The week twitter found its voice

October 20th, 2009
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I’ll start by sharing with you the thoughts of fellow twitterer Tom Smith @everythingabili: “All those issues us liberals care about, but don’t actually bother to DO anything about, are finding a home on twitter. About time!”

It feels like almost every day for the past seven days the UK twitter community has been alerted to an injustice by one of its members and the tidal wave of protest that has followed has swept aside anyone in the way.

On Tuesday a ‘super-injunction’ gagged The Guardian but as the PR nightmare blew up in its face Trafigura became the top trending topic on twitter and the company, which has been dumping toxic waste off the coast of Africa, instructed its lawyers to back down.

Friday we had the abusive tube worker which you can now watch on the BBC but initially came to light in a blog and the tale of Jan Moir in the Daily Mail, who wrote about the death of Stephen Gately.

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It’s all going on in Manchester this week

October 6th, 2009

It’s fun when the you can watch your city on BBC breakfast as you eat your muesli, and this week has seen the national media stray outside London and decamp here to Manchester.

Of course there’s rolling news rolling along with all the talking heads and political correspondents they can dig out but what’s much more interesting is the online buzz.

David Cameron might have said some rather disparaging things about Twitter but there are major politicians who tweet. I personally follow @MayorofLondon (Boris Johnson) and @JohnPrescott (odd combination I know but I like my tweets diverse) but sadly their tweets are generic and I suspect generated by an aid.

Far more interesting are the commentators, journalists and bloggers who have also massed in Manchester: @tweetminister has been great for all the behind the scenes info on who’s going where and with whom and @krishgm tweeting the journalists’ perspective has added an interesting angle and a heads up on whether it’s worth watching Channel 4 News later on.

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Tweet tweet

February 20th, 2009

I’ve been umming and aahing about blogging on Twitter for some time now but I think that today is the day.

The main reason for this is that Twitter seems to be taking over a)The World and b) My Life. The first is manifested in all the coverage Twitter seems to be getting and the fact that Stephen Fry, who I follow, is complaining about journalists asking him about Twitter and not his new film/tv show.

The second is demonstrated by my feeling the need to Tweet whilst out for wine and tapas last night.

Last week a couple of friends asked me what this whole Twitter thing was all about and in my attempt to explain I made it sound incredibly narcissistic and quite dull. I also told them that they’d be on it in a month’s time and as addicted as me.

The great thing about Twitter is that it really should be incredibly self-involved and dull but it isn’t. It’s not just a high tech version of Heat magazine either.

Yes I now know what Stephen Fry and Boris Johnson are up to minute by minute but I also get nuggets of into on events from exhibitions to gigs going on in Manchester from @eventmatch.

It constantly evolves too, on average I’m finding a couple of new people/things to follow each day. Today’s addition is, I think, going to be particularly revolutionary as I’ve started to follow @pitchforkmedia, this means that every so often they suggest a song and I head off to blip.fm to listen to it.

Similarly I follow a couple of journalists and bloggers who point me in the direction of stuff that they’re reading or writing. Both of these demonstrate the genius of Twitter: people who know more about a particular subject than you do, be it themselves, new music or iPhones, effectively filter the internet and give you the interesting bits.

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