Made a post on an article today in response to some other posts. It seemed like an interesting exchange to me so I wanted to make sure and archive it here in my blog.

Link to site/article: TinyGigantic Site

Tiny Gigantic actually seems like a very neat little site. I'm now following one of the creators of the site on Twitter and have subscribed to its feed using Google Reader. Lets see how far this site can go.

Here is the whole article and exchange:

Twitter tastes like Kool-Aid which tastes yummy. Want some?
Twitter. It’s something I’ve been avoiding for the past months. I’ve even had moments of wanting it to fail a little because the idea just kinda bugged. Who the fuck cares about status updates?

But recently, I realized it’s not about status updates. It’s not, as the Facebook prompt suggests, about what I’m “doing right now.” And it’s not, as the LinkedIn prompt suggests, about what I’m “working on right now.”

Twitter is a whole new kind of human communication—a one-to-many conversation—that enables a whole new kind of community. Here’s a nice summary (from Deep Jive Interests):

"It’s because I can listen and participate, in real time, with a giant chat room full off interesting people, who at any given time, are thinking out loud, reporting on things they find important, but doing so in a fairly terse and concise way; and, who are almost always reachable and generally approachable about answering any particular question you might have."

This is a big fucking deal. I know because I’ve recently been lamenting the fact that my areas of interest are unusual and my fellow weirdos often live in other cities. Sure, we all have blogs and delicious accounts, and lots of us are on Facebook or Linkedin. We all use email, text, and chat. Nonetheless, we do not have community and we don’t really have a running conversation. Twitter looks like it’s gonna change that.

Now I want to show you another interesting tidbit, the Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance (from the Influential Marketing Blog):

1. Denial
“I think Twitter sounds stupid. Why would anyone care what people are doing right now?”

2. Presence
“I don’t get it, but I guess I should at least create an account.”

3. Dumping
“I use Twitter to send people links to my blog posts and to send people my press releases.”

4. Conversing
“I don’t always post useful stuff, but I am using Twitter to have authentic 1×1 conversations.”

5. Microblogging
“I use Twitter to post useful stuff that people read, and I’m having authentic 1×1 conversations.”

Lastly, some recently released stats, and a business-case anecdote (via LitmanLive):

* 70% of users joined in 2008.
* 20% have joined in the last 60 days.
* An estimated 5-10,000 new accounts are opening every day.
* The average user has been on Twitter for 275 days.
* 80% of users have a bio on their profile. (I personally don’t follow users without a bio)
* 62% have a photo on their profile.
* Traffic has grown 600% over the last 12 months.
* Total user numbers are between 4-5m with approx 30% unengaged.

(Sources Hubspot and Compete)

It’s not there yet, but it’s getting towards reaching the tipping point. It has potential for business also, success stories are starting to emerge from well known brands who are establishing a presence and engaging with their audience. Perhaps most famously, Dell recently reported that they have made more than $1 million dollars through their DellOutlet Twitter account. It’s clear that there’s value to be had from many angles.

My point: I think Twitter is here in a big way. I think it’s not a matter of adoption, but acceptance. I think it’s a matter of a learning curve (the one-to-many conversation is new to everyone, and we’ll get better), and I think it’s a matter of the hockey-stick curve we see when the network effect kicks in, which is gonna happen real soon.

With that, I’ll sign off and invite you to connect with me on Twitter.

12/26/08 by Axel Albin

This entry was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Candy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
6 Responses to “Twitter tastes like Kool-Aid which tastes yummy. Want some?”

Michael Colton Says:
December 27th, 2008 at 6:58 am
WALL-E & THE PROBLEM WITH TWITTER!

