The world is indeed shrinking

March 28, 2007 12:06 AM

Twittervision is a browser app using Google Maps to show Twitter comments as they happen in (more or less) real time.
posted by zardoz (54 comments total)

I don't "get" twitter, but that was kind of fun.
posted by mrnutty at 12:21 AM on March 28, 2007

Seeing real-time comments from people all over the globe is kinda cool, but no I don't "get" Twitter either.
posted by falconred at 12:26 AM on March 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

When I first heard about Twitter I felt really old because I couldn't possibly imagine any use for it. It seems like a real waste of time.

It is getting popular, however, and I'm slowly imagining good uses for it. Like broadcasting text messages that people could tune into geographically. Or asking for help geographically - with filtering, maybe it could be a real-time localized Ask Metafilter or Craigslist personals section.

I think my main problem at first was that it costs me US$0.10 to send and receive text messages. US$0.20 if they contain multimedia content. I'm surprised that the phone companies aren't completely, totally laying all their support for this thing - it can bring in so many text messaging plan subscribers and they can make millions off of late adopters without a plan.

Oh yeah, that and I couldn't give a shit about telling strangers what I'm up to. Aaaand, I'm not really that interested in the fact that "SWEATY_NUTZ in French Guiana is watching "Married with Children" and checking Myspace"
(yes, that really popped up).

Regardless, that was an interesting link. Thanks!
posted by redteam at 12:37 AM on March 28, 2007

mr strange: Wondering what the hell Twitter is good for.
posted by mr. strange at 12:48 AM on March 28, 2007

How long before a pony request for MetaTwitter is posted in MetaTalk?
posted by Cranberry at 12:48 AM on March 28, 2007

The text message thing is something of a red herring: almost everyone I know who uses Twitter does so through their web or IM interfaces, which are less disruptive than texts and don't cost any money.

The easiest way to understand Twitter is probably to think of it as ultra short-form blogging. Think LiveJournal but restricted to 144 characters per post. The restriction actually encourages usage of the software, since you don't have to work very hard at all to compose something meaningful in that much space.
posted by simonw at 12:49 AM on March 28, 2007

The first thing I thought when I saw this was "guerilla warfare". Tied in with a good GPS system, you'd have a great way for civilians to disclose the locations of enemies.
posted by aliasless at 12:59 AM on March 28, 2007

since you don't have to work very hard at all to compose something meaningful in that much space.

Actually it's quite difficult to compose something meaningful in that few words.

Unless you consider "going to work" meaningful
posted by justgary at 1:43 AM on March 28, 2007

Oh look, someone in Dallas is taking a shit right now.

Blah.
posted by toxic at 2:31 AM on March 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

You mean people in Dallas shit too?! Wow, twitter is truly an anthropological goldmine.
posted by nadise at 2:33 AM on March 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

After a few minutes of watching, I don't think one can strictly say that it's "real-time." More like it cycles through a buffer of recent Twitter posts, refreshing the buffer at preset intervals so new posts get included on refresh. I must say, the illusion of immediacy produced by all that map scrolling is quite edifying, in a Henchmen's Helper kind of way.
posted by brownpau at 2:43 AM on March 28, 2007

Yeah, gimme more cool looking social pr0n to feel even more connected with nothing ...

More info pr0n:

http://labs.digg.com/swarm/

http://labs.digg.com/stack/

http://labs.digg.com/bigspy/

PS: A real time page with all new MeFi comments would be nice.
posted by homodigitalis at 3:03 AM on March 28, 2007

Fuck Twitter. No-one knows what it's for, but a bunch of posers use it anyway because they've been told it's the next 2.0-cool thing. Using it full-time would clearly be an unsustainable, expensive way of living.
posted by reklaw at 3:17 AM on March 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

It was neat to see comments popping up. Then I read the comments and realized, why do I care so and so left their computer on over night?

