TwitsMag Canada

The “forced follow” bug discovered on Twitter earlier this week gives us yet another way to gauge which Tweeters are the most popular.

For those who didn’t see the exploit, the bug allowed a user to force another Twitterer to follow his or her account, just by tweeting “accept [username]” (i.e. “accept HuffPostTech”).

Word of the glitch spread quickly over Twitter, and users rapidly began exploiting the bug to force others to follow them (although Twitter later undid any of the forced follows).

Data from the auto-follow glitch reveals whom users were most eager to have follow them and offers another way to measure who are the most popular people on Twitter.

Rowfeeder has compiled data to create a graphic showing which Twitter users received the most “accept” requests (see the chart here).

Check out the top 20 Tweeters who received the most “forced follows” in the list below.

Interestingly, @BarackObama got just a quarter of the requests @Oprah garnered, and was out-ranked by @JustinBieber, @LadyGaGa, and @PerezHilton, among others

1. @Oprah
2. @LadyGaGa
3. @JustinBieber
4. @ConanOBrien
5. @PerezHilton
6. @Aplusk [Ashton Kutcher]
7. @BillGates
8. @KimKardashian
9. @JoeJonas
10. @Ddlovato [Demetria Lovato]
11. @NickJonas
12. @PhillyD
13. @BarackObama
14. @BritneySpears
15. @JimCarrey
16. @SelenaGomez
17. @TaylorSwift13
18. @HugoGloss
19. @YelyahWilliams
20. @KevinJonas

Article Source: The Huffington Post

getspaz.com

Spaz is a free open source Twitter client with attractive design and high customization ability.Its features include directory listing of users, built in global search, short URL creation tool, markdown syntax support and user-defined CSS overrides. It  also offers multiple themes and supports the user defined themes.

Article Source: Reuters

TORONTO (Reuters) – For tech-savvy singles who are unlucky in love, shy or just looking for a new way to meet people, Flitter could be the answer.

Hundreds of singles attended the first Flitter parties across Canada last week in the latest dating game which is a play on words of the microblogging site Twitter and flirting.

Each guest wore a white sticker with a number and gazed closely at their iPhones and Blackberrys in a dimly lit room in Toronto, their thumbs tapping away at their mobile devices on Twitter.

They were Flittering and trying to catch the attention of other tweeters who were flying solo on the eve of Valentine’s Day.

“#129, you’re so fine, but #152, you’re hot too. Man oh man, what will #72 do?” tweeted one guest as the comment showed up on a giant projector screen set up inside the venue.

Will Lam, a 27-year old banking professional and Twitter fanatic, attended the event because he was interested in seeing how Flitter worked.

“I was just wondering how they would leverage Twitter and facilitate interaction between people,” said Lam, who found the tweeting to be awkward and distracting in his attempts to strike up conversations with women.

“I actually tweeted #19 was really cute, but I can’t even find her anymore,” he said.

But Halley Trusler, a 23-year old event co-ordinator who recently moved to Toronto, found Flittering to be a great way to meet people.

“It allows people who are a little more shy to put themselves out there,” she said.

Trusler received plenty of tweets offering to buy her drinks and revealed she may have someone in mind by the end of the night.

The tweeter can choose to sign off with his, or her, assigned number or send an anonymous message or compliment. The recipient can respond and meet the tweeter if interested, or just read the anonymous compliment and move on.

All senders must end the tweet with the word “Flitterme.”

Justin Parfitt, founder and CEO of Fastlife, the Canadian-based dating service provider, originated Flitter singles events in Australia and introduced them to North America.

He thought there must be some way of getting people to interact using work devices, such as their Blackberrys or iPhones, to make people feel social as oppose to anti-social.

The Flitter parties, which were also held in Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal, were advertised on the Internet.

Article source: Mashable

Think you’re such a social media expert that you could tweet for a living? Well, President Obama is looking for an official social networks manager, and you might be just the tech whiz for the job.

According to President Obama’s website, The Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America is in the market for a new hire. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mia Cambronero, who currently holds the position, said, “[I] will be stepping down from my infamous role as ‘Barack Obama’s twitterer… We’re looking for someone who is available to start immediately.”

And what exactly are they looking for over at the White House? According to the job posting:

“The Social Networks Manager is responsible for maintaining the Democratic Party and Organizing for America accounts on all social networks (such as Facebook , Twitter and MySpace accounts, etc.) The Social Networks Manager works closely with the rest of the New Media department to execute grassroots campaigns to advance the President’s agenda for change.”

Said person must also be willing to work hard — “this isn’t a 9-5 job,” the posting said — and be “passionate about engaging millions of Americans in advancing President Obama’s agenda and changing the country.” Yeah, that’s not daunting at all.

Social media has been integral to President Obama’s career since the beginning. He launched his Twitter account back in 2007 (although he only really tweeted for the first time last month to support Haiti relief efforts after admitting back in November that he was too clumsy to use the microblogging tool), and recently used YouTube to engage with the nation after the State of the Union address.

Although both the Obama and White House Twitter feeds used to read like a stream of press releases, the tweets have become much more lively in the ensuing months. Whoever fills this new position will have to continue to up the ante when it comes to engaging with the American people. Will you apply?

Article Source: Mashable

Some think Google Buzz could be the next huge social platform. Others think it’s one big privacy nightmare. With its launch week drawing to an end, we pinged our friends at Crimson Hexagon for analysis of Twitter user’s opinions.