Witty, poignant, and cynical in its proof points, the movie Wall-E presents the unexpected but unfortunate result of the way we communicate in the world. So while we are not living 700 years in the future, we are not all obese and we are not losing all of our bone-density because we live on a mothership in outer space, we are losing our face-to-face connection with each other. Maybe you can take the POV that we are gaining proximity and intimacy with people in far away places. Maybe it is the wave of the future. But its unfortunate. Its making us all more likely to be transient and less physically social. As Wall-E demonstrates, in generations of the future, we will have forgotten basic formalities and subtle physical acknowledgments. It wont all just disappear but will be slowly and subtly enough and demonstrated only in our offspring who take their cues from us. Just as me and my children today have little awareness of animals outside the zoo so future generations will have an odd kind of comfort with their parent’s transience or the ease with which their parents fall in and out of relationship.

In my opinion, Twitter is a playful but sad alibi for a relationship. Maybe it innovative and cute today, but in the future—a future we will take little responsibility for our children with their children will come closer to confirming wall-E’s brilliant suspicion. Hopefully it wont parallel in time the loss of oxygen and photosynthesis on our planet.

Hey! Spend less time telling people what you are doing in the privacy of your own mental space and more time interacting face to face. Use you muscles-The TINY muscles in your face to smile and greet other people and the GIGANTIC muscles in your legs to walk out amongst your local friends.

If you want another take on what the future will be like, see the documentary, “THE END OF SUBURBIA”. Sure its primarily about the death of fossil fuels but the bright future involves the creation of self-sufficient local communities. Jobs and lives will all exist in local areas the proficiency will be valued because of its value in sustaining the local milieu. We will live with and our cultural values with support living next door to our best friends and we will know them deeper than we ever have before. On the contrary, today we living in cities where we do not often know the person living on the other side of our wall. We drive great distances to work and we communicate virtually to people in the same office.

700 years in the future they will learn about us and scratch their heads at what we thought was right.

Axel Albin Says:
December 27th, 2008 at 9:19 am
mike-

awesome notes.

you might well be right. but these days i am super inspired by the relentlessly growing global brain, and by the manifold ways humans are overcoming the problem of spatial distance.

i have a lot of trust in nature and life. i believe that the optimal destiny will manifest through the all-encompassing process of variation and selection. i recognize that this a statement of faith, but so are all statements about the future.

one last thought: it’s curious how often people (myself included) tend to forecast the future in extremes. take the hyperlocal, end-of-suburbia scenario. i’ll agree with the idea that communities need to be more self-sufficient in order to be more sustainable and resilient. however, these communities will not be isolated. they will have deep connectivity to the global network. eventually the global network will facilitate the creation of a transport technology innovation (some new energy source, a new engine, etc) that will once again make it economically compelling to import raspberries from a great distance. we’ll do that for a while until it becomes unsustainable again and so on. this kind of scenario seems to better align with my sense of the cycles and rhythms of change.

: )
aa

Michael Colton Says:
December 27th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Touché Axel…

And you got me there. I did and do forecast in extremes. The effects over time would be subtle and probably never experienced to the point of suffrage by anyone. I think the exaggeration comes from a sense of helplessness over the impact the information society will have on my children and my children’s children.

Kids online are junkies and the machine sucks them in like chocolate on a stcik. They are more likely to be isolationists and with a resources like Twitter, enabled to do so even more so. And when we get them out of the house they want to take their Nintendo DS or watch a DVD in the mini-van. Sounds pathetic, I know.

Darwin characterized dominance of the recessive and this to me is exemplary. A result of and ABSENCE of variation and selection.

Consider this analogy. In childbirth woman consent to c-section in at least 35% of all cases in the U.S. The WHO is now seriously alarmed at the impact over time and generations. The recessive effect ( with the absence of selective pressures) is that, the more likely a woman is to have a c-sections, the more likely her daughter is to have a c-section and so on. Sounds silly but cranium size is then free to exceed pelvic cavity diameter. Use your imagination to imagine the inherent complications besides future c-sections and the effect on the Hat industry.

Twitter and Facebook, innocent as they seem to be might be ultimately culpable. the ‘inside-the-cranium” equivalent. Our heads are getting lop-sided, virtually.

