Talk:Twitter/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

→

Archive 5

Name for Twitter users

Twats is NOT what you call Twitter users. Twitterer is a more acceptable, less offensive terms. Let's use that instead, shall we?

Twits or Tweeps (derived from Tweeple) are the most common that I've seen --phocks (talk) 06:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Backronym

Someone threw this early in the history section: "(Comedian Josh Marino created the twitter backronym; Typing What I'm Thinking To Everyone Reading.)" It's a pretty funny factoid, but didn't belong in that part of the entry, especially given that the backronym wasn't invented until years later -- i.e. not part of the early history. 76.232.55.213 (talk) 23:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Too many links

Does anyone else think there are a few too many links ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jenkinsp (talk • contribs) 16:25, June 4, 2007 (UTC)

I've added {{nomorelinks}}, I'll try to go through them later but look at WP:EL for the policy -- pb30<talk> 16:33, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I cleaned up all of the links that don't directly relate to Twitter, its creator, or its partners. White 720 02:37, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I just added two links before looking here. Maybe there should be a different header titled 'Third Party Services' or something similar. Twitter has an API and stimulates external services so I do think it is justified to link to these on this page.

In References section - link №10 is bad. Lesha 15:32, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Really?

"It made its debut at South by Southwest Interactive in March 2005.[1]" -- In March 2007 it just turned one year old.

Yeah. This above statement citing March 2005 as the debut date is false. Twitter was launched in the summer of 2006.

Prod notice

I removed the prod notice, added a reference and added some stubs. Capitalistroadster 06:37, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure it passes WP:WEB yet as that requires it to have "been the subject of multiple and non-trivial published works" --J2thawiki 11:10, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Take a look: http://news.google.com/news?q=twitter&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wn Though there's tons of blog references there, there are still several newspaper articles (San Francisco Chronicle, Arizona Republic, The Guardian) about the site's growing popularity and importance. Jeff Greco 04:33, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

International Number

Im not sure how global it is, but I get Twitter updates on my Australian Mobile, and it comes from the US number Conufsed 04:51, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

There is a UK number that I think is recommended for use in Australia phocks 04:57, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Twitter.gif

Image:Twitter.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 04:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Updates via email?

Considering removing where it says you can update via email as Twitter does not support this natively as far as I know. There is another separate service at twittermail.com that you can sign up for and email tweets, but it is a separate service and so probably shouldn't be considered as part of this article. phocks (talk) 04:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

you can sign up for email updates through twitter, or another service. it should be included --RCNARANJA 17:14, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Where is the Fail Whale? :(

The powers that be deleted the Fail Whale entry and it was supposed to be combined with this entry. But it was substantial and they haven't been combined. BRING BACK THE FAIL WHALE! He deserves his own entry. 67.83.159.168 (talk) 20:44, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree. All the article needed was some clean up. Since it was deleted through the speedy deletion process, it is perfectly acceptable to create a new fail whale article (one which doesn't include the same content previously article). It's in the works... Steven Walling (talk) 21:27, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

For those interested, we'll draft it at: User:Steven Walling/Fail Whale Steven Walling (talk) 21:33, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

My understanding is that the content of Fail Whale was merged into this article's edit History. From there, editors can integrate it to the current article. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 21:34, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Where was the merge discussion? It was supposed to happen here. Seeing as it was only merged on the 18th, the discussion should still be present. I don't see any Fail Whale section either, which is where the link points. Steven Walling (talk) 21:51, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 July 16 here. The closing admin Wafulz states that he merged the content after the article was deleted. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Obviously he didn't merge it, since it's not here. Also the Fail Whale is notable, since it's been focus of several mainstream news articles. Unmerge! 131.107.65.118 (talk) 00:39, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I merged it because at the deletion review there were three people who wanted the entry deleted/redirected and three others who thought it should go to articles for deletion despite being pretty sure it would be deleted there. I merged the content that GregManninLB wrote because it was based on reliable third-party sources. If you want you can expand the content here, but keep in mind that the topic should be given appropriate weight.-Wafulz (talk) 02:36, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the Fail Whale deserves its own article, because it's become a larger meme that reaches outside the Twitter site. There are accompanying blogs, art, products and coverage etc. etc. Steven Walling (talk) 18:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

