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Strange Twitter News Stories

Darlanne — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:24:04 +0000

As the popularity of the microblogging site turned household word continues to grow, so does it’s mention in the news media. Performing a basic search in Google results in an explosion of news stories, articles and blog posts about the social networking phenomenon. Most are generic in nature and relate to the service’s massive growth, such as the buzz surrounding the possibility of various internet giants being poised or in talks to buy Twitter, along with many op-ed articles either giving the birdie a whole hearted thumbs up or just giving the bird in general and wishing the Twitterverse would go find a new galaxy somewhere. Twitter, love it or hate it, but either way it’s definitely aflutter within recent media reporting.

Just like with every hugely popular trend, it’s success comes with the good, the bad, and the strange! I wish to share with my readers a few of the more bizarre and outright weird news stories I’ve come across. The moral of all the oddball stories below? Twitter doesn’t just mimic real life. In it’s own unique micro way it provides a true glimpse into the human experience. A “tweet” can be so spontaneous it appears to often capture a very accurate depiction of what each user is truly like. It’s my belief that sometimes a simple 140 characters or less can tell more about a person’s character than a full blog, bio, interview and so on. Why? Because it’s so raw and often “off the top of our heads”. However, with the rawness comes the downright strange, just .. like … REAL life. Perhaps we really are what we tweet.

Metro Pastor Says Twitter Post Led to Hate Crime

One of Pastor Taylor’s Twitter posts: “Crowley invokes the power of the badge on private property proved to be owned by black professor i guess black men cant holler on they land”

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Watch what you Tweet – Twitter could get you sued

Watch what you Tweet – Twitter could get you sued. One Chicago renter is find this out the hard way. Reportedly on May 12th Amanda Bonnen mentioned her “moldy apartment” to her 20 followers and now her property manager is taking her to court.

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Woman Chronicles Bank Heist on Twitter

“My bank was just held up

Speaking of Twitter

Darlanne — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:24:34 +0000

As you may have already noticed by the recent posts on this site, yours truly has been ever so slightly bitten by the Twitter bug. While I don’t consider myself a social networking junkie in any sense of the word, I definitely now recognize the value of this awesome micro blogging mode of communication. So simple, yet very powerful as a marketing tool. Whether you’re tweeting to promote a new piece of software, pimp your themes and designs, writing a book, you name it, Twitter can end up your absolute online BFF.

In keeping with the spirit of the big T, I’ve started offering a few of my own Twitter services, in the form of graphical goodness. If you’re looking to spruce up your Twitter page and low on Photoshop skill and cash, please feel free to check out my absolutely FREE Twitter Backgrounds. There are 100 in total I’ve created but I’m only putting up 20 at a time so be sure and check back weekly. If you’re wanting a more unique solution, in a few weeks I’ll be offering exclusive custom Twitter designs. There’s a brand new site coming for this service so again, stay tuned!

Happy Tweeting & Don’t Forget To Follow Me On Twitter!

Twitter & WordPress

Darlanne — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:19:41 +0000

Not everybody who tweets also runs a website, but if you are a site owner, there’s a decent chance you’re powered by WordPress. There are other frameworks and CMSs of course, such as Joomla, Drupal, Typepad, etc but for those of you who are using WordPress and Twitter, there are many ways in which you can integrate your tweets and more right into your site! Joomla is a wonderfully powerful feature filled CMS, and I run a few sites with it, but for the ease of use and simple functionality, I encourage you to take another look at WordPress for your site needs. Now onto the Twitter/Wordpress love!

WordPress Plugins for Twitter

Twitter & WordPress Integration Guide – Free Download
13 Essential Tools for Twitter Integration
10 Twitter Hacks for Your WordPress Blog

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER!

Beware of Poser Tweeple

Darlanne — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:15:58 +0000

If you’ve been on Twitter for any length of time, you’ve probably by now noticed there’s many celebs also enjoying the art of Tweeting. Some use Twitter to promote their current projects, and others use it to simply be social. This is a new trend for sure. A few years ago, mixing, mingling and exchanging 140 characters or less with a well known person online was fairly unheard of. While it’s nice to be able to log on and see what John Cusack is up to, or catch up on the happenings of the day with Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, what isn’t fun is a 12 year old kid thinking she just had the tweeting experience of her life with the Jonas Brothers, (who do NOT have separate accounts), or following about 20 different Twitter accounts ALL claiming to be a particular famous person. Some are downright obviously posers, but others have been, sadly, very effective and believable. Justin Timberlake had I don’t know how many posers in all, but being a fairly social networking type himself (see Robo.to, his SN site), he finally got on Twitter with a “Verified Account“. Twitter recently began offering a verification process, not for all stars but only for those being impersonated on the micro blogging site. This is a good thing.

I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be impersonated but I laughed out loud at a particular tweet of Alyssa Milano who commented on having found somebody posing as her on Twitter (despite her already being an established Twitter user).

