Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
One of the little annoyances in my life is that the clock on the Newtown Post Office in Sydney is permanently stuck at 3.45pm. Public clocks, key piece of civic infrastructure in the Victorian age, are now neglected.
I was therefore rather pleased to stumble across this video clip promoting the Stopped Clocks movement which appeared on the BBC’s The One Show .
Would anyone like to start a Sydney chapter with me? If so, what Stopped Clocks do you know about?
The won’t be a Stilgherrian Live tonight. After last week’s journey, and this week’s Silicon Federation seminar Entering the Mobile Ecosystem and yesterday’s Internet filtering forum, my poor little brain is overloaded. If you’re desperate, you can listen to me on A Series of Tubes.
I’d just like to say a great big “Thank you” to the chap from Adelaide who was the first person to use the “donate” button on my website. After giving me $50, he said: “The live blogging is good (although I read the last one a day late), but in general I like your Crikey commentary and your investigations into the Labor Great Firewall of Australia. Keep up the good work.” Thanks. You can donate too, if you like.
Since being listed as an “interesting Aussie Twitter user” at NEWS.com.au the other night, I’ve gained 300-ish new followers. Here’s how I’ve been deciding who to follow back.
First, though, I don’t think Twitter starts to make sense unless you have a reasonable number of people in your network. For me, the penny dropped when I had about 50 followers and followees, and you actually interact with them. At that point I started to see the live communication rippling through the hyperconnected mob. It helped that I already knew some well-connected geeks to get the ball rolling.
Once you hit hundreds of followers, though, there’s a phase shift. You simply can’t see everything that happens. It scrolls by too fast. At first that’s stressful — until you realise there’s always more in the world than you can ever experience. So another penny drops, and you detach. Zen. The Twitter-river flows on 24/7, but you don’t stop to watch every fish.
I use Tweetdeck most of the time, not Twitter’s standard web interface, because I can create groups of people. The unfiltered Twitterstream rolls by on the left of my screen, with separate groups for close friends, for media contacts I need to keep an eye on, direct messages and so on. Another panel shows everyone who replies to me or mentions me. So while I can’t see everything on the main stream, just mentioning me will grab my attention.
(I daresay it changes again when you’re like Stephen Fry with more than 88,000 followers. [Update 5 February 2009: It’s now more than 122,000.] May the gods forbid I reach that level of fame! He wouldn’t even be able to monitor all his @replies and DMs!)
So, how do I choose who to follow? Here’s what I’ve noticed today.
So… Right now there’s this graphic with two canaries on the very motherfucking front page of NEWS.com.au which links to a story listing 10 of Australia’s most interesting Twitter users. I’m one of them.
Stilgherrian (@stilgherrian) Fiercely opinionated blogger and former broadcaster Stilgherrian (“yes, I only have one name,” he says) is one of the busiest Twitter users in Australia with more than 16,000 posts. Subscribe to his feed for thoughts on media, technology and politics from a web-savvy point of view.
Example: “In all of this, pls differentiate between ‘news’, which we all pass on, and ‘The News’, which journalists manufacture.”
I wonder why they didn’t pick example tweets like this or this or this?
The list also includes Crikey cartoonist First Dog on the Moon (@firstdogonmoon), Fake Stephen Conroy (@stephenconroy) and possibly the least interesting Twitter user of all, Kevin Rudd (@kevinruddpm). Please check out the full list, earn poor Mr Murdoch some advertising revenue and, more importantly, suggest some other folks who might be good additions.
I think it’s hilarious. But I’m also amazed by some of the initial reactions…
I’ve blipped up in a couple new places overnight. ZDNet Australia quoted me in a story, Australian Twitter use hits all-time high. Given the volume of my Twitterstream that’s probably my fault alone. And I’ve also appeared in cartoon form thanks to websinthe. More on both those stories soon.