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I’ve recently uploaded the twitter app onto my new iphone. Before, I was browsing and twittering occasionally at my desk. I am now officially hooked.
Twitter can be funny, a great source for stories, (some boring tweets), and social interaction for wasting away spare time. It can also be intimidating. Some of the the twitterers I follow are so damn smart. Their sharp, sometimes barbed comments sparkle delightfully on my tweetline. Take @Rubygold who tweets up a storm. This morning he quipped, “6969 please nobody else follow”.
Since that tweet he has more followers.
Simon Pegg, that English tv chap, has more than a million followers. Now I mention Simon not because I am that keen on his tweets – there is too much marketing of his work going on – but because he has written a wonderful piece on tweeting for New Statesman. That same issue which features Hugh Grant’s piece, The Bugger, bugged, about his secretly taped chat with Paul McMullen. McMullen is one of the hacks who have “blown the whistle on the full extent of phone-hacking at [News of the World]“.
Jemima Khan guest-edited this issue of New Statesman and focused on freedom of information and free speech.
Back to @simonpegg. He writes about how followers are found. Of course consistently tweeting will get you a following of sorts. Then entering the twittersphere with an established celebratory status will get you immediate sign-ups. But says Simon “”followership” must be earned and even if you are a known quantity, not bringing your A-game to the t(w)able can retroactively damage your credibility in the real world. The offender is demythologised, revealing the mundanity at his/her core and as such is unceremoniously “unfollowed”.”
So when you lose a follower know that you need to up your game. Be cleverer. Consistently tweet 140 clever, artful words.
And if you’re not up to it, know that at least your family loves you.
There has been much criticism about Women’s Day. Ferial Haffajee, editor of City Press, tweeted this week, “Jeez, Women’s Day is not Ladies Day. It’s being hijacked by marketers and turned to rubbish.”
And this seems not an uncommon sentiment this year. It’s the day that we should be commemorating the 20,000 women who marched on the Pretoria Union Buildings 54 years ago to protest against the extension of passes to the women by the Apartheid regime.
Helen Joseph, a woman who had committed her life to opposing apartheid and who had a profound influence on me as a student, was one of the main organisers of the protest on the 9 August 1956. Instead of posting a picture of her, I’ll put this one up sent to me by Louis Vuitton to wish me a wonderful Women’s Day.
Enjoy your day off.
Louis Vuitton's Women's Day card
Belle de Jour has just tweeted a link to an ex-boyfriend’s blog. The tweet this morning read Please RT this she asks “http://twitpic.com/q36ar – The physical threat posted by my ex on his blog”, and she said in another tweet that she’s reporting him to the police.
A man blinded by love, an obsessed ex-boyfriend wants revenge:
Tell your “friend”, tell “T”, he failed her and he needs to be a lot stronger to protect her from here on in. Tell him that his first test, his first trial and proof of his love is to meet me. I know about him, he must certainly know about me now. Every one else does. Tell him to meet me, just I was going to him in February before Brooke stopped me. Meet me with a Second and a Referee. I will come with my own and a medic. I know several in Bristol. Its nine months later than expected but they are good stout fellows and will agree to it again. I can move quickly on this. Read More…
Just another internet rumour. A hoax perhaps. Maybe it’s another publicity stunt. His last one was pretty successful. Remember how excited everybody was after he ruined Taylor Swift’s award moment?
This new stunt, or whatever, started on Twitter I believe, and today, long after the rumour had been quashed “RIP Kanye West” is still the top trending topic.
The Independent claims that a suicide scene in Kanye’s recently released short film “We Were Once a Fairytale” may have sparked the trending topic. Today, sparking a new controversy, Kanye took the video off his website which he had posted on Monday.
The 11-minute film is pretty hectic: Kanye is seen having sex with a stranger (Eish!), projectile vomiting blood and then stabbing himself in the stomach.
You have been warned:
The twitter quitter’s mother has left the twitter sphere too. I can’t tell you how devastated I am.
(Did her ma join to keep tabs on her daughter?)
“Dear Friends, I would like to let you know before it gets in the papers that I am going into the hospital to have a procedure on my heart.
It’s very new and involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device, without open heart surgery, so that my heart will function better.
Any prayers you happen to have lying around I would dearly appreciate. I’ll let you know when it’s all over. Love you, Elizabeth”
On twitter, if you’re following Sara Morishige Williams, the pregnant wife of Twitter honcho Ev Williams, you’ll know that her waters broke earlier today and she’s called for an epidural. Poor woman. (The baby might be born by now. We don’t know that yet.)
Last night on Conan O’Brien’s show The Tonight Show, Demi Moore’s husband and top twitter addict, Ashton Kutcher, chatted about Twitter mentioning the picture he posted of Demi Moore’s bottom in March. This little bit of information led to an internet flurry, the picture was reposted many times (here again) and since March the pic has had 821,649 hits.
5
Obama calls Kanye a “jackass”.
Oh dear Barack Obama has inadvertently entered the Kanye Swift fray.
During a CNBC interview on Monday, Obama called the rap star a “jackass” after the singer’s unscheduled stage appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards. He rudely, and very amusingly for all of us, interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech on Sunday night.
Obama’s remark was an off-the-record one, but was immediately tweeted by an over keen reporter, Terry Moran who told his many followers that “Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential”.
The tweet was deleted. ABC apologised. And I’m wondering if Moran has a job today. (Listen to the podcast of Obama’s remark here.)
PS I am with the Guardian’s music blogger on this. The whole thing, I am sure was staged: “Swift comes out of this more vulnerable and loveable than ever, Beyoncé gets props for her grace and generosity after she brought Swift on to complete her speech later in the evening, Leno gets a boost to his brand new, five-times-a-week chatshow. And West? Well, it’s been hard for him. His mother died, and he hasn’t taken any time off. He’s a celebrity. And now he’s a little celebritier.” Agree?
Watch Kanye apologise again to Taylor Swift during an appearance on “The Jay Leno Show” last night: