Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Has Twitter Reached the Tipping Point?

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase The buzz around Twitter as well as the usage continues to grow, I blogged about my reasons for using in an earlier post.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell talks about the underlying factors that push a service, product or even an epidemic over the top and into high growth rates.

I recently finished his book and if you look at the articles that are appearing across the internet, it might be that Twitter has reached that point or might be there very soon.

Some of the indicators that I see are fairly obvious like growth. As you can see in the following post there has been tremendous growth over the past year. This appears to show that the 'Connectors' in the online world have done their job and the followers are now starting to connect to one another to drive this growth.

Twitter is Growing Like Crazy: Up 422% in 12 Months

But for me, the factor that shows me there may be a real growth spurt that will continue is the use by more and more 'Mavens'. Mavens are people that are very knowledgeable in their fields and are ready to share with others. Not for profit, but just because they want to.

I currently follow a combination of 'Mavens' in various fields. Several of them are very conversant in the stock market and financial's of the world, which has been very interesting reading during the current market meltdown. Others I follow are professional journalists where you get some of the back story discussions behind the headlines. And then there are other times you just get lucky and find someone that is in New Orleans during Hurricane Gustav.

Whatever the actual reason is I see Twitter growth continuing and I am excited to be a part of it. Do you Twitter?


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Saturday, September 13, 2008

Burn After Reading

Coen brothersImage via Wikipedia Burn after Reading is a fun offbeat movie from the Coen brothers, who are also know for the likes of Fargo.

There was a nice crowd last night at the late showing and they were treated to a fun movie with some rather interesting twists and just general nonsense. I had a great time.

George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malcovick and the resat of the cast were put into some very interesting characters by the Coen brothers and thye made for a fun night with a film where we didn't really learn anything (watch the movie to understand that).

The movie scene the last couple of months has been pretty barren in my opinion, but this is a movie worth going to see, but be advised these are not typical roles for the stars that are in this movie.
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Friday, September 12, 2008

Radio, Radio

Last.Image via Wikipedia I found a little time today during lunch and decided to write up Last.fm.

I'm listening to 'Arcade Fire - Intervention' right now, you can see what I have been listening to lately in the widget on the sidebar of this page.

I don't own any 'Arcade Fire' CD's yet, but I might soon. I caught this group on 'Austin City Limits' a while back and have been meaning to look into more of them.

This is very cool, Stevie Wonder's Superstition just came on. I haven't heard that in a while and I have always loved that.

Last.fm is an online service that allows you to set up your own list of favorite artists and then plays a stream of songs for you from that list. You can add artists and select favorites. Then the service streams a continuous flow of music from the artists you have in your library.

I still have a lot of exploring to do. I need to figure out how neighbors works. What is a scroble? There are videos and a section for events. It looks like they can tell you where the artist is performing in the near future.

There are other options that I need to look into further, but so far I am loving this.
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