Tag Archives: Twitter

Anthony Weiner Admits to Sending Lewd Tweet

6 Jun

New York Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner held what MSNBC’s Luke Russert called “an extraordinary” press conference this afternoon, admitting he sent lewd, inappropriate images to a series of women over a series of years. Following days of news coverage, Weiner admitted that a tweet showing a cloth-covered erect penis was sent by him. Over the course of the press conference, Weiner apologized numerous times for his behavior, calling it “dumb,” “inappropriate,” “stupid,” among other terms.

Among the facts we learned:

  • Weiner meant to send the tweet that started the press coverage as a direct message on Twitter. For those of you not familiar with how twitter works, think of a direct message as a short, private email communication visible only to the two parties involved. A tweet, like Weiner sent, is visible to anyone who follows the account or searches for it. Once he realized his mistake, Weiner “panicked” and lied in order to prevent further personal embarrassment.
  • The series of relationships with women dates back at least three years. Many of the inappropriate relationships occurred before Weiner was married, but some of them occurred after he married long-time Hilary Clinton aide Huma Abedin last year.
  • Weiner never met any of the women and never engaged in sex outside of his marriage. The congressman met most of the women via Facebook and spoke with several of them by phone. He refused to answer whether he engaged in phone sex with any of them.
  • Before beginning the press conference, Weiner spoke with Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. She urged him to tell the truth and expressed her disappointment in his behavior. Pelosi later opened an ethics investigation into Weiner’s behavior.
  • Weiner issued a blanket apology to everyone affected by his bad judgement. The apology included right-wing commentator Andrew Breitbart who broke the scandal and shockingly took to the podium before Weiner spoke.
  • The congressman denies using governmental resources to have the discussions, saying they occurred at home and own personal devices. He does not plan to resign.

Also, noteworthy:

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Kenton Cool Tweets From Mount Everest Summit

8 May

British mountain climber Kenton Cool became the first person to ever tweet from the top of Mount Everest on May 5. Cool (pretty epic mountaineering name, no?) used a Samsung Galaxy S II to make the first 3G call and send a quick tweet from the summit.

His message read: “Everest summit no 9! 1st tweet from the top of the world thanks to a weak 3G signal & the awesome Samsung Galaxy S2 handset!” The feat was possible thanks to a Ncell, a Nepali mobile network operator, which installed the first cell tower last November at Everest Base Camp.

Samsung sponsored Cool as part of a marketing campaign. He also spoke with the BBC from the summit saying, “The world is getting smaller and smaller. We got a 3G signal on the summit of Everest. How incredible is that?”

Here’s video of Cool phoning his wife, Jazz, from the summit. She obviously is terrified about why she’s receiving the call.

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119 Million Twitter Accounts Considered Dormant

5 Apr

Twitter

Bad news for Twitter and their multi billion valuation. An insider granted Business Insider access to some of the company’s user information. That analysis showed that there are fewer than 21 million active Twitter accounts and more than 68 percent of the 175 million registered accounts could be considered dormant. In order to be considered “active,” a user must follow at least 32 people. A more generous definition considers an active user anyone who follows more than eight people, in which case there are 56 million accounts.

Now, those figures aren’t nearly as bad as they sound. Other popular social networking sites like MySpace (41 million) and Huffington Post (30 million daily) have similar reach as Twitter. They aren’t good either.  The numbers suggest that the importance of Twitter are vastly overstated. Certainly organizations relying on Twitter to convey information to customers could be overestimating it’s reach.

It almost sounds to me like Twitter is creating a niche for itself. Certain parties (celebrities, reporters) will use it to share quick tidbits of information amongst themselves and a small contingent of interested people, but the vast majority of people don’t care or won’t follow them.

Thoughts?

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5 Unusual Uses of Twitter

26 Mar

The rise of Twitter means we can share information with the world pretty much whenever we want. That’s led to some creative uses of the technology. Some of them have been life-saving. Some of them have been tragic.

1) Bank Robbery: Annemarie Dooling (who describes herself as a “Jet setting, Manhattan drinking, design obsessed sicko” who is also a web producer for an unnamed “popular talk show website”) was just at a bank some normal day when all of a sudden a robber came inside. Shortly after, she began tweeting about the robbery and about her missing trackball (which is why she can’t make calls). The tweets continued until after the police interviewed everyone and let them go. She praised the teller for their response during the crisis.

2) During Childbirth: You don’t really for that to be a private moment. Not if you’re the CEO of Twitter’s wife. Sara Williams, wife of Evan Williams, tweeted throughout the experience from the moment her water broke through the first diaper. The first tweet about the child birth read “Dear Twitter, My water broke. It wasn’t like Charlotte in Sex and the City. Now, timing contractions on an iPhone app.” Perhaps thankfully, no tweets came during the hardest part of the procedure.

3) A Miscarriage: It was just a normal day at the office for Penelope Trunk, chief executive at Brazen Careerist. Then, during a board meeting, she realized she was having a miscarriage. She cheerfully tweeted the news to her followers:
The internet exploded in outrage. How could a woman share that type of personal information with the whole world? Trunk was unapologetic and explained she had already endured two abortions and a miscarriage. Having the miscarriage then saved her from having to go through with an already scheduled abortion.

4) Drowning of a Child: Shellie Ross sparked a nationwide outcry when she tweeted about her son’s drowning right after it happened. That afternoon, she tweeted about a rare batch of fog in her neighborhood. Just 15 minutes later, she called paramedics because her child had fallen into the pool. Then, she posted a tweet which read, “Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.” Five hours later (after her son passed away) she posted again “Remembering my million dollar baby” with an attached picture. Ross says she was outside when her son fell into the pool. Her profile is Military_Mom.

5) During a Heart Attack: Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher suffered a major heart attack in late 2010. Doctors said it would have been fatal if not spotted early on. Christopher was rushed to a hospital in the back of an ambulance tweeting the whole way. Here’s a sample:

Colleagues immediately rushed to his aid and offered words of support. Thankfully, Christopher’s condition stabilized. He now has returned to work for Mediaite.

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Why You Need Proper Punctuation

25 Mar

Though I should probably not be the one heaving stones, here an example of horrible punctuation.

Sen. Chuck Grassley: I suppose this isn’t so much an egregious error as embarrassing for a U.S. Senator to be communicating this way. Grassley gets credit for using Twitter effectively for someone his age (79). However, he seems bogged down by the character limit and sometimes his message gets really lost. Like this tweet, for example.

Now, what does any of that mean? Or this one?

Anyways, Grassley took to Twitter yesterday to tell people to stop whining. I think shorter, multiple messages are more effective than these endless abbreviations that drive everyone nuts trying to decipher.

(h/t  Wonkette)


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