Twitter C/D

this is a shame, because your minute-by-minute update from "control" was fucking genius. for the few minutes it lasted.

People were complaining!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1640#more-1640

as usual

the end of twitter in the UK? er: yes, as far as i can see. i don't want to have to *look* for tweets. i want them to come to me:

Hi,

I'm sending you this note because you registered a mobile device
to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you
know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on
Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.

I'll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no
longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy
receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are
recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.

Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.

Before I go into more detail, here's a bit of good news: Twitter
will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries
throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new
numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you've
been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.

Why are we making these changes?

Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send
updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to
ten followers, you aren't charged ten times--that's because we've
been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to
the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in
popularity, so too would the price.

Our challenge during this window of time was to establish
relationships with mobile operators around the world such that
our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective.
We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States.
We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without
passing along operator fees in these countries.

We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more
mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we've arrived
at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs
and take a different approach. Since you probably don't live in
Canada, India, or the US, we recommend receiving your Twitter
updates via one of the following methods.

m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones
m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones
TwitterMail.com works on email-enabled phones
Cellity [http://bit.ly/12bw4R] works on java-enabled phones
TwitterBerry [http://bit.ly/MFAfJ] works on BlackBerry phones
Twitterific [http://bit.ly/1WxjwQ] works on iPhones

Twitter SMS by The Numbers

It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid
placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a
limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter
about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada,
India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair
billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass
these high fees on to our users.

Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in
Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships
that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way
service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is
sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies
around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers
for updating via SMS are on the way. We'll keep you posted.

Thank you for your attention,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.
http://twitter.com/biz

I never understood why anyone would want tweets pushed to them. I get excited when I receive a text. I don't want to find it's some spazz like me telling the world they've found an odd-coloured bogey up their nose.

it would be nice, when the iphone's push service is switched on, if twitter would push messages down to twitterific - this would solve the 'excited when I receive a text only to find it's about a bogey' problem

If my phone had let me assign unique message alert tones to numbers like it does with ringtones and voice calls then the problem might have gone away.

Maybe the fundamental problem is that I'm not interested enough in other people.

most of twitter is exquisitely described in metaphor by that news story about the inflatable turd named "Complex Shit" blowing away and breaking actual stuff that matters

of course being me I would say the same for pretty much everything "web 2.0"

actually, i'd follow a tombot twitter feed. furious cynicism at unexpected moments could be fun.

i guess twitterific might step up to the plate here, but then again: it can't run in the background on the iPhone, can it?

(this, incidentally, is my first ILX post from my shiny new iMac.)

creepy

13.28
cozeny Wondering out loud what we'd need to start a UK group SMS system and take Twitter's market: Ruby developers, time, money, and Red Bull... ? 9 minutes ago from web

13.37
Hi, cozeny.

tweetsms (tweetsms) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out tweetsms's profile here:

http://twitter.com/tweetsms

You may follow tweetsms as well by clicking on the "follow" button.

Best,
Twitter

tweetsms
http://www.tweetSMS.com will be available worldwide across almost all carriers. We also plan to deploy an ad-based service for free updates.
38 minutes ago from web

@PurpleKitchen check out www.tweetsms.com about 2 hours ago from web in reply to PurpleKitchen

just uploaded http://www.tweetsms.com to help all of those international SMS users! about 2 hours ago from web

Used it cause I was excited (are you still an early adopter a full year after the SXSW explosion of use?), then didn't for a few months cause I didn't really see the point, now I'm usin it again cause I've had some new local friends start following me.

Good for questions, link-sharing, Microemo bursts, etc.

I have a friend who uses this to read his friends' feeds, so I basically only see it from the angle of a person who is constantly checking his phone while I'm trying to have a conversation with him. The first time I heard of Twitter was from him when I finally got exasperated with his constantly checking his phone.

Maybe I'm the one with the problem, but I can't really think of anyone in the world interesting enough for me to want updates on their activities throughout the day. I'd say the only people I could imagine wanting to twitter could be: Drug smuggler, violent prison inmate, Slash-in-his-heyday type rock star, and a dog (if they somehow managed to translate its thoughts into English text).

don't use it, don't know anyone who does, but i check this one all the time: http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

i very very rarely check it on my phone. does mobile use seem to be the prominent use?

SMS functionality seems to be its USP now that Facebook status updates have taken the mainstream microblogging space.

As I said above, people using it for pushed news bulletins and question-broadcasting rather than personal what-i'm-doing stuff is another application.

(I think you can now do Facebook by SMS in America, actually, but not here)

SMS is a fucking trilobite technology

I followed @johncleese back when his followers were in the double digits.

Seriously someone FedEx me a fucking medal already.

how the fuck are they planning to make money? Also, they could easily have charged for this in Europe, and at least started making some actual income for a change.

so: brightkite, then. anyone played about with it much? i'm not sure i can particularly be arsed, TBH.

Twinkle is useful to see if there's trouble on my tram line or the local cafe is on fire.

