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Twitter

Posted by MrPowers under Internet, Technology

Twitter is something of a phenomenon at the moment. No, its not a meme and there is no sign of Rick Astley anywhere (for the most part).  I have recently started following people in Dundee and to my surprise I have found that there actually are other people interested in the Internet and technology in this city! The best part of finding this out was the fact that it was so easy to do and it “just worked” (and it wasn’t even made by Apple). With its simplicity and popularity it begs the question “Why didn’t we see this years ago?“. While I don’t have an answer to this question, my best hypothesis would be that only in the past few years have we seen creative people and geeks team up and create some amazing apps like Twitter. I must admit - amazing as Twitter is I have been slow to adopt it. I do an update once every so often but not nearly as often as the people I follow. Perhaps thats a good thing, after all its not a rule to write every little thing that you do!

One of the features that I think helps make this a great web app, is the fact that it uses tinyurl to make the posts far more readable. Something I have never liked when reading blogs etc is outrageously long hyperlinks in the posts. Twitter is of course quite different from blogging but still a vital feature nonetheless.  Then we have all of the 3rd party apps. There are a few of them out there to say the least. One I found particularly interesting is twitterblacklist.com as its not too often we get to see such a wonderful thing generated from the user community. It seems very difficult to find a spam free area on the internet these days - what better than to have a community that can actually fight back, and help you fight back too. I should point out the companies who create the various Web 2.0 apps do try to combat this overwhelming problem, but I believe that the users provide the best means of killing the spam. Over the past few years I think the power of communities/users is evident, after all if you are reading this blog you are likely getting your news from Digg.com (a user content submitted site).

Last but not least…. follow me on Twitter!