, Mike Madden (Salon's DC correspondent, not the football guy), Chris Cillizza (who "tweets" during WH briefings), AlterNet, Miles Kahn (CNN producer and buddy of John Hodgman), Stephen Colbert, Atrios, Jack Cafferty, Al Gore, Al Franken, AnnaMarie Cox (former Wonkette), John Cleese, the wonderful John Hodgman, Lynn Sweet (Chi Sun-Times), John Arivosis (AmericaBlog), Crooks and Liars, Marc Ambinder, Andrew Sullivan, C-Span, Olbermann and Countdown, Jane Hamsher from Firedoglake, OpenLeft, Oliver Willis, Think Progress (Center for American Progress), and Barack Obama.

Mostly I follow tech people.

You can follow my tweets at http://twitter.com/baileymarkham

[hisownpetard]

35. The last time my tweet got tagged, it cost me $120 to have the dermatologist

remove it.

[Dreamer Tatum]

37. Seriously, are you nuts? nt

[Shakespeare]

38. Good lord. What ignorance.

You don't need talking down, you need an education.

[blues90]

39. It's a stupid name "twitter" sounds like a geek title

and just another way for people to communicate so they can sell a promotion to take over other ways of communication. Oh look at me I'm twittering , just shoot me now.

[Odin2005]

42. Yawn, just another "our young people are going to be the doom of our civilization" rant.

50 years ago they were saying the same thing about rock music