So, I have exaggerated on the impacts as do most forecasters. Its high drama and attempts to shake people in to caring about something that is beyond the sensory world. But optimism and faith in the resilience of humanity can also only be experienced within our limited framework and we haven’t really had the opportunity to witness phenotypic effects of our ingenuity.

Sustainability efforts are, to some extent, requiring the rethinking of the ingenuity that brought about the industrial age. And who knows how far it will persist and require our ongoing rehabilitation of our original bright ideas.

BTW, I also wonder what reinventions will be in store for societies that experience the spoils of the information age. I say this to a guy who I know has taken pride in living without a television for years.

Michael : P

Stowe Boyd Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 6:14 am
It’s actually many-to-many, not one-to-many.

Noah Wiles Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Michael,

I just had to make a couple points about your argument and forecast about what Twitter could mean for society.

One, your post that is now reaching many people over the internet of whom can now digest and retort as desired is essentially the exact same exchange and social interaction (because this does qualify as a social interaction between humans) that Twitter offers. So you are clearly engaging in and benefitting from what you say could ultimately be the end of society.

Two, if you are someone who is on Twitter and who is actively using it and following others on it, you come to find something very interesting. Many of the posts that people are submitting to the site are updates, and as is becoming and will continue to become more prevalent, about or that include pictures and videos of SOCIAL situations that the poster is currently engaged in with other people.

So no offense, but I just think your forecast is misguided and does not take into account the fact that Twitter exists specifically because we are, by nature, social creatures and are constantly trying to find new ADDITIONAL ways to connect with each other. Twitter is by no means a replacement for direct face to face socializing. Anyone who wakes up in the morning and goes to work or school or performs whatever hundreds of little daily tasks that all require you to be out and about interacting with people knows this. I think this vision of yours of a possible WALL-E future is nothing but sensationalism at its best.

Maybe you are watching too many Disney movies and not socializing enough.

Smiley Face

Just messin’ with you dude! I love that movie and I’m not trying to be a jerk.

Take care brother.

Noah Wiles Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Ummm…..I’m not sure how that big smiley face got in there.

My Girls!

I am quite excited about the next two days. My sister Ida and my two nieces Emalee and Payton are in town and we will be spending some time together during tomorrow and Thursday. The big day will be Thursday when we all go to Disneyland.

As much as Disney has become just another corporate money making machine, it is still a fun place to take your kids, nieces, nephews, young cousins, neighbors kids, etc. It is just fun watching them have fun. This is gonna be great! It's been so long since I have seen them all.

Mumbai

The muslim extremists are not doing themselves any favors by taking the kind of action they took this past holiday weekend in Mumbai. Attacking random citizens, some not even citizens of India, but visitors to the country, and executing them for some wrong they perceive was done against them that many of those who died probably weren't even aware of.

I am afraid that this type of violence is still going to continue escalating until they force the whole world to be united against them. This is very bad!

Through the outsourcing to India the company I work for does I have met many Indian folk, some who work in Mumbai. They are all such very nice people. It has been an eye opening experience to meet and work with them all. So to see this kind of thing happen to them really makes me sad. Of course they are a country that has their own problems, but they are trying to improve. It is a slow process. It will take time.

Proposition 8 passed, so now what?

The fight is not over all of my gay and lesbian friends! There is much work to be done though! See what you can do here.

read more | digg story

Simplify Media

So I just shared an article from Google Reader, you'll see this if you look at the little widget down and to the left of my Blogger blog page, about a new iPhone application called SimplifyMedia written by the company Simplify Media. If you create accounts with their service, you can install this application on the iPhone or iPod Touch and stream your own iTunes music to the devices. This is a very cool in and of itself, but what is even cooler is that you can also stream music from the iTunes libraries of friends who are also registered for this service. Very cool!

Blogger Widget for MAC Dashboard.

Ok. So I just installed the Blogger widget for the MAC Dashboard. Hopefully this will make it easier for me to make quick little entries into my blog from time to time. We shall see.