TV characters on Twitter

Certain fictional TV characters have twitter accounts, to update fans about their doings between shows or series. I think this could go into the article, but the only source I can find is a blog: [1]. On a similar note, Sockington is a (real) cat who seemingly updates there. Totnesmartin (talk) 10:46, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Eh, yeah, unless we can find a reliable source, I don't see putting it into the article. It's not really that important to the article, IMO, as it's no different from the studio running a blog with the character. It's not unique to Twitter. Though I do think it's cool that there are Twitters for things like the Phoenix lander. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:17, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

There's a Phoenix Lander twitter? (follows) Totnesmartin (talk) 17:40, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

"Enterprise Uses"

I do not really like the title "Enterprise Uses" isn't really right. Only the first bullet has anything to do with a corporation the rest are Churches, Universities, Candidates, and NASA.

I think it should have a title like Known Uses are Prominent Uses. Or something along those lines. I just don't think using the word "Enterprise" is really the right word when 90% of the uses pointed out are not enterprise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aceofspades1217 (talk • contribs) 07:11, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

check out my addition to the page at the bottom>> usage:marketing. Dreammaker182 04:12, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Bots adding O-live

I went over to the Danish(?) Wikipedia article to see what the story was, and apparently that article has external links to Twitter on many other Wikis.

Should those external links on the external Wiki page be removed, since the two service are nothing the same? TheChrisD ^{Rants•Edits} 07:04, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Corporate name

On their website, it doesn't say Obvious, LLC; it says Twitter, Inc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AlanH (talk • contribs) 07:28, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It is obvious (no pun intended) [2] Speer320 (talk) 07:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Fail Whale image

I don't know if there's been discussion or not about including an image of the fail whale (I think the Fail Whale article had one back when it was a separate article, but I dunno), and I don't want to jump the gun if there has already been a consensus not to include an image, but anyway, if there hasn't been a decision not to put up any image, I saw at least 2 images on flickr that may be usable (are only "some rights reserved" instead of "all rights reserved," are not just screenshots of the image but are things like photos of a hand holding a blackberry displaying the fail whale): [3] (CC-BY-SA) and [4] (CC-BY).

I personally don't have any intention of uploading any of those, I just figured I would mention them here in case anyone finds it useful. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 06:29, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The Live Election Feed

I think there should be a section on the Live Election Feed that showed Tweets from all public users that concerned various topics. It was a very prominent feature (which I rather miss) and is worthy of inclusion in my opinion. (It was certainly part of the 43% increase in activity on Election day)--Occono (talk) 23:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I found out it's still up. Why isn't there any obvious link to it? Or the search feature? They're buried away.--Occono (talk) 16:22, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

"As of 2008, the service sold no advertisting and produced no revenue."

If they're sharing user information with Third Parties, aren't they getting revenue that way?--Occono (talk) 23:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Additionally if the Japanese site has advertising aren't they getting revenue from that?

How does it work?...

There should be an explanation of how it works for the user in addition to the lengthy technical description of how it works. Cuchulain9 (talk) 20:05, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

How do you set it up if your followers have different interests?...

Critique...

Where are there critiques of it?...
--the zak (talk)

Userbox

Is there any Twitter userbox?--Kozuch (talk) 16:37, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Innovativeness

"Innovativeness"? rowley (talk) 15:21, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Innovativeness. Not kidding. -- Mojei (talk) 19:47, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Section about Twitter clients