A fake me is following me. I wonder how I’m doing this evening. ~ @Alyssa_Milano

Sometimes a verified account doesn’t always stop these apparently very bored people who have way too much time on their hands. Oh definitely not. Miley Cyrus has a verified account, but at any one given time there are at least a dozen if not more “Mileys” trying to suck in the teen masses into believing it’s her “second account”. Even her dad Billy Ray was not immune and had a handful of posers portraying him. Then the confusion really sets in when all these fake people follow other fake people, likely all ONE person unless there’s some “poser posse” out there somewhere. This truly gives new meaning to the term multiple personality disorder. The entire Cyrus family at one point was all being faked. Billy Ray, once told of his poser, got so outraged for the sake of his fans being deceived that he jumped out of bed, snapped a photo, sent to Twitter and immediately had his account verified in order to stop “RealBillyRay”.

See! This is me ! I just snapped this picture. Please block the real billy ray cyrus. It is a fake ! - @BillyRayCyrus

Yes. There is a poser ! Elvis said” Imitation is the highest form of flatery”. But that was before Twitter. This scumbag is a fake!!!!!!!! ~ @BillyRayCyrus

Even though some celebs have made it crystal clear that they don’t use Twitter, it doesn’t seem to stop the posers. For instance, Vanessa Hudgens, impersonated heavily on Twitter, confirmed, along with Zac Efron, that they do NOT use Twitter during an interview on the red carpet of an award show, and on Ellen. A few posers tried to explain it away that they didn’t want too many people knowing about this “private account” (with the celeb’s name and pic splashed all over the page), and a few others simply said she “changed her mind” and DOES tweet now.

Sometimes the internet can be a wonderful globally “together” place and other times the fact that anyone can hide behind their computer screens beneath the veil of anonymity, really breeds a sense of distrust and asks the wonderful age old question … “WTF???”

So bottom line, while Twitter is clearly addressing the issue and at some point fake tweeps will be a thing of the past, in the meantime, if the account is NOT verified, while this does not at all mean they aren’t the real deal, use caution. Don’t go around bragging to all your coworkers that you just had the most amazing tweet session with Robert Pattinson of Twilight (who, as of this writing, does NOT use Twitter).

If you think you’ve found a poser and want to do something about it, I recommend contacting TweetFakes, and Valebrity, who make it their business to verify and report on who’s real and who isn’t. Be careful yet AGAIN though, as there are some posers out there so hell bent on gaining your belief and trust, they will even create a similar Twitter account that by all appearances looks like it’s there to BEAT the fakes for the sole purpose of

Twitter Birdy Obsessed?

Darlanne — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:11:45 +0000

Birdies, I see birdies, they’re everywhere! No, thankfully we’re not talking about an Alfred Hitchcock flick and the feathered flock is friend not foe, but they ARE swarming, all over the net. Who’d have guessed back before the internet went all Web 2.0 on us that one of the main mascots of the new technology era and social networking craze would be a bird for the now insanely popular Twitter micro blogging service. As a graphics designer, I gotta admit, some of the illustrations out there are ridiculously adorable. And while I am a designer, I’m not much of an illustrator, so I often find myself in awe of what new creations I see come along.

If you’re just dying to get your hands on a few of these freebie birdies for your own Twitter endeavors, I’ve compiled a list for you! Thanks to the artists for sharing their talents and offering their Twitter goodies for free!

An interesting sidenote, the actual bird used on the Twitter site was licensed from iStockPhoto.com for around $6!

The bird on Twitter

Twitter Client Apps

Darlanne — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:09:07 +0000

If you haven’t jumped on the Twitter train yet, then this post will probably not interest you. Then again since quite a few of my recent posts are Twitterish in nature, you may just wanna hit the x now ha! It took some time indeed, but I’m able to say with certainty at this point that I’ve finally been bit by the Twitter bug. I’ve been a member for a year now but only recently finally really started seeing the value of what this nifty little social networking service has to offer. So what better than Twitter? How about some helpful resources and tools that make Twitter itself better? Sound good? Read on!

In this post, I’m going to address the topic of Twitter clients, which are applications that provide an alternative to tweeting directly from the Twitter.com website. There are a gazillion to choose from but after trying out about a dozen, there were two that won in my book, hands down.

Tweet Deck

Gotta have it, can’t live without it. I’ll even go as far as to say that I didn’t get nearly as involved in my tweeting until I installed this beautiful little Adobe Air desktop application. It stacks tweets into columns, completely customizable with as many columns as you can imagine needing. It looks rather like a deck of cards, hmmm Tweet”deck”! Oh and it’s 100% FREE.

It also features a powerful search function, a terrific way to filter out results for quickly narrowing down tweets, and my favorite feature, Groups. When one has hundreds of followers, it’s near impossible to keep track of who’s tweeting what. I use this feature to create Groups and open them in columns. Wanna know what’s being said about something in particular on Twitter? Create a column for that keyword and voila! In addition to all this, NO manual refreshing, all tweets come in automatically in real time.

TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what