ON IPHONE

Brightkite seems particularly marvelous, actually. Like Twitter with upgrades.

mildly diverting for a bit

http://joshblog.net/projects/roktok/roktok.html

well, it would be if only folk would stop talking about coldplay and radiohead

oh

it combines the top artists from last.fm (coldplay, radiohead) with twitter

no potential to divert at all now

"Alternate HTML content should be placed here. This content requires the Adobe Flash Player. Get Flash"

Man I fucking hate flash

I'm on this goofy thing now:

http://twitter.com/NedRaggett

ned why are you not on the nanowrimo thread

hie thee hence

I am now following: http://twitter.com/therealbritney

so i signed up to this to follow shaq, is there anything else for me to do

tweet.

https://twitter.com/maxmaxmaxmax

^^ tweeted

i even personalized it

cool tweet max

http://www.justmusicuk.com/spweb/images/publications/medium/JM46521.jpg

thanks guys, feel free to follow me

shaq tweets a lot more than u do hoos

u personified that shit boss

ay look @ this i am following barack obama

i wonder if he tweets during cabinet meetings when he is bored, just under the desk w/ his blackberry

"paulson such a dik lol"

don't even know why i'm on this. oh yes, for shawn elliott. and g.fiddle. and ultragrrl. and you guys. other than that, i can't hardly tweet myself. i always seem to fuck up. and i have very little to say anyway. i r moron

LIVE THE LIFE U IMAGINED, JEEZ I SUCK AT TYPIN, LOL

http://twitter.com/mondosalvo

@Ned: twitter won't let me direct reply to you, but I'm Johnny Fever here and brasstax on Idolator.

Ah right!

just seen this:

TwitOrFit is Twitter-meets-HotOrNot
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/12/15/twitorfit-is-twitter-meets-hotornot/

look the state of Twitter ain't great, it's being slowly taken over by porn bots and really gross ads like this "Liver King" one I keep getting where it's a really gross roided out Macho Man Randy Savage looking dude sticking his head into a slab of raw beef or whatever. I think it's still in better shape than Facebook which I can see has really been taken over by AI generated engagement bait which works really well on the platform because its average user is not online savvy at all

lol I've been seeing Liver King, too

liver king has bled through his soul to bring you the truth, you ingrates

once i saw one about how he hasn't washed his hair or beard in years (bc decadence, or something) but i guess that didn't test well because never again

I mean like none of the apps can possibly be good anymore because the apps industry has determined that the thing that generates the most money is short form vertical video telling people to bet on sports, that's all the internet is for now

eventually TikTok and Fanduel will be one app and there will be no apps after that

How many album titles beginning with 'N' can you name?

Nebraska - Bruce Springsten

Never mind...

didn't they debunk the liver king as being on roids?

he was (is?) on ten thousand dollars of steroids a month, idk how much steroids cost but that seems like a lot

yea I'm pretty sure it's impossible to look like that otherwise

no you just need to eat more raw liver

you can only aspire to liver prince until he dies from causes unrelated to liver

skips leg days

Something I've noticed is that there will be tweets w numbers of "Views" listed as being in the tens or h a hundreds of thousands (or more), but which have only a handful (if that) of likes and/or replies. Seems slightly off...

two accounts, one is mostly indie games and trains but i must've clicked on something recently because I'm also getting posts from every London museum and library and walking tour and university now

the other account, music and friends, is now 90% Arabic, which i can't read, pages and pages of it. and it's just random Arabic stuff too, weddings and cars, lots of the war obv, but also recipes and pop videos and fashion.

oh, those algorithms...

still doing it. the only odd thing i can see is

Languages: "English, No linguistic content, Estonian"

David Klion profiles Will Stancil:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/will-stancil-twitter-mn-house-candidate.html

lmao

The way people talk about Will Stancil you think they’d never seen an annoying moron before.

— ettingermentum🥥🌴 (@ettingermentum) December 14, 2023

oopsie

In the summer of 2023, Stancil clashed with more irony-poisoned elements of the left who were joking, in his view distastefully, about the wealthy tourists who died during the Titan submersible implosion. And for a period after the October 7 Hamas attacks, Stancil went hard after left-wing critics of Israel, myself included — though he hasn’t tweeted about the conflict at all since a few weeks before he announced his candidacy. “I kinda don’t think the organized left in America is going to survive this,” he tweeted on October 11. During our discussion, Israel was the only major topic Stancil wanted to go off the record for; on record, he simply said, “My position on the war in Gaza is that it’s horrible, and I want it to end as soon as possible.”

i like david klion but that piece doesnt examine what i guess is stancils core thesis that hes influencing the media and washington with his tweets, which is needless to say absurd, sure if you go around playing the victim to some boogieman left thats sabotaging an otherwise popular and successful democratic party then yeah some people will listen to you, people who already think that, because its a comforting easy thing to believe, it also happens to be completely unmoored from reality, but comforting things are generally like that

the idea is an old one, to the extent professional dems think about left thats what they tend to think

its also funny behavior from "a policy wonk" because its completely vibes based, why not spend yr time advocating for real world policy that could actually help people instead, oh cause no one gives a shit, yeah its like that sometimes

its funny cause he thinks hes on some grand strategy but comes off more like hes fucked in the head

Beijer, one of the more outspoken socialist power users on Twitter, takes a cynical view of Stancil, though he notes their disagreements are primarily ideological. “The man has absolutely convinced himself that he is somehow controlling political discourse at a national level. He really thinks that his tweets set off a chain of events that ended in the population of the United States deciding that Bidenomics are working,” Beijer said. “It’s delusional, but it also betrays a staggering level of Messianic arrogance and condescension towards all the people who he thinks he’s manipulating.”

anyway hadnt thought about this guy in a while due to going off twitter, overall recommended, tho i do kind of miss checking in on sad freaks like him, he did try to go on bluesky for a while but the shtick didnt take i guess cause its not specifically designed to dredge up the most psycho bs available