I loved reading the excerpt below written by Blair for the Tool February '08 Newsletter about what happened with Danny, Rynne, the anonymous person and himself. Only, because it so closely resembled an incident I experienced where as I made a left turn onto a residential street from North Lake Avenue in Pasadena, and quickly realizing that the street was void of any available parking spots with the exception of one spot immediately to my right just beyond the painted red area and before the first parked car, I received a traffic ticket for parking "aggressively" considering I quickly pulled to my right to plop into this one available parking spot. When I asked what I was receiving a ticket for and the cop actually said, "For parking A.G.G.R.E.S.S.I.V.E.L.Y" (I can't help but always think of the Faith No More song "Be Aggressive" from Angel Dust when I think of this), I had absolutely no control when the words "Are you kidding me!?" escaped my mouth. Just as with Blair's incident, the cop immediately replied with an aggressive "Does it look like I'm kidding!?". It was immediately clear that this dude was just a macho asshole, and possibly a boojum though I had no idea what a boojum was at that time, and so chose not to tempt fate. Thus I contained my anger and frustration as much as I could during the remainder of this transgression, although I couldn't help but yell very agitatedly to my brother and group of friends at one point, who were all across the street witnessing this go down as they were waiting for me to join them, that I was getting a ticket for parking of all things.

The part about this that makes it more frustrating, knowing that the cop was behind me since he was also making a right turn onto the same street, is that I have no doubt in his mind he justified giving me that ticket for such a ludicrous reason not only because he was probably tailgating me as I made my turn and so probably had to break unexpectedly so as not to hit me as I suddenly slowed and pulled to the right to grab my parking spot, but also because he probably already had me profiled before we even made the turn considering that I was driving a little black pickup truck that had all kinds of stickers like Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, KPFK, and Rage Against the Machine on it as well as a license plate that read Evil Empire (EVLMPIR).

Regardless, the inherently flawed justice system simply got away with robbing me of more money. Things could be much worse so I guess I cannot complain too much.

"SOMETHING’S FISHY HERE!
Having just exited a black roadable* in order to have some lunch with theatrics at Benihana of Tokyo in Encino, Danny, Rynne, I and another (who wishes to remain anonymous) crossed Ventura Boulevard, only to be accosted by a Black Hat-boojum disguised as an L.A.P.D. motorcycle cop (a convincing fake!) who was totally INVISIBLE until we reached the other side of the street. At the entrance, before we could get to the teppan-table, hibachi steak and any dazzling effects, we were each issued a JAYWALKING TICKET (this while one of the freakin’ Cuyler clan was probably cleaning out the robot box at a nearby Starbucks). But not only that, while the ‘officer’ wrote up the citations, we had to listen to some Jabberwocky about how dangerous it was for us to cross the street, and that our ticket wouldn’t affect our driving record. Well, “no shit” to the latter –we weren’t driving (hence the term “jaywalking”). As for it being dangerous to cross the street – that’s fine if you’re a five-year-old child (or if Britney happens to be out and about on that day). When Danny asked if the officer was kidding, after his stern reply of “Does it look like I’m kidding?”, I knew that this was in fact a boojum, and that the encounter with him was a warning for us not to experiment with transuniversal travel. Even though the ‘cop’ didn’t have a purple Sharpie, making no judgment as to whether this was the real Danny and not a decoy, this Fair Witness watched as he calmly signed his ticket, at the same time suggesting that the officer’s time might be better served going door to door looking for any dangerous baby furniture. Once over the emotional shock (for evidence, Rynne also took a photo of the ‘cop’ with a Polaroid Stereo-Instamatic-Self-Focusing, Automatic-Irising, Automatic Processing Camera [or was it an i-Phone?]), we received the equally distressing news that the restaurant had closed for the afternoon. Would there be no lunch with theatrics at Benihana of Tokyo in Encino? Relax. Fortunately, I had a backup plan, and this was “Something’s Fishy Here” just up the boulevard a bit. We thus headed for the nearest crosswalk…"

Peter Gabriel's new audiophile quality subscription site.