Given the proper context, neat. Nameless strangers providing mundane facts about their mundane lives....not so much.
posted by Atreides at 3:46 AM on March 28, 2007

I just looked at Twitter for the first time. Is it just me, or is it one of the least impressive of the Web 2.0 designs? It looks like they spent about a minute and a half on that CSS.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:16 AM on March 28, 2007

Five years ago, it would have been impossible to aggregate such banality into one app, much less to organize it geographically. We are truly living in the age of progress.
posted by Slap Factory at 5:03 AM on March 28, 2007 [6 favorites]

Twitter is, at least, a good way to keep track of Darth Vader.
posted by sexymofo at 5:04 AM on March 28, 2007

more noise.
posted by mr_book at 6:04 AM on March 28, 2007

I got a twitter account because having an IM stream of what my friends are doing would be less intrusive than getting ping by them on IM personally several times a day. Twitter's IM service hasn't worked properly since I signed up, and not at all for the past two weeks, so it isn't half useful.

If they incorporate some geography intelligence and friendslist filtering, though, this could become really useful.
posted by ardgedee at 6:05 AM on March 28, 2007

After I found out about twitter, I did the natural thing.

I attached it to my cat.
posted by jscott at 6:18 AM on March 28, 2007

I'm holding out for Twatter 2.1. Given the lifespan of these "flavor of the month" web apps, I'm blocking out next Thursday.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 6:44 AM on March 28, 2007

So YouTube is out and Twitter is in? Wow, I guess the internet is only useful for people 13-24.

Let me speed things up by running this idea into the ground:

Some media studies student will send a twitter message every 6 seconds to drive home that someone is raped/beaten/murdered every 6 seconds.

Some art student is going to use twitter to send haikus

shortly thereafter, someone will come up with collaborative haikus - this will get posted to boingboing

next, there'll be a twitter -mass transit schedule mashup where late buses or trains get sent to twitter - in view of the subway maps connection, this too will get posted to boing boing.

etc.
posted by Pastabagel at 7:05 AM on March 28, 2007 [3 favorites]

I liked this better when it was called The World As A Blog.
posted by Remy at 7:12 AM on March 28, 2007

C'mon, this will totally help out when the damn Horde invade a lowbie zone and start ganking noobs. I needs me my honorable kills, yo.

Last I heard of Twitter the site was down for like three days. Call me when it's not running off your laptop.
posted by abulafa at 7:22 AM on March 28, 2007

How narcissistic do you have to be to think that anyone gives a fuck what you're doing moment at the moment? Can't we just wait to hear you whine about it on your blog?

That said, world maps updating in realtime give me a warm fuzzy feeling.
posted by phrontist at 7:27 AM on March 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Right now I'm sitting here typing this comment, and then I'll try to get some work done.


The one thing I think would be a neat use of twitter would be to send six word short stories to your friends.
posted by drezdn at 7:35 AM on March 28, 2007

Maybe it's just me being an old guy, but it sure seems like a ton of time and energy gets wasted on "social networking."
posted by davebush at 7:41 AM on March 28, 2007

strangely hypnotising. The banality of most of the conversations is amusing.
posted by ninjew at 7:43 AM on March 28, 2007

more noise

Exactly.

Friends Swap Twitters, and Frustration -- "New Real-Time Messaging Services Overwhelm Some Users With Mundane Updates From Friends."
posted by ericb at 7:57 AM on March 28, 2007

I snark so much because although I'm not in Twitter's demo (43 year-old married dude), I have this Pavlovian tendency to sign up for every fucking cool new toy I read about on Delicious, etc. So yes, Twitter will get some of my unfocused rage due to my weakness. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. Last month I signed up for Facebook and got sufficiently creeped out enough to deactivate the account soon after.

