
How we created a Twitter viral: the ePenis story - daveambrose
http://barryborsboom.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/how-we-created-a-twitter-viral/
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jballanc
Is it just me, or does everyone else get the feeling that there are two
Twitter communities out there? Personally, I follow friends, one or two
announcement streams, and an influential figure or two in the Ruby community.
Essentially, I use it as a quick tool to keep up to date on what's important
to me.

Then it seems like there's everyone else who just discovered Twitter in the
past month or two. These people seem to be either one of "I can follow my
favorite celebrity! It's like I'm almost touching them..." or "I'm going to be
huge and have lots of followers and feel important for it..." For them,
Twitter is just the latest fad like Facebook, MySpace, Geocities, etc. before
it.

I guess, even though I've been on Twitter for a while now, I still don't _get
it_. Maybe I'm elitist? Maybe I'm becoming out of touch?

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ahoyhere
Your perception is wrong - there are not two Twitters, but a million Twitters.
It's been that way for a couple years almost, altho it is now achieving
critical mass.

Since "friend" relationships are only one way, everybody builds the Twitted
they want to see. That's part of its appeal and why it's so interesting to an
experience designed like me :)

~~~
jballanc
There's that too. If I were a social researcher rather than a biology/computer
science researcher, I think I would be banging down the door of Twitter
headquarters for unfettered access to their raw data.

In some respects, Twitter has become the human social genome project.

~~~
ahoyhere
There's not a whole lot of "private" data that Twitter keeps locked up. Their
API and search are very good, with few exceptions.

Have you seen this project of mine? <http://twistori.com>

Or the PepsiCo Zeitgeist, which I designed & developed with my husband for the
SXSW conference. The conf's over now so the experience isn't the same, but
videos of it in action are here:

<http://www.youtube.com/user/pepsicozeitgeist>

~~~
jballanc
I had actually sen the pepsicozeitgeist bit...very cool! It reminded me a bit
of <http://www.wefeelfine.org/>

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amix
This really does not surprise me, as stupid things are known to hit the viral
spot. On Facebook for example, most things that go viral are applications
where you can throw sheep at your friends or pick your top 5 beers - I haven't
yet tried a viral FB application that has been useful, it's kind of sad.

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jfarmer
People use Facebook to waste time and chat with friends. Is it really
surprising that all those social tax preparation or contact management apps
haven't caught on?

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dwwatk01
I'm all for good, original ideas, but I have to send a big 'who cares?' to
this one...

~~~
Andys
Its not exactly original.

Back in the 1990s a bunch of us sysadmin types created an identical website
where it graphed everyone's unix machine uptimes in a similar way (with
variable length ePenises).

But back then, it wasn't twitter, it was just a small joke shared on IRC
amongst friends. I had no idea back then we were 10 years ahead of the curve,
and no idea that this sort of thing would reach global proportions and even
start to be picked up and shown on TV.

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lunchbox
Nice, but they should give the measurements in inches as well.