The results, not surprisingly, are incredibly mixed. 16 percent of the tweets analyzed were characterized as positive, while 14 percent simply express curiosity. The much talked about privacy issues that Google has already moved to address garnered 15 percent of the tweet activity, though a full 50 percent either don’t like Buzz or are already claiming to be done with it. Somewhat surprisingly, 6 percent expressed loyalty to Twitter in their comments – a sign that some view Buzz as a competitive threat.

The overall buzz, one way or another, has been plentiful. According to another analytics firm – Trendrr – Buzz garnered more tweet volume than Google’s Nexus One launch, with a peak of nearly a quarter of a million tweets on Tuesday.

Article Source: CBC News

The proportion of U.S. teen and young adult internet users who blog regularly has plummeted to about 14 per cent from 28 per cent in 2006, according to a survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre.

The study also found that just eight per cent of teens age 12 to 17 who use the internet report using Twitter, an indication that young people are not always the early adopters of new technology.

“The decline in blogging was really surprising for us until we stepped back and thought about some of the changes that were happening in social networking,” said Amanda Lenhart, the author of the report and a senior research specialist at Pew.

The study found that in 2006, 28 per cent of internet users age 12 to 29 said they blogged regularly, but by autumn 2009, those numbers had dropped to 14 per cent of teens and 15 per cent of young adults.

During that same period, the percentage of internet users older than 30 who blog rose to 11 per cent from seven per cent.

The Pew study is the third to come out as part of the centre’s Internet and American Life Project. A total of 800 teens and 2,253 adults were interviewed over the phone for the project.

Lenhart attributed the change in online behavior to several things but chiefly to the fact social networking sites are changing and that young people are migrating to Facebook from MySpace.

“While MySpace offers this very front-and-centre opportunity to blog — it’s right there on the front of the profile — Facebook doesn’t have that,” said Lenhart. “Facebook prioritizes shorter updates, status updates, short posts.”

Another reason for the decline of blogging is that younger people are being more cautious with their online personas, which might also explain why they don’t tweet as often as older internet users, she said.

“Teens in the U.S. have been told that putting your personal information out there publicly is a very bad idea — that it’s not safe, that people will come and harm you and your reputation,” said Lenhart. “And I think because Twitter is so often used in a public way, teens, given all those cautions, don’t see the utility of it.”

Teens who do use Twitter tend to use it more as a way to get information about other people.

“They say they use it to follow celebrities or stay in touch with people they want to follow, but it’s not so much a conversation for them,” Lenhart said.

The survey has an overall accuracy of plus or minus 3.8 per cent 95 per cent of the time. For the adult findings, the accuracy is plus or minus two per cent, 95 per cent of the time.

Article Source:London Evening Standard

Written by: Alistair Foster

Users of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are undermining their own right to privacy, scientists warn today.

Online “exhibitionists” who bare their personal lives to the world are unwittingly inviting authorities and employers to put new media under ever-closer surveillance, they said. The sharing of intimate details and photos on websites could also damage people’s relationships, a conference at the London School of Economics and Political Science was told.

Computer scientist and philosopher Dr Kieron O’Hara, of the University of Southampton, said today: “Users of new media, in their self-disclosure, are often as complicit in assaults on our privacy as the authorities which orchestrate surveillance.”

Dr Adam Joinson of the University of Bath, an expert in computer communication, said: “As new technology and social media encourage sharing of the small details of everyday life, it also reduces privacy in social relationships, and may have negative effects on intimacy levels between people. If you desire intimacy, it may well be disastrous to add your partner to Facebook, or to follow them on Twitter.”

About 300 experts are attending the annual conference of the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association.

Kyle Doyle, who worked for a telecommunications company in Sydney, was caught faking a sick day when he boasted about it on Facebook in October 2008.

Twoddler: Twittering Toddlers from Bart Swennen on Vimeo.

A Belgian design team has envisioned a future in which babies no longer need to go through the hassle of crying. They can just update their online status.

The team out of Hasselt University has combined a basic Fisher-Price Playstation with the social networking site Twitter. By manipulating the knobs and doodads on the toy, the baby sends an automatic update to his/her Twitter account, which the inventors have renamed Twoddler.

The system “interprets” the child’s choice and frequency of target on the board and translates it into a predetermined message.

Here’s how the design team says it would work: “When Yorin plays with mommy’s picture (one of the buttons features a woman’s face) for over three minutes, a Twitter message will be posted saying, “#Mommy_Yorin Yorin misses Mommy and looks forward to playing with her this evening.”

Creepy.

The technology is still rudimentary, but it was impressive enough to take first place in the 2009 Innovative and Creative Applications, given to top Belgian designers.

It’s not clear if the application will ever make it to market. Or if Twitter will sue Belgium back into the Stone Age as a result.

Article Source: thestar

The Twitter account is now more clearly a parody, with cascading hamburgers and a fake moustache. (CBC)

P.E.I. Senator Mike Duffy wants an impostor posing as him removed from Twitter.

Sun Media is reporting the senator has asked the information technology staff on Parliament Hill to find a way to halt the parody Twitter account. Duffy said he does not have Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Past posts on the senatorduffy account, which started Sept. 10, include “reading is for losers” and “craving onion rings.”

Since efforts to remove it started being reported, the account has changed to look more like a parody. Thursday morning that included a picture of Duffy with a fake moustache and a background photo of cascading hamburgers.

The bio also now reads “Canada’s egregious Senator. Unplugged. Parody’d.”

Twitter will usually only delete fake accounts if there is no way to tell they are a parody.

Early Thursday morning the senatorduffy account had 292 followers.

Article Source : CBC News Canada