“To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.” - Ben Jonson
Seeing that Yahoo 360 is soon closing, and the bloggers here are looking for a new home, it is apt that I share with you an interesting snippet of news I read in the newspaper today. “Twitter” is the new rage, it seems, and is threatening “Facebook” in supremacy. This is no surprise as we live a society where communication seems to be in a process of ever-shrinking dimensions. The “140 character message limit” of Twitter constitutes a “tweet” and is perfectly suited to the SMS, telegraph-like brevity of the communication of the modern person. Our ancestors once communicated effectively with short grunts, so why not us? Let’s get back to our roots…
Twitter and Facebook, Yahoo 360 and Blogger, MySpace and Multiply, just to mention a few of these social networking sites, are big business. There is much money to be made wherever people congregate in large numbers and that goes for the virtual community, not only the real one. Hence the big competition in the popularity stakes and the extreme marketing associated with each of these platforms for ascendancy. Alas for some, popularity (ever fickle), has by-passed them and hence the decadence of Yahoo 360 that we have witnessed lately.
Seeing that Twitter is the new wunderkind on the block, is it a surprise that various para-service industries have sprung up to cater to the advertising needs of the twitterer market? Brisbane-based company uSocial has launched a service that allows twitterers to buy “packages of followers” if they can’t attract any of their own. For only $87 you can purchase 1,000 followers and for $3497 you can buy the maximum of 100,000 followers!
So how is that? You can buy yourself admirers! You can purchase your own fan club! So when you write: “I am now thinking of going out for a stroll because it’s a nice day here in Melbourne, and I feel like a leisurely walk.” (122 characters), your fan club can know about it and rejoice in your excellent thought so pithily communicated. The world must know of course about such important events in your life.
Humour aside, if a company buys 100,000 followers on Twitter and keeps bombarding them with advertising, it’s well worth the $3497 investment. Another uSocial service puts paying customers’ websites on the prestigious front pages of social networking sites such as Digg, Buzz and StumbleUpon. Another revolves around positions of prominence for your company in search engine results. What did I tell you before? It’s big business!
Meanwhile, keep on blogging!
confabulate |kənˈfabyəˌlāt| verb [ intrans. ]
1 [formal] Engage in conversation; talk : She could be heard on the telephone confabulating with someone.
2 [Psychiatry] Fabricate imaginary experiences as compensation for loss of memory.
DERIVATIVES
confabulation |-ˌfabyəˈlā sh ən| noun
confabulatory |-ləˌtôrē| adjective
ORIGIN early 17th century: From Latin confabulat- ‘chatted together,’ from the verb confabulari, from con- ‘together’ + fabulari (from fabula ‘fable’ ).
Jacqui BB is hosting Word Thursday
Twitter may grow fast but it has the least loyal users. I joined up to communicate with two people - one from Blogger and Treesparrow from 360. But I am already so annoyed with all the pestering followers and those that I stupidly decided to follow hogging the space that I am about to delete my membership.
ReplyDeleteI began going to it almost daily and now seldom go there more than once a week. (some on multi-blog poetry wednesday give me their links on Twitter). I do spend more time on Facebook but it is in need of an adult version. It takes me so long to weed through all the alerts about silly games that I sometimes just delete it all.
I remain a blogger and not a twitterer so I am more often on my Blogspot pages than the other two. And I am giving profiles a chance. It was not lack of interest that 360 is closing but an unstable platform that could not be supported or fixed. It remains to be seen if Yahoo will tweak it to be closer to 360 or not.
I do not multiply and having been there and done that will not go back. I soon will not Twitter. I will let Facebook go if they continue to refuse to be responsible for all the games and the malware that comes attacked. So at this moment my best guess of where I will be in a year from now is here. Or profiles if they get their act together.
I have not tried Twitter but it really does not appeal to me. I assume that you would have to be constantly in front of a computer to get any real value from it and I am not. And anyhow, just how indepth can you get in 140 words?
ReplyDeleteI am on facebook (and actually went on it before it was even very popular and had only a few hundred followers here in Australia). I have never really liked it. I don't know why - something to do with its format or layout just leaves me cold. And I agree with Jacqui - the silly games and applications take up too much time and space. I only go on facebook briefly a few times a week because I have certain friends who use it as their primary means of communication (even over the phone or email). If it wasn't for this I would happily delete my account.
Like you Meredith, I was on Facebook as soon as it surfaced here in Australia. However, it did not take me long to become disenchanted with it and quickly deleted my account.
ReplyDeleteTwitter is not appealing to me in the least so I have not bothered with it and Jacqui, you describe, i think, what I would feel if were a Twit!
I was briefly on Multiply the first time Yahoo 360 threatened to go under and then I found Blogger, which was much more appealing. I'm hoping that many of our friends from yahoo 360 will end up here...
Multiply is another one I just couldn't get a hang of. In a way this is a pity because some of my 360 friends are there (such as the excellent redhead girl). It would be great if some of the 360ites did come here.
ReplyDeleteToday Farcebook is headline news because MI5 were slack enough not to warn Ambassadors' wives against putting all their private life on it, especially when husband is hoping to be Head of MI5/6 whatever.
ReplyDeleteMy Fbook is closed to all but designated friends, and I too, loathe all the silly stuff like "XX has hit you with a sheep, sent you a plant" etc oh FFS.
On Twitter I get and ignore, requests from people I dont know, but Ilike going there to follow The Big Tweeters -Stephen Fry and Russell Brand (@rustyrockets).
Never put your accurate DOB on farcebook.