Suggestion: add new section about the various Twitter clients such as Twitterific. Photographerguy (talk) 01:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I would like to see this, as well. twitter.com maintains a partial(?) list at http://twitter.com/downloads 67.149.196.181 (talk) 14:38, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Clients that are notable in their own right and have articles can be linked in the see also section, that's good enough. This article is about twitter itself, not all the various third party services and clients. - MrOllie (talk) 14:41, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that the "Related Services and Applications" section should be changed so it focuses more on Twitter's extensive API and the way it has been utilized instead of listing several clients. The way that the clients listed are selected seems rather arbitrary. --Dylan Mikus (talk) 02:09, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree. (See the section at the bottom of the talk page.) And it's not arbitrary, the user who posted it initially obviously just has an iPhone bias. XP KhalfaniKhaldun 02:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Won't let me edit

Wanted to add a link to cy:Twitter but it won't let me save the page after editing: Spam filter notice: The following link has triggered our spam protection filter: www.readwriteweb.com. Llusiduonbach (talk) 15:34, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I removed the URL. - MrOllie (talk) 15:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Still no mention...

... of Sockington. It's just not right. Totnesmartin (talk) 19:56, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

55 Million users figure is suspect withdrawn

The 55 Million user figure quoted by Bloomberg is coming under fire for being wildly inaccurate. For an analysis, see http://socialsphere.net/blogs/36-johns-blog/255-come-clean-twitter.html . The community is awaiting response from Twitter regarding a more accurate number. Any thoughts on how to correct the entry here? The reference is correct, in the sense that Bloomberg printed that number, but common sense leads one to believe that it's inflated. MHuyck (talk) 16:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Matt, I exchanged emails with the Bloomberg reporter. His information was obtained from a source inside Institutional Venture, one of the VCs behind the recent funding round. He stands by the 10x growth number that 55 million implies, saying that according to Institutional Venture, daily Twitter audience is "roughly twice the size of the American Idol audience and 10X the size of CNN nightly viewers." American Idol averages over 30 million viewers according to several sources (e.g., http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/american_idol_8/2009_Jan_14_debut_ratings). So Bloomberg is standing by the number. I'd still love to see it validated from another source. I'll keep the challenge up. Vanhoosear (talk) 18:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

User JonGarfunkel qualified the number in the entry, which is fine by me, at least for now. But I still think we need more sources, so I'm going to keep the Refimprovesect tag up. Vanhoosear (talk) 14:04, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Bloomberg has issued a correction (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a7GvluHkkAWE&refer=us) in its story of the Twitter funding, removing the reference to the number of daily users thanks to our input. So I am removing the Refimprovesect tag and removing the references to incorrect data. Thanks, all! Vanhoosear (talk) 16:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Nice work, Todd! It looks like the 55 Million figure estimates number of visitors rather than users. A big difference. Thanks for chasing this to conclusion. MHuyck (talk) 16:57, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Taking down the advertising warnings

Because they aren't advertising, but useful complements to the techie stuff that comes before. And there's no justification in this Talk page. Just came from a conference -- most people wanted to know how Twitter is being used. These sections give a first pass account of that. Bellagio99 (talk) 15:05, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Free or For pay?

Is Twitter service a for-pay service or a free service like, e.g., Wikipedia? "For pay" or "free" seems to me a highly important qualifier that should be right in the first sentence of the article.Svato (talk) 03:30, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Uptime figures

Twitter experienced approximately 98% uptime in 2007, or about three full days of downtime.

Which is it? Checking both of the references, the 98% figure seems to be accurate, but how does that translate into three days? Unless someone can clarify what this means, I'm going to fix the math. A10t2 (talk) 08:02, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

WeFollow celebrities

Is that list really necessary? No-one wants to see twenty or so names of people who are sometimes in the news and use Twitter. It's only going to grow and I can't really see a point to it. I figure we should just remove the paragraph and wipe out hands of it. Unless anyone can provide me with a good reason for keeping that paragraph there, I'll do it myself. Greggers ^{(t • c)} 20:09, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Well you, myself, and apparently at least one other editor agree, so I think it would be best not to include it. It seems to lack any significance, and it will constantly change and be difficult to maintain - especially without vandalism. I'm going to revert the edit to add it back in, and hope that users who want it will come here to comment. KhalfaniKhaldun 01:21, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Related services and applications

