Jay Adkins

I can honestly say that being a prior police officer, I never danced in front of my camera. I made a few funny faces to test it out but never danced. This is pretty good though…

Popularity: 2% [?]

What is Twitter? That’s the question a lot of people ask. Those who are familiar with the service and use it on a daily basis will tell you what it is, but are they right? Twitter started out as a project by company board members of Odeo. Not realizing just how popular the service would be, the board members including Jack Dorsey, branded the service Twttr. Inspired by services like Flickr, the service adopted American mobile short code 40404 due to the fact that it is easily remembered and can be used by SMS from most American mobile phone carriers.

The working name was just “Status” for a while. It actually didn’t have a name. We were trying to name it, and mobile was a big aspect of the product early on … We liked the SMS aspect, and how you could update from anywhere and receive from anywhere.

We wanted to capture that in the name — we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word “twitch,” because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But “twitch” is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word “twitter,” and it was just perfect. The definition was “a short burst of inconsequential information,” and “chirps from birds.” And that’s exactly what the product was.
—Jack Dorsey

Twitter is not the new kid on the block anymore. The service has become mainstream in the fact that the name alone is being used in everything from commercials and news casts to viral advertising by companies like Pepsi. Twitter is used by individuals, companies as a form of marketing and even celebrities. So, what do you think Twitter is? Is it a messaging service, a status tracker, an instant messaging service or all of the above? Do you think people are using the service as it was intended?

Personally I think Twitter has spun out into a life of its own. I believe it became bigger than anyone had anticipated and will have dire effects if it ever shuts down for good. I don’t anticipate that happening in the foreseeable future. Is it a fad or faze that we are going through or will Twitter stand the test of time? I guess we’ll have to wait and see but they will have to come up with a plan to monetize the service before they run out of funding, otherwise the service will be lost and that would be a sad day for those of us who are social media geeks.

Popularity: 4% [?]

By now you may have heard all the hubbub about St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa’s Twitter account being hacked. It seems Tony is so peeved about the hack that he’s now suing Twitter. Apparently someone got a hold of Tony’s Twitter account and made some statements that he didn’t particularly find amusing. Now, Twitter is responding with the possibility of verified accounts, which may or may not be a good thing.

In my humble opinion, I believe verified accounts would be a good thing in that you would know exactly who you’re talking to. On the flip side, the anonymity wouldn’t be there and some may have a hard time saying things they would normally say, knowing that no one knows the “real person” behind those comments. I think it will be good, especially for celebrities who Twitter. I mean who wants to talk to some “wannabe” celebrity when they can Twitter with the real deal, right?

Either way, someone will always come up with some way to get around the system and each time they do, Twitter will be there to counter. In Twitter’s latest blog post, the also say that Mr. La Russa’s lawsuit was basically a waste of judiciary time and “Twitter has not settled, nor do we plan to settle or pay.” Go Twitter!

Popularity: 44% [?]

A little laughter for your day.

Twittering cellmate

Popularity: 81% [?]

On May 5th Owen Thomas at Gawker.com made some statements hinting toward a possible sale of Twitter to a very heavy-hitter in the tech world, Apple. However, on May 7, 2009 Ian Paul confirmed PC World Twitter’s statement that they are in-fact not for sale.

“President of Operations Santosh Jayaram was talking about the future of Twitter’s search engine. Speaking on a discussion panel with representatives from Twitter and LinkedIn, Jayaram said Twitter was going to start indexing Web pages linked to in Twitter posts, according to CNET. The basic idea behind indexing Web pages is not to compete against larger search engines like Google, but to supply a faster alternative for real-time information.

Jayaram also said that Twitter would institute a reputation ranking system for its users, in order to help Twitter’s search engine rank search results. When you search a “trending topic” on Twitter — the list of Twitter’s 10 most popular topics that appears in a Twitter user’s sidebar — the reputations of people posting messages about your particular topic would be taken into account when ranking search results. Twitter’s engineers are still trying to figure out how to determine a Twitter user’s reputation, but hopefully they will not create some sort of Twitterocracy like Loic Lemeur has suggested.”

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/164493/twitter_were_not_for_sale.html

Popularity: 40% [?]