I'm slowly becoming part of the "Just Because We Can Know What You're Doing Doesn't Mean We Have To Know" camp (maybe there is already a backlash and I'm just late to the party?). Christ, do I really need all of this info in the form of texting, IMs, photo, video messaging? I realize it's cool and all but where is the mystery of human relations? It's as if any hidden meaning, any longing has been completely sucked out of the equation. I picture long-distance relationships losing their zing due to the fact that a couple can almost literally text/upload/whatever, a picture, a thought and a long missive, all with the click of a mouse. Any subsequent face-to-face time would be anti-climatic. At least that's how I picture the effects of having so much access to each other.

To the original poster, it's not that I don't care about your link; it's quite cool. It is, however, another example of information overload and clutter. Just another example of the cotton candy-like ubiquity of the web.

Now that I've sufficiently outed myself as a flaming Luddite, I'm shut my pie-hole.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:59 AM on March 28, 2007

I like to pretend that my avoidance of things like twitter will mean that I'll finish my first novel while friends are busy telling each other what they had for lunch and how regular their bowel movements are.
posted by drezdn at 8:13 AM on March 28, 2007

Now, look: I know I'm a bit of a luddite--keeping my appointments in a good old paper calendar, preferring to write assignments and notes out by longhand whenever I have the time, refusing to fix the css on my webpage--but I, too, just don't see the point of twitter. And I'm twenty-four, which means I must be missing something.

Unless more news organizations (like the BBC) started using this map. Then I could see it becoming very useful. The sort of thing I'd leave on in the background to give my workspace that sci-fi feel. Or maybe that Hungarian disaster map, updated in real-time. That would be sweet.
posted by thecaddy at 8:14 AM on March 28, 2007

"I just got to work!"

"I'm drinking coffee!"

"I just downloaded the new version of blah blahbblah 6.0!"

Who the fuck cares?
posted by wfc123 at 8:24 AM on March 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

The internet has turned us into cats.
posted by drezdn at 8:50 AM on March 28, 2007 [4 favorites]

This isn't very interesting to me personally.
What I would dearly love, however, is an app
that would show me google queries in real-time.

Someone I know who once went for a job
interview at google told me that in their
waiting room, they project google queries
in real-time on the wall.
posted by Sully at 9:06 AM on March 28, 2007

Google Live Query.
posted by ericb at 9:09 AM on March 28, 2007

"I just got to work!"

"I'm drinking coffee!"

"I just downloaded the new version of blah blahbblah 6.0!"

Who the fuck cares?
posted by wfc123 at 11:24 AM on March 28

Check out my feed:

"I just got to the empty field!"

"I just opened the trunk!"

"I just buried the hooker!"
posted by Pastabagel at 10:00 AM on March 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

Has anyone made a "twitterpated" joke yet?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:34 AM on March 28, 2007

Never have I been so glad to have so few friends, and almost all of them low-tech types. However, if it cuts down on the idiots on the train yapping on their cellphones in favor of Twittering...I'm all for it. For other people.
posted by emjaybee at 11:01 AM on March 28, 2007

I've decided to take this one step farther attach a web cam harness to myself along with a wifi transmitter, gps and blackberry to myself. Then I will transmit every single instant of my life to the internet, never taking the harness off, or using a second harness when I need to itch under the first.

You will be able to see me do everything from watch The Office to petting my cats or surfing the interblarg. If you follow more coordinates on the GPS page, you can even get in the action by walking up behind me (unless I use multiple cameras, in which case you can stand in front of me and say hello, I will say hi back. We will both awkwardly go on our ways, our lives changed slightly by the experience). Occasionally, I'll read a book and you can be there watching my eyes scan the page. Or you can catch me making foolish moves in Advance Wars.

When I get inspired you can read the annotations of my life posted from my blackberry to my blog.

While I sleep, you can watch me sleep, or watch highlights from my day put together by my crack team of video editors.

In the forums you can debate whether I'm getting fat, if I need to shave my beard, or if the guy at the store didn't give me correct change. I will read the forums from time to time, and then kindly thank people for letting me know when I was swindled.

To pay for this media event, I'll get sponsorships from companies, and only use products that pay me, or at least provide the product for free. I won't tell my viewers though.