Is it really necessary to mention all these related applications? There are a lot of applications that have been developed for use with Twitter, and - contrary to what this part of the article would seem to suggest - they're not all on the iPhone. I feel like mentioning them in the lead to the article (which they already are) should be sufficient. I see no problem with keeping the related services part, though, as TwitPic is a relevant webapp clearly built to work with Twitter, is usable on any platform (PC, Mac, phone, etc.) and isn't just one of dozens of similar products. KhalfaniKhaldun 00:00, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

usage: marketing

I have found a ton of websites that verify twitter as being a marketing too... I have an account and I get marketers following me all of the time. They follow thousands of people and usually follow more than they are followed.

Here's one site for businesses that use Twitter: https://easytweets.com/ Here's a list of articles based on Twitter and marketing and in social media: http://socialmarketingjournal.com/index.php?s=twitter Dreammaker182 04:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

New facts to add to the article (somebody/whoever, please!)

1. "MySpace suffered a drop in visitor traffic last month and is now less than half the size of its younger rival, Facebook."
2. "Facebook is now well over twice the size of MySpace (...). It was less than a year ago that MySpace and Facebook were the same size."—Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
3. "MySpace is clinging on to a marginal lead over Facebook in America but trails badly in Europe. In Britain, Facebook overtook its competitor in September 2007, the comScore data shows."

Source: "MySpace shrinks as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo grab its users", The Observer, Guardian, 29 March 2009

To add in:

• Twitter
• MySpace
• Bebo
• Facebook
• Social networking

93.97.49.174 (talk) 19:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

How does any of that apply to Twitter? KhalfaniKhaldun 20:02, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it doesn't directly. Apologies in that case. Use your own judgement in the end. Forward this to more relevant articles if you have more time than me.

Hints:

1. word "Twitter" is mentioned in the article's body and title,
2. the article signals an apparent major shift on the social networking market,
3. I have left handling or the inclusion of this news to others' judgement (by not including the information in the article by myself). I'm just short of time.
4. Do with it what you really want. You are the owner :-).
5. I picked Talk:Twitter page for no other reason than that I had to pick some seemingly relevant Wikipedia article to post it (rather than none, or all). You've got to start somewhere.

20:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.49.174 (talk)

140 Characters, Not Bytes

The twitter maximum message size is 140 characters, not 140 bytes. People tend to think of bytes and characters as interchangeable, but that's not so. As it happens, Twitter uses a variable-length encoding called UTF-8. That means that if a tweet contains non-ASCII characters, these characters will be two or more bytes.

I'm going to go ahead and change the article. If you revert me, please explain yourself below. Isaac R (talk) 20:46, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

see http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/9d9d16d55e2e1e67

they themselves don't know how many characters/bytes.-- ExpImp^talkcon 23:00, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Good point. I doubt that we're going to get any reliable sources for this. I could find out for myself just by experiment, but that would be against the "original research" rule. I suggest we change it to "about 240 characters" and let it go at that.Isaac R (talk) 23:19, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I hope you mean 140. I believe we should leave it at the current state (including the verification needed template), as that is exactly our current knowledge. i propose we check the linked google group in a week or two and then change the article accordingly.-- ExpImp^talkcon 19:31, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Though they may be altering their internal treatment -- and so at some point enabling 140-characters -- it is currently 140 bytes. Via Alex Payne, API lead: "It's 140 bytes, as that's how Ruby counts string length unless you use a bunch of experimental UTF-8 support that messes with our stack. We have to encode HTML entities to prevent XSS attacks. Sorry about the lost characters." This is a late-2007 thread, but until told otherwise it should stand as bytes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrflip (talk • contribs) 01:09, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why bytes vs characters matters so much... If we aren't 100% certain if it is limited to 140 bytes or not (as would seem to be the case), but anyone with an account can log in and see from obvious use that it has a 140 character limit, then we should say it has a 140 character limit. That's not hard to find sources for, since every news publication describes it that way. Examples: [5] [6] [7] KhalfaniKhaldun 03:35, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Related services and applications

