About video replacing text

Just a small snippet of a reply I sent out to someone while discussing video taking over text. This mainly in relation to Twitter and other micro-blogging applications as well as communication between people in general.

Twitter became big mostly because of text messaging. It took years for every device and almost every user to have text messaging available to them, then a service that utilized it was possible. Video does not have the option to be ubiquitous like text is. Great, you me and 20% of at&t subscribers are going to have phones that can post their stupid videos to myspace. That is not enough users with devices that have the technology to make a difference right now.

Twitter, RT bots, and a lesson on the internet

I haven't mentioned this in my blog yet but for the last few months I have been operating a few RT bots on twitter. For those of you not on Twitter or don't know what an RT is I'll explain. RT stands for retweet. If someone likes a tweet from someone or for some other wants to spread that tweet around they'll make a post that, usually, is formed as follows

RT @orig_poster_name Text of their tweet

With my bots I am doing the same thing but have an automated way of finding tweets that contain a certain phrase and retweet that. Depending on the phrase this can end up retweeting a lot or just a little. My busiest bot is @shutupmeg who looks for the phrase "shut up" and a few variations of that.

The point? To have fun mainly. I don't have a solid plan for monetizing this however my accounts have a large number of followers so advertising may work in the future. For now I'm keeping my greed itch at bay.

The profile page of my bots have a link back to a page listing all of my bots, their last few retweets, and a small survey. The results don't really matter but I do like feedback on what I'm doing.

This is a comment I received recently:

I don't find these bots entertaining. They're very annoying and are an invasion of privacy, since they retweet stuff people say.


- Anonymous

I really wish they would have left their name so I could give them a link to this post, and the following lesson:

When you post something on the internet, especially on a public website like twitter, that work is no longer private

The internet as we know it is a place where information and ideas can be viewed over and over again, shared, remixed, repackaged, and spit back out on to the internet again where the cycle can continue. This does not happen with every bit of content out there but if something is deemed worthy of this by anyone then it can and will happen.

If something is private to you then maybe sharing that on the internet isn't the greatest idea you've had. I recommend that you write it down on a sheet of paper, look at it, and burn said paper. If you must share something private on the internet don't come running to mommy because your ex boyfriend, teacher, or some bum in an internet cafe saw it and *ghasp* spread it around.

So, Mr/Mrs Anonymous, do you really want to share something that's private on Twitter? Make your account private. It's an option and that way bots like mine can't view your stuff unless you specifically allow them to. Otherwise, don't call me a pervert when I look in to your livingroom window while you're changing your clothes with the drapes fully open.

Housekeeping!

I shut down two projects today. One was godgivesyoulemons.com and the other is looreview.natefanaro.com. I'm really sad to see looreview pass but I obviously never spent any time on it. I most certainly would if I had the domain name that I wanted. That will have to wait though.

God Gives You Lemons was more of an impulse buy. While it was fun it wasn't popular. I have the software around for it since it was a custom setup. I doubt it's useful to anyone else but I can't throw away code.

I'm also starting to seriously debate the future of gobloggo.com. I can retool it as just a small community, a utility site that basically works just like ping.fm, or I can shut it down. Honestly I need to get some people to post naked pics on it. Seriously. Mobog made it BIG because of porn. On the web, most things take off because they're driven by porn.

TweetScribe and your password on Twitter

With all of the hubub of twitter, oauth, celeb accounts getting hacked, and phishing dm's going out like mad, I wanted to make a statement about how TweetScribe handles your passwords.

We don't.

There's a little bit of grey text below the login box of TweetScribe that I really mean. "We do not store your password!" And I want to prove that to you.



All authentication is handled by Twitter. If Twitter doesn't auth you, TweetScribe won't auth you. The above code happens after Twitter says your username and password is valid. We then store your user name so when you log in next we can grab your searches on TweetScribe. No passwords are saved in this code or anywhere else.

We don't need your password either. All searches we do when you are not logged in to TweetScribe are handled under our own username and password. (Not really needed with twitter's search API but we log in anyway) The only time TweetScribe needs your password is when you want to follow someone, or post a tweet in reply to someone else.

So no more second guessing whether or not you should try us out. Log in and give TweetScribe a try!

TweetScribe Updates

Some new work has been done on TweetScribe

I managed to get my layout straightened out. The previous version was put up real quick so I could test the UI a little. Now things looks a little cleaner. I also made an icon for @tweetscribe

One feature that I want to add is the ability to see who is showing up the most in your results so you can follow them. Also in the works is the ability to reply to any tweet that shows in your search results. This would be a site only feature of course. I wouldn't be able to make a feed out of that. So many ideas and so little time I guess :)

Announcing tweetscribe.com

Just launched a new website: tweetscribe.com

Here's what it's all about. When you use twitter and follow people you're following just people. Sometimes you don't always want to know what's going on with your friends but just about things. Products, websites, what people are listening to, etc. You can currently use twitter's advanced search and get a list of your results for one search term, but tweetscribe allows you to merge as many advanced searched that you'd like in to one easy feed.

There are a few good uses for something like this:

Companies can use it to follow who's saying what about them and their products.

Search for "is down" and find out what's not working so great right now.

Follow news about your favorite sports team and find fans from anywhere.


So give it a try. Hopefully this isn't just another project I get rid of in a year :)

Some fixes

I realized the most embarassing thing today, gobloggo.com really didn't look right in IE. Same happened with godgivesyoulemons.com. Normally I attribute this to IE's lack of knowing how to render a page like everyone else but this time it was my fault. Both sites have been fixed. I can't imagine how many people using IE must have seen that and went *yuck* right away. Actually, I can tell you. gobloggo's visits from IE are 50.46%. godgives you lemons is at 61.76% Ugh, that sucks. Sorry IE users! (ps: stop using ie)