Tag Archives | Twitter

5Words for Thursday, June 11th, 2009

5wordsLots of little Microsoft stories:

Free anti-virus from Microsoft.

Bing will translate for you.

Microsoft kills off Money completely.

Is Twitter starting to peak?

Smartphone total cost of ownership.

“Web 2.0” is millionth word.

New iPhone: faster than AT&T.

Buy Dell, fly for free.

Lego starts to make gadgets.

A Casio that keeps going.

Cnet reviews the Kindle DX.

Palm gets a new CEO.

This concept notebook folds up.

Facebook bans scammy ad networks.

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Facebook to Implement User Names

Facebook LogoFacebook announced today that user names will become available at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13. Save the time and date: Legions of homebodies with nothing better to do will be the first in line for the land grab.

If someone wants to find out what I’m up to on Facebook, they have to log in and search for me unless they know the random string of numbers that represents me. Whereas Twitter already has easy to remember user names that people can type into their browser (I’m twitter.com/dcworthington).

This is a welcome improvement, and it complements Facebook’s strategy of focusing more on its users’ stream of events. I’m equally happy that it still requires people to use their full names when they register for an account. That protection adds a measure of trust, which many be one of the reasons why I am not spammed on Facebook. I get spammed on Twitter, and now to a lesser extent, Myspace. Adding user names is that latest of many smart decisions Facebook has made to evolve itself.

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A Tweetup in San Francisco

Sam Levin and Daniel Brusilovsky, both of whom are definitely Friends of Technologizer, are throwing a tweetup this Thursday in San Francisco from 5:30 to 9:30. Door prizes include Western Digital’s WD TV video box, a WD portable hard drive, Flip video camera, and Speck cases; if you’re in the Bay Area and can make it, you’re invited. (I plan to be there–c’mon over and say hi.)

Click here for more details and to register.

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Study Finds Twitter Usage Might Be Overstated

TwitterResearch by the Harvard Business School seems to indicate that we might need to temper our enthusiasm for Twitter a bit. Taking a random sample of 300,000 users in May, researchers found that the top 10 percent of Twitterers in the sample accounted for 90 percent of all tweets.

Furthermore — and this may be surprising — most rarely tweet. The study found that the median number of tweets was one, which it said translated into half the group only tweeting once every 74 days.

Success as a tweeter also has to do with sex. On average, a male will have 15 percent more followers than a female. Men will follow men: they’re twice as likely to do so as following a woman. 

Harvard researchers noted that this is reversed from what is typically seen on other social networks. “On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women – men follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they know,” they said.

While this is probably not the most representative sample here, I’m wondering if and how often our Technologizer readers tweet.

I for one tweet at least 2-3 times per day. You’re welcome to follow me, of course! 🙂

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