We need to put some guidelines on what should go here. We currently have five applications, which is acceptable, but any more and I think we'll have a problem. How notable does a service need to be before appearing here? And how do we test that? Greggers ^{(t • c)} 19:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Well we've now hit six, making this an issue in my opinion. Should we just see which get the least hits in google and remove them? Seems a pretty straightforward solution to me. Greggers ^{(t • c)} 07:18, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

The list got to twelve separate items and looked like it would continue to swell. Therefore I moved all of these into a new list where they can propagate to their heart's content. Greggers ^{(t • c)} 15:36, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Google is buying out Twitter

Wikipedia needs to add something to the Twitter page. On April 4th, Twitter wants over $1 Billion to be bought by Google. I hope you guys can track the Google take over offer of twitter. Thanks for adding it if you do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Darkquest21 (talk • contribs) 22:39, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, that is nothing more than a rumor. (see here) Unless you can provide a reliable source that suggests it is more than rumor, we can't include anything about it here because it is pure speculation. KhalfaniKhaldun 22:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Name

Does anyone have info about how the name was decided upon? I think it is important since its name is kind of strange. --RCNARANJA 17:54, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

A quick search of Google suggests it's named after the sound birds make when they talk. I'm neither for nor against adding a properly cited reference to this story. By the principle of personal sloth, this means that I won't add it and I won't complain if someone else adds it.Jopo sf (talk) 19:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Link Fail

The two links for the Daily Telegraph article re students storming in Moldova (currently FN 73) just lead to the Wikipedia entry for the Daily Telegraph. Neither links to the article. Ileanadu (talk) 10:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Aha, no. Easy mistake to make. Clicking on "the Daily Telegraph" will indeed take you to that article. However, clicking on the link before it, with the name of the article, will take you to the article itself. Greggers ^{(t • c)} 12:27, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Twitter in the News

I've removed the reference to Moldova since the article already listed the first use of Twitter in conjunction with a physical protest. I don't think there was anything specifically inappropriate about the Moldova reference but I felt that, as with people, we're at the point where we can expect Twitter use to be somewhat common. The case today when AT&T used Twitter to communicate that phone lines had been cut to a major region would be an example of an news story that I think might still belong in the page since one could make a case that it's a novel use. Thoughts?Jopo sf (talk) 07:55, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Ecosystem

I think, now that Twitter is getting an ecosystem, we should add SOMETHING about components such as Twhirl.Martin Packer (talk) 21:21, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

• OK, I added a basic section on ecosystem. Feel free to edit / wikify. Martin Packer (talk) 14:48, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

this

why have i not heard of it before now? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.238.83.27 (talk) 23:37, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Because we've been keeping it from you. Goddamn it, people, who told him? He wasn't supposed to know! SteubenGlass (talk) 21:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Vert

Love the advert. That's what this article is, right? Right. I'm not saying that there should not be an article about Twitter in Wikipedia, but HONESTLY! This is the most obvious "viral" blog pap! Good grief! Proxy User (talk) 16:53, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

C.N.N.

C.N.N. doesn't run it's feed, a separate individual setup a script that checks the site and then posts it. He considered selling it on eBay and then decided not to so he removed the auction. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page | Contribs)} 09:22, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Number of Users?

Does anyone know of a reputable source for the number of twitterers? If so, that should probably be incorporated into the article. --Mmpartee (talk) 16:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

TwitDir keeps track of the number of users with a public profile. It looks about the most reliable. What do you think? http://twitdir.com/ (Currently 2 million +) Phinicky (talk) 09:47, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The statistic cited by the Bloomberg reporter of 55 million users has to be wrong. 5.5 million perhaps, but 55 million? According to Compete, Twitter got about 6 million uniques in January. Older statistics from last year come in at under 5 million. Vanhoosear (talk) 15:20, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

See section "55 Million users figure is suspect" below for continuation of this topic... Vanhoosear (talk) 18:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

→

Archive 5