Tag: twitter

WNBA Outsiders flap appears to be resolved (followup)

Following up the previous story on the WNBA blocking the WNBA Outsiders Twitter account, the latter tweeted a few hours ago that it may have been as simple as a misunderstanding over improper use of the WNBA logo.

If this is the case, I still stand by my earlier statements; this could have been resolved with a simple e-mail or direct message rather than heavy-handed and potentially incendiary attacks as blocking without notice. Given the WNBA’s poor response, I commend LD Thornton’s ability to stay relatively level-headed through this little ordeal.

The WNBA’s Twitter gaffe

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” — unknown (“probable misattribution” to Edmund Burke according to Wikiquote)

I’d like to know what the person in charge of the WNBA’s Twitter account was thinking when he or she blocked a well-known fan account associated with a blog called, oddly enough, WNBA Outsiders. The latter’s words on the matter include the following:

Let me explain to you a lesson that my mother taught me when I was just ten years old. When someone is bothering you and trying to get under your skin, the best thing that you can do to minimize that voice is to ignore it. But, @WNBA (whoever you really are), you have failed to practice this wisdom. Instead of pretending that the authors of this website do not have a voice or an audience, you have chosen to actively work against us. By blocking us, you have recognized our influence on the coverage of the league. We deem it a foolish action by a league that seems to specialize in such ill-advised decisions.

And further down:

The aggressive action against the Outsiders has been noted, but it will not be tolerated. Let it be known that a failure to accept the olive branch of peace we have graciously extended will be interpreted as nothing less than a declaration of war.

“Foolish” is a bit too mild for me; I have tagged this with “galactically-stupid” which is a tag I reserve for the most decisive lapses in intelligence. I don’t know how anyone at the WNBA could possibly see this as a wise move.

If it’s a trademark or trade dress issue, that’s a complete non-starter. For one, it is impossible to get the WNBA Outsiders blog mixed up with any real, genuine WNBA publication. The site design is completely different. The WNBA would never use a minimalist design with only a 770×150 pixel or so tight crop of a generic basketball.

I have remained a WNBA fan despite the folding of the Houston Comets (which I think may well be one of those “ill-advised decisions” that WNBA Outsiders makes reference to). I’m beginning to wonder if that’s not a mistake now.

Twitter: dead or alive, dying or growing?

Okay, I was really torn between going ahead with a very belated entry about this, versus just moving on to the next story. (Aside: I actually have a backlog of stories I wanted to blog, and deleted three draft entries about news articles that looked good when I landed on them in StumbleUpon but which turned out to be rather blah for writing a real blog entry about.)

But, given how much time I have spent on Twitter, I can’t very well just up and delete a draft post concerning a news story about it. Especially when the headline of the original is “Who Killed Twitter?” and the article is still relatively fresh.

I almost have to wonder if the question should be rephrased: Is Twitter dying? If so, who is really behind it?

Some very interesting claims are made. Among them:

Harvard Business School says the average Twitter user tweets once and never again.

I have yet to see any Twitter users give up after only one tweet, most maybe after 5-10. Maybe there are a few out there; I wonder if this study weeded out spam accounts, as most of those would appear to “give up” after one tweet, but their purpose is accomplished once they have tweeted once and followed 2,000 people.

TechCrunch says that the ol’ 80-20 rule is in full effect on Twitter: 20% of Twitter users are creating 80% of the activity. Harvard Business School says it’s even more extreme than that: 10% of Twitter users post 90% of the Tweets.

This is not surprising. I don’t think it’s any different for Twitter than it is for Blogger, Livejournal, or any other major online service. There are people who blog once a month, once a week, all the way up to once–or more–per day. There are people who blog for a few days and then say “this isn’t for me” just as much as there are people who have been blogging since the days before people abbreviated “weblog” to just “blog.”