Peter Gabriel is doing a lot these days to try and come up with fresh new ways for artists to express themselves without restriction while still being able to make a living at it. Check it out. It's an interesting concept. Go Directly To Site Here

read more | digg story

Albert Hofmann Departs

"LSD wanted to tell me something. It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation."

read more | digg story

Sierra Madre Fire News Article

This is not cool. This fire is no particular threat to Tina and I, but it is very close. It is only a little over 5 miles from us. The part that sucks is that I have two good friends that live in this area. One of them most likely is in no real danger. She and her husband are far enough down in the rural area and away for the mountain and actual forest areas. My other friend though is actually living right there with the forest area just at the base of the mountain. You could easily see the fire raging right from the area where her house is. She is just North East of Mountain View Trail where apparently they did end up having to evacuate this morning. This is right by the Mt. Wilson trail that we all go hiking at as well. I wonder if the trail will be shutdown for an extended period of time because of this.

Surging costs of groceries hit home

"American families, already pinched by soaring energy costs, are taking another big hit to household budgets as food prices increase at the fastest rate since 1990." What the shit is happening to our economy!? I don't get it.

read more | digg story

Wired.com Readers' Brain-Enhancing Drug Regimens

I am not surprised. Are you? It's not like I don't have the occasional experience with certain substances. I just find it interesting to hear about an hidden culture of folks who would normally be stereotyped as "straight edge" engaged in popping pills to increase their ability to be productive and successful citizens.

read more | digg story

Interesting LSD Documentary

Hofmann's Potion

Indian DNA Links to 6 'Founding Mothers'

The six "founding mothers" apparently did not live in Asia because the DNA signatures they left behind aren't found there, Perego said. They probably lived in Beringia, the now-submerged land bridge that stetched to North America, he said.

read more | digg story

Cool

I like this little My iTunes HTML widgit I just added to my blog. Good stuff. That was pretty smart on Apple's part. Not sure how many people will actually use it, but I suppose we shall see.

lunar eclipse

"On Wednesday February 20, 2008, beginning at 7:01 p.m. PST the moon will move completely under the shadow of the Earth in a total lunar eclipse. The eclipse can be seen in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Hope for good weather because the next total lunar eclipse won't happen until December 2010."

read about it here

Krista Bagley

I just chatted with my internet friend Krista. She's a sweet young lady. Strange how I had not picked up on any headlines regarding this, but it seems that the Mackay area of Australia was getting hit with massive amounts of rain for the past few days and thousands of homes and many businesses were severely damaged by widespread flooding. Thankfully, her home was not one that was caught in the flooding since it is located in an area of higher elevation. Here is an article about it: Flooding in Australia

On a lighter note...

...it was freaking awesome to finally see Autolux do their thing again at the El Rey Theatre. I was a little disappointed though that there was no mention of the new CD. It was cool to see Tim Roth up on the stage kicking it over to the side taking pictures. It seems that every time I see Autolux there is at least one famous face there as well. From all the times I've seen them I ended up seeing Giovanni Ribisi, Vincent Gallo, and now Tim Roth. Anyway, I just hope the new CD is coming out soon.

Aloke Dutta

For those of you out there who are in to Indian Tabla and Sitar music, please consider purchasing an album or two from Aloke Dutta. His website is provided below. I just found out that he almost freaking died at the beginning of this year due to major heart attacks. He had already gone though major surgery and only just recently recovered to a condition that may see him going home fairly soon. Any purchase will help him in dealing with his new medical bills. Thanks.

Support Your Local Tabla Master

The Joker has leapt off the Brokeback Mountain.

Heath Ledger has passed away today. That's a damn shame. He was a fine actor and from what I understand an upstanding fellow. It seems to be still unclear whether this was an accident or not and apparently sleeping pills were involved. I guess Heath had been complaining a lot about not being able to stop his thoughts and going through a period of sleeping very little to not at all for a long period. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happened.

