Raj Dash says he hasn't searched much and hasn't turned up many performing artists on Twitter. In his post he offers tips for why performers and entertainers should use Twitter to build brand and a following. Makes sense, just like it does in any other of life's many pursuits. By the way, Raj, I can be found on Twitter here and I tweet quite a bit about my professional theatre exploits, among many other things.
I'm not sure if the title of this post should be Twitter: A Passion Play or The Passion of Twitter. In either case the music should be written by Stephen Sondheim. Whatever the case, for a communications medium that incorporates messages no longer than 140 characters, Twitter is sure getting quite a few words written about it lately, and with quite a bit of passion behind them. More to the point, a debate over whether or not Twitter needs to be decentralized and/or how to scale it is spilling out with enough passion
Most of what I'm reading and listening to seems to be of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" persuasion, and I happen to find myself thinking that myself. If you want to do some reading about this far beyond the 140 character limit here's a a quick list (provide your own Sondheim music as background):
Cliff Gerrish: A Venezuelan Moment?: The Gillmor Gang Considers Nationalizing Twitter
Steve Gillmor: The Blood Brain Barrier
Karoli: Twitter, Techcrunch and Tornadoes
Alex Iskold: Twitter and the Architectural Challenges of Life Streaming Applications
I'm not sure Sondheim could do much with that last one, but maybe. I'm sure he would have fun with Cliff's use of the words rhizomatic and arborescent though.
And if reading isn't your thing, you can listen to a three parter of the Gillmor Gang on the topic. I wouldn't use background music here at all.
I think, but don't know for sure, that Dave Winer started the decentralization discussion, over the point that, "We all trust the owners of Twitter, but they're human, even with the best intent, we all are taking a risk that the network could disappear at any time. And unlike the Internet which has huge amounts of redundancy built-in, if there's any redundancy in Twitter, none of us outside the company know about it." That came after yet another Twitter failure, if I'm not mistaken.
Twitter is becoming a lot of things to a lot of people and as chaotic as it may seem at times, it is quickly becoming very Sondheim-like in its complexity. At times the constant ebb and flow, (strike that; there is no ebb, just flow, unless you turn it off), runs at you with a melange of thoughts, ideas, conversations, pitches, questions, and comments that all blend together in what may at first bang on the senses is a cacophonous waterfall, but after some self surrender begins to make terrible sense, to at least a few senses.
Twitter, like Sondheim, still seems to be an acquired taste, with or without Johnny Depp. More to the point it is like Sondheim's Fosca, horrendously ugly in both appearance and attitude, but at the same moment beautifully and seductively entrancing in an odd and life changing way. The off center is attractive.
Noise. It can really bog you down. I know it does me at times. It's warm weather here in the Shenandoah Valley and when warm weather comes we frequently hold some small (one on one, one on two) meetings outside in front of the theatre to enjoy the weather. Unfortunately that brings noise with it. I'm not just talking about the cars and loud trucks that sometimes pass us by. Other employees and even some of our neighbors see us standing around talking and assume they can just walk up and chat. A polite, 'please excuse us we're in a meeting', usually does the trick, but the noise as already jumped into the conversation and interrupted the meeting flow.
Now, this isn't the passersby's fault. It is ours (or mine) for holding the meeting outdoors.
In my view there's a certain similarity here, though there are differences, with Robert Scoble's search for a noise reduction system whether it is brought to you by Twitter, FriendFeed, or pick your social network. Yes, I'm sure there will be some sort of noise reduction system in the future for these kind of things. The early adopters who have loads of followers will demand them, and the companies that build them don't want to see the Scoble's and the Calacanis's saying they've moved on because of too much noise.
But eventually, even with noise reduction systems, the only way to reduce the noise in any of these circumstances is to acknowledge it and know when to shut it off, whether it is Tweets, replies, comments, email, or what have you. It isn't easy, I know for a fact. I'm not talking about Scoble's first point here (choosing to remain ignorant) because that's a one way street to shutting yourself off, and as Scoble points out, all too well, can lead to those who do choose to swim in what's going on controlling the conversation in an ever decreasing cycle of cultural doom. I guess I'm suggesting that the best way is some sort of personal control and selecting when to swim and when to keep yourself on the beach, (or upstairs in the office.)
As my grandfather used to say,
"Just because the phone rings, you don't have to answer it. You do have a choice."
Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor wants to do for obituaries what he did for classified advertising for jobs. He's starting up a new company called Tributes.com. Supposedly, the last web page you'll ever need, it has funding from the Wall Street Journal, and to my eye plays to the ego in all of us as well as the emotions of those grieving the loss of a loved one. The idea is to sell this to funeral homes who will then use their high mark-ups to package it to customers.
The Wired.com article where I found this says that online grieving is certainly on the rise, and I'm thinking that makes a lot of sense. I'm just wondering how Twitter will fit into this.
Following on the heels of Google's announcement of Share Anything. Anytime, Anywhere., industry leading toilet paper manufacturer, Charmin, announced today that they've added Google's sharing feature as a social networking component to their latest new products. According to a Charmin spokesperson:
"The essence of social networking is sharing. Sharing things you find on the web, pictures, videos, news articles, all sorts of information. With the advent of smaller and more mobile devices, we've seen an uptick in the trend of Stall Surfing, where an individual will carry his iPhone or other mobile device to the restroom for a little browsing while they are taking care of business. So, we've added Google's new share component to our latest products, to allow you to share any information with other users who might, or might not be stall surfing at the same time."
"It is simple really. Our new toilet paper dispenser is equipped with a WiFi connection that hooks into your home network. When you see something you wish to share with a friend or your followers, you simply choose the Charmin Share button on the dispenser, which immediately sends the item over the web to your Google shared feeds, as well as prints it out on the next sheet of toilet paper. Share on the web, or keep a hard copy for yourself or someone in your household."
The spokesperson continued, "Of course you can plug into the Twitter API, as well as other social networking tools, so that all of your followers can see what you've just shared right from your toilet seat. Share Anything. Anytime. Anywhere. Just don't squeeze it."
More signs Twitter will die soon. Everyone's talking, cartooning, and writing rules about it.
First up this card via Steve Clayton.
Francine Hardaway on Seesmic, Twhirl, and The Gillmor Gang (with Love, Grandma)
Geek and Poke take a poke at Twitter.
Ola Bini on The Twitter Conspiracy.
Turns out the Twitter problems we've been experiencing these last few days were caused by a blatant act of sabotage by the Clinton Campaign. According to a Fox News reporter:
It was discovered today that the Clinton Campaign purposefully and willfully hired a small group of hackers to bring down the Twitter network. The hackers succeeded in cracking the code in such a way that the Twitter service appeared to be still running, but users were not seeing the communications (they call them Tweets) between certain users. When confronted with this by reporters today a Clinton Campaign spokesman first denied the information, then later admitted that someone in the campaign was overzealous and had make a mistake.
According to that spokesperson, 'this individual, acting alone and not under the direction of the campaign, apparently became concerned that Twitter was becoming a resource and communications mechanism that was spreading false information about Senator Clinton and her bid for the Democratic nomination under some direction of the Obama campaign. It is well known that the Obama campaign follows users that choose to follow his campaign on Twitter and thus creating an elitist network of followers. This individual had become increasingly concerned that this elitist network was being used as a subversive influence, possibly guided by the Obama campaign. The individual cited such activities that had sprung from Twitter as the NewsGang podcast, where a well known group of Obama supporters gather daily to spread lies and disinformation at the behest of the show's host Steve Gillmor. The individual was also concerned that the network participants' increasing affinity for a foul-mouthed and obscene puppet pretending to be Shel Israel would yield to calls for yet another debate moderated by the puppet.'
The spokesperson concluded, 'Senator Clinton regrets the overzealous efforts of one of her supporters. That individual is no longer associated with the campaign. But the Senator is very interested in talking with the puppet.'
In other news today it was reported that a hacker redirected Barack Obama's site to hillaryclinton.com.
Twitter is acting up in a very strange way and has been doing so all weekend. Some tweets get through, some do not. It makes it look like an entire wave of Twitterers that I follow have gone on a Twitter vacation. I see Tweets from some and not from others.
What's weird, as MG Siegler points out is that we're not (as of the moment) getting any real communication from Twitter on the matter. It is amazing how addictive Twitter is, and I use it as my news stream throughout the day.
Hopefully things will get straightened out soon, or the withdrawal pangs will start to get pretty intense and drive the addicts elsewhere.
Looks like Alpine, Texas just lost their biggest promoter on Twitter. Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid blogged that he has deleted his Twitter account. No more gapingvoid tweets. No more Alpine, Texas updates. 
Hugh says he found Twitter too easy and his time will be better spent drawing cartoons and writing books. I'm looking forward to the book, I always love the cartoons, and I will miss the Tweets.
Wonder if this will start a trend?
I picked up the news on TwitterLocal from Kevin Tofel at jkOnTheRun this week and thought I'd give it a whirl (Twhirl?) to see how many folks are twittering in my immediate area. Given our rural surroundings I set it up to look for Tweets in a 30 mile radius. I didn't expect to see a bunch of Shenandoah Valley Twitterers, and so far the yield is four other folks using Twitter. There is a desktop client based on Adobe Air, that seems to be having troubles, so at the moment I'm using it via the RSS feed and checking it out through my feed reader. We'll see how this goes.
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