It’s the same with Facebook. And I’m not going to lie, I almost gave up on Facebook. Heck, I almost gave up on Twitter at one point. I still feel like I have not truly mastered either, but then again I was a very late adopter for Facebook and several other services (Digg, StumbleUpon, and FriendFeed being most notable as I signed up for all three in the closing days of 2008).

A survey from Pace University and the Participatory Media Network found that only 22% of people between the ages of 18 and 24 use Twitter (though nearly all have social networking profiles).

I have to wonder how accurate this is. Maybe it’s too limiting for the under-25 set, though I fail to see how a generation that grew up with text messages can’t wrap their head around something that is, in essence, text messages that can be read by everyone even if they don’t have a phone.

It is entirely possible the non-Twitter users are using one of the other microblogging services such as identi.ca or simply using the status update feature of Facebook as a rather hackish substitute for Twitter. (Several tools exist to populate Twitter updates to Facebook status, and at least one exists that is selective and looks for a “#fb” hashtag.)

Personally, I don’t think Twitter is dying for me. Quite the contrary: I’m now north of 600 followers which is almost where I was a few months ago. I am at the point where I can’t follow everyone back that follows me.

The problem with stories like this, everyone sees them differently. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say almost everyone and their dog is on Twitter–literally.

The important things to remember are:

  • Twitter does not replace your blog. Not everything I say fits neatly in 140 characters.
  • Twitter does not replace Facebook, MySpace, or similar sites.
  • Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, and CNN did not kill Twitter.
  • For that matter, Cracker Barrel did not kill Twitter. (In fact, Cracker Barrel was probably the reason a lot of businesses all of a sudden hopped on Twitter.)

Twitter co-founder’s interesting viewpoint in CNET interview

I stumbled across a recent CNET article featuring Jack Dorsey where he raises some interesting viewpoints on the Twitter service and its future. In particular, there are two good quotes:

“I think Twitter’s a success for us when people stop talking about it, when we stop doing these panels and people just use it as a utility, use it like electricity,” said Dorsey, who was on a “Future of Media” panel here Wednesday as part of Internet Week New York.

“We took VC money so that we can be patient in that endeavor, and we’re going to be patient, we’re going to do it right,” [Dorsey] insisted. “We’re not going to put something on top of it that doesn’t fit.”

Longer mealtime, smaller waistline?

Recently on Twitter (from @MyFitFoods who passed it on from someone else with protected updates) I found a chart which compares time spent eating to the national obesity rate. Now while the criteria used to define obesity may be a bit controversial (it’s a simple, no frills, percentage of the population with a BMI over 30) I think it’s good enough to get an idea of the overall trend.

It’s probably not realistic to expect a perfect trend line with a graph like this, and thus I’m not surprised that there are dots all over the place. Canada, Korea, Japan, Poland, Italy, and all three Scandanavian countries in the survey (Finland, Sweden, and Norway) are all below the trend line, while Mexico, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey are above it. The rest of the countries are either on or close to the trend line.

The US does not fit neatly at all into the trend with a sky-high obesity rate of around 34%. But it is obvious that the graph is trying to show that more time one spends at the table, the less likely one is to become obese.

The stark contrast between the US and Canada is puzzling. The US actually averages slightly longer meals than Canada, yet has the highest obesity rate on the entire chart.

I would be interested in seeing a graph sorted by profession. In my current day job (courier) I rarely have time to actually sit down for even a full half-hour lunch. There are days where I do what I know I really shouldn’t and just grab a bag of chips from the nearest convenience store, where usually the closest thing to a meal is a rather expensive bag of beef jerky (also a frequent “meal” of mine). Not surprisingly, even though I don’t consider myself “obese” it’s possible I would fit the controversial criterion used in this study. (I have no idea what my BMI is, but I’m around 5’11” (180 cm) and weighed in the range of 240 pounds (109 kg) last time I checked.)

This is one reason I want to move on to something else, where I can truly set my own schedule and take meal breaks as long as I want. Really, who doesn’t?