Being a huge fan of Terry Gilliam, it is also sad to hear that Heath was going to be in Terry's next project of which he was already in the middle of filming. It would have been very cool to see what Heath's talents could bring to a Terry movie.

Such is life. We are but fragile creatures.

Thank You

Thank you Martin Luther King Jr.

There are few men who have existed that are greater than you.

Humans

There is this incredibly adorable woman from Turkey who I have chatted on and off with for a few years now. Unfortunately, it is rare for us to connect often enough to have more consistent conversations due to the time zone differences of course and our busy lives. This is not the point of this entry though. The point is that we just had a very enjoyable time chatting and most of that chat was me introducing her to my blog on blogger.com and then showing her how she could easily subscribe to the RSS feed of my blog through Google Reader. With her help and just by chance, I then found out that Google apparently is working hard to translate any blog from blogger.com from one language to another automatically and as necessary. She helped me find this out when she expressed her surprise to me at how when viewing my blog it was being displayed to her in Turkish. It is efforts like this that cause me to be as much of a fan boy of Google as I am.

Again, I am straying from the point a bit. My intention, really, is to express here, since i feel i cannot express enough to her, how enjoyable it is to communicate with her and how very appreciative I am of the fact that we are able to have these communications mainly because of her understanding of my language and because of how very intelligent and computer savvy she is.

Making these kinds of connections with people from all over the world is why I love the internet so much and is also what helps give me hope that eventually we will all figure out how to come together as one. It is also a wonderful way to help fend off that feeling we sometimes have of being trapped in our own little worlds and sectioned off in our own separate little concrete rooms with no connections to each other. I am speaking on a more global international scale when I say that.

Anyway' though we have little to do directly with each others lives my good friend from Turkey, as well as all you other friends I have made over the internet through the years, I feel we have all forged small bonds that to me are very tangible and I am thankful for them.

It's in the dictionary people. See Here It is nothing more than a word that is part of our language. Get over it you flippin' morons!! We are never going to evolve quick enough to get off of this fuckin' planet before the sun kills us when we continue to think as small minded as this. We are doomed! Sorry. Humans can frustrate me so sometimes.

"First Week 'V is for Vagina' Release 11/07/07: Good news #1 on the Billboard INDIE chart. #25 on the Billboard top 200 No Major label budget. No Major label $300,000 Bus bench/poster/billboard marketing campaign. No overpriced full page ad in every silly magazine ever printed No Promotions Dept Payola hand jobs. No shove it down your throat anything. just 100% street level, viral, word of mouth support. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. By the way... Some Friends of mine in the Garment industry sent out a flyer advertising the release. They received dozens of Complaints from Mothers who were offended by the word Vagina. Ironic, isn't it? Without a vagina they wouldn't BE mothers."

taken from the following site: Puscifer

Game Time!

Over the years I have had the PS2, Xbox, GameCube, modified Xbox, and Xbox 360 consoles in my home and at my disposal. I found that I rarely ever played any of them. I probably played the GameCube the most out of all of them, but that total play time was still very nominal. It was not until the Wii came along that I have found myself playing games as much as I do now. It seems that Nintendo really has tapped into a change in the gaming experience that really does just work. For example, as foreign as the Wiimote and its accompanying Nunchuk looked and seemed to me in seeing it for the first time, after using it as much as I have now the traditional style of remote just isn't comfortable to me and even further does not seem to feel natural or right anymore.

Anyway, my intention with this entry was really to make mention of some of the upcoming games to the Wii that I am a little excited about and want to make sure and get. The whole of my goal was to use this entry as a way to remember them all. :-)

Well, here they are: Fugal Fantasy, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Sega Superstars Tennis, The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return, Samurai Warriors Katana (this is actually available now), and Alone in the Dark.

Ok. I'm pretty much done now.