twitter

Tweet the vote

POSTED IN microblogging, social media, twitter | TAGS : birminghamuk, microblogging, politics, twitter 2 May 2008

Birmingham City Council progressively decided that they would livestream their local election results, which was more of an invitation than us politically-interested twitters needed to provide a ‘backchannel’. Having decided to base round the hashtag #brumcc (a few test tweets fired off as people voted in the day), it all kicked off around 10.25 with a very geeky moan about the format for the streaming (Windows Movie Player) and the standard of the the sound (there was a problem with the gain on the wireless mic I think).

The actual conversation bounced between pub-style debate, willful surrealism, and the kind of listening and reacting to the actual words that microblogging really helps — collating the “did he really just say that?” factor between other viewers rather than waiting for the host to pick the politician up.

Four hours of it made us all flag, but it really was a worthwhile experience and in two years (when the local elections come around again) I really hope the council harness the conversation in some way too. It doesn’t have to be twitter (which, considering the UK local elections borked it, may not be around) but it was really powerful – and if publicised widely could be really useful.

Twitter Cartoon Day

POSTED IN cute, geekery | TAGS : catoon, fun, twitter 18 April 2008

Normally my twitter followers are a, fairly, sane bunch of humans – but today I’ve been watching then all turn to toons. Today has been declared ‘Twitter Cartoon Day’ -

“Brighten up the lives of your fellow Twitterers today by changing your avatar (picture) to a cartoon character.”

URL-based twitter social-stand-up

POSTED IN twitter | TAGS : comedy, twitter, urls 11 April 2008

I had a little idea earlier this evening, just a little URL-based one liner – so I twittered it. Some of my followers/followees joined in (and thanks to : catnip bluemilkshake editorialgirl graphiquillan kevin_rapley LloydDavis podnosh probablydrunk ) here’s the result. Quick lazyweb request, can someone build a twitter conversation reorderer that presents nice – I had to do this in photoshop: