Twitter Archive

Over the past couple of days I watched all of the demos at the TCDisrupt conference in blazing hot San Francisco. One of the more popular startups was GameCrush. Sebastian Anthony from Download Squad explains what GameCrush is, “…just like prostitution, but with boys buying game time rather than sexy time from a dizzying array of cute, gamer girls…Just like prostitution, some of the girls are cuter than others — and some are better at what they do, too — but they’re all available as potential PlayDates (seriously). All you have to do is whip out your credit card (it’s $0.60 per minute), grab your joystick and game.”

So basically you can play hangman, pac man, tron, spy hunter, galaga, doom, wolfenstein 3d, or the coming soon duke nukem with a cute girl for $36/hour. Apparently GameCrush shares the revenue with the girl although the split wasn’t shared on the Techcrunch stage. (They do accept men as well as playdates, ladies signup for a session of Ms. Pac Man with me!)

I started to think that gaming is just the beginning here! Just like there are clones of all the popular apps, I am excited to announce the launch of SNCrush – the first service to allow you to pay to chat with the person of your dreams and needs on the social networks. But haters, this ain’t a clone!

Continue reading “SNCrush – Pay To Tweet With Hot Women, Men, Cats & Fish” »

I’ve often wondered when (or if) companies will start to fight back when people complain online about the service they receive.  For example, when a blogger complains about a hotel not having a room for him when he probably should have confirmed everything before leaving home, should the company go on record to explain their side or just hand out some vouchers to remedy the situation. My belief is that you should try to work with the company first before posting any emotional-reactions to make sure the company has a chance to respond and take any corrective measures. And after you continuing reading this story, the same advice goes for companies that want to respond without a full investigation.

I am guessing we will see more stories similar to the one below as employees from companies respond to user’s questions and complaints online.

Here’s a social media story that is almost too hard to believe – a user on Twitter posted some comments about the upstate-NY supermarket chain Price Chopper. Here’s the tweet in question (I’ve left the name of the user off the tweet):

This is a pretty mild-mannered message- no swearing, just basically stating that PriceChopper isn’t as good as rival supermarket Wegmans. I’ve often written that I wish x was more like y.

Continue reading “Man Complains About Company on Twitter – Company Contacts Man’s Employer” »

There is a nasty attack going on the Twitter website currently. I was hit with it along with what appears to be at least thousands of other users. Mike Butcher at Techcrunchuk suggests that the security flaw is only hitting Twitter.com and not the third-party clients. After I was hit, I tried using Seesmic Web and it wouldn’t load so I am guessing if you want to switch, you must follow the instructions below first as my guess is the javascript onmouseover code is somehow killing the API…

It does appear if you have the New Twitter interface (which is like 100 tech bloggers and Twitter friends), you are safe.

If you have been hit with the security bug/flaw – here’s how to fix it quickly and easily:

1. Go to Twitter’s mobile site and login
2. Go to your user page
3. Delete the bad virus tweets
4. It may take a minute for your Twitter account to appear clean

After you have cleaned the bad tweets, make sure not to mouse over any links in the Twitter.com interface. And just to be safe, change your password.

Apparently the third party client tools for accessing Twitter are not affected by this bug – so if you need to Tweet that pic of your dog, that you just ate a ham sandwich or that you have just completed a check-in at the Borders, check out Tweetdeck, Brizzly or Seesmic.

Update: Brad at Next Web was able to get some additional information on how the hack works.

Update 2: Twitter notes they have fixed the security issue.

Leave a comment if your Twitter account was hit with this hot mess.

Yesterday I posted some of my comments about the new Digg site along with a video from several of the top digg users (aka power diggers).  I took some time out of my coding session to take a deeper look at the new Digg. What I found is that many of the elements of the new Digg mirror those on Twitter (and to a lesser extent Facebook). I can say that Digg loads much faster than Twitter and is a lot more polished on the user interface side (something Twitter really needs to fix).

Interestingly, when I visit both Mashable and NextWeb today, both are pushing huge banners to get their readers to follow them on Digg. This follows the same pattern as with the launches of Google Buzz and, earlier, Twitter. Both publishers are defaults on the new Digg and my guess is that we will see continued pumpage (from a good number of publishers) as long as Digg provides the same traffic burst as they did previously. Since these publishers are defaults for new users, they should see an even larger increase in traffic as more of their stories reach (and dominate) the home page (see below for more on this topic).

Let’s take a look at some of the core concepts on Twitter and the new Digg to see where the similarities exist.
Continue reading “Is The New Digg Just a Prettier, Faster Twitter?” »

Yesterday I was thinking that perhaps finally Twitter was starting to move from “just ads” to something more. Posterous was down and they used Twitter to communicate with their customers. I see more companies using Twitter to communicate with customers when a service isn’t functioning correctly. But then a story like this one comes along to bring me back to reality. The german term is “Blumenkübel”.

This story comes from a small town in Germany. Apparently a flower pot (see photo on right) was broken by vandals at an elder care home in Neuenkirchen. You can read the full story on the newspaper. The newspaper posted a follow-up story noting that flower pot is now an Internet trend. I can’t confirm but it appears the story’s author is either an intern at the newspaper or it was her first day. What a way to start a new job – with massive traffic and the beginnings of an Internet meme.

This exciting story is a trending topic on Twitter currently and the comments are coming in amazingly quick. Here’s a great in-depth story about the flower pot and how it’s taken Twitter by storm. And be careful as spammers are loading up the #Blumenkübel keyword on Twitter with their spam links.

It gets better – the damaged flower pot now has a Facebook page and there are already 680 fans!

The reporter notes that the pot had a value of 150 euros and that residents of the elder care home were upset and saddened after seeing the damaged pot.

Update: The Facebook page is now over 750 fans – our sources tell us this pace of fan addition is quicker than President Barack Obama’s Facebook page receives!

I could only imagine if the vandals broke both flower pots!

Here’s a twist on typical pre-roll and overlay online video advertising. Twitter video hosting service TwitVid has launched a new advertising platform today called SocialAds. The goal with SocialAds is simple: to get you (or your brand) more Twitter followers and/or retweets of your advertisements.

Here’s how SocialAds works…after creating an account, you setup an ad campaign. TwitVid says they host videos for major music groups including Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Maroon 5 and The Jonas Brothers. They also work with the NBA and the PGA. The ad campaign focuses either on obtaining new followers or retweeting an ad. The ads are displayed within the videos hosted on TwitVid and you only pay when the desired action is completed.

Bidding will begin at one dollar per follower and seventy-five cents per retweet, with higher bids receiving better placement on the advertising units.

TwitVid notes, “during a private beta test of SocialAds, participating brands received more that 400 new followers in less than an hour. Two percent of those viewers who were shown the advertisement followed a brand.” I have no idea if this would be considered good or not. I think the more important stats would be how many remain connected to the brand after 30 and 90 days. It’s also important to note that most won’t unfollow others on Twitter – similar to how most won’t remove a RSS feed.

Currently SocialAds is running on TwitVid’s main site but the company plans to integrate with partners in the future.

This new launch is yet another reason I continue to suggest that Twitter is just one big advertisement. The idea of buying Twitter followers appears to be a concept Twitter itself is also considering in the near future.

As the World Cup comes to a close (go Germany!), it appears Twitter missed the winning kick. We already know that Twitter is a marketing platform and they should have maximized the potential for users and for sponsors/advertisers.

My InformationWeek column takes a look at how Twitter missed their goal-den opportunity. And Twitter isn’t alone…third-party client services including Seesmic, Tweetdeck and Brizzly also missed the same opportunity to create a specific, integrated client for the World Cup.

Continue reading on InformationWeek »