Eventually my fans will get into vicious edit wars over the drezdnpedia, the user-generated encyclopedia of my life. I'll be featured on network television, but only briefly, and more in the context of increasing internet Narcissism.

Another internetizen will steal my idea and find a certain level of success. Our viewerships will peak when we get into a fist fight outside of a fast food restaurant I'm known to frequent when the other guy comes to report on a local music festival. We will make up over beers, but our fans will demand blood.

Finally, I'll fake my death when my wife demands the constant camera action to stop. utilizing a miniature action figure made by a fan in Anchorage, I'll show myself jumping off the Hoan bridge, with the signal cutting out just as "I" hit the ground.

The video of my "death" will be quickly make it to the top of Youtube's greatest hits, helped by Bill O'Reilly's bellowing that this was proof that the internet must be shut down. Some kid will regard himself perform the entirity of Hacker using speak n spells and mego toys, and I will be quickly forgotten, reduced to a mere stub on the wikipedia.

A handful of fans will put flowers on my second life grave, and a few die-hards will foolishly have sex there until I post penis-shaped sentries around the site.

Or I'll hire an actor to do this for me.
posted by drezdn at 11:11 AM on March 28, 2007 [4 favorites]

It was boring and banal... everybody from North America and Europe chattering away about minutiae regarding their daily lives. Then, suddenly, everybody was speaking Spanish.
posted by tehloki at 11:14 AM on March 28, 2007

TIME magazine: Why Everyone's Talking about Twitter.
posted by ericb at 1:06 PM on March 28, 2007

I've decided to take this one step farther attach a web cam harness along with a wifi transmitter, gps and blackberry to myself

Maybe you can borrow a SenseCam from Microsoft Research and learn some tips from Steve Mann's WearCam.org
posted by ericb at 1:15 PM on March 28, 2007

"Fuck Twitter. No-one knows what it's for, but a bunch of posers use it anyway because they've been told it's the next 2.0-cool thing. Using it full-time would clearly be an unsustainable, expensive way of living."

"How narcissistic do you have to be to think that anyone gives a fuck what you're doing moment at the moment? Can't we just wait to hear you whine about it on your blog?"

""I just got to work!"
"I'm drinking coffee!"
"I just downloaded the new version of blah blahbblah 6.0!"
Who the fuck cares?"


But... but...
Our fearless leader...
:(
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 1:52 PM on March 28, 2007

I start to wonder what some of these folks who twitter so much are actually getting paid to do.
posted by action man bow-tie at 2:23 PM on March 28, 2007

There's one possible upside to twitter.

When I was doing a daily photoblog, I would go outside of my normal paths to try to capture some new images. Maybe on a site like Twitter, users would find themselves going to new places in an attempt to make their posts more interesting.

Or, they create a *Woot, Drunk!* posting macro.
posted by drezdn at 3:09 PM on March 28, 2007

Remember back in the day when we learned what people were up to by watching their webcam feed instead of through 144 characters of text?
posted by gyc at 3:49 PM on March 28, 2007

from Time magazine:
"I know, it's totally silly and shallow, but that's precisely why Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app. And if you don't like it, well, in the words of one Twit from San Francisco, "I'm so sick to death of Twitter-haters. If you don't like it, why waste your time writing, reading, or talking about it? Sheesh.""

Did Time coin the word 'Twit'to describe a Twitter user? If so, thats an awesome paragraph.
posted by vacapinta at 4:34 PM on March 28, 2007

Did Time coin the word 'Twit'to describe a Twitter user? If so, thats an awesome paragraph.

Suggested trade phrases:

'Only Twits Twitter!'

'Twits Twitter while Tits Quit!'

'Twitting is for Twitters'

posted by ericb at 4:56 PM on March 28, 2007

Company spokesperson - here.
posted by ericb at 4:57 PM on March 28, 2007

Not a Howl, A Twitter: in which I wave my hands and talk a load of bollocks and try and place Twitter in a larger context, that context being pornography!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:29 PM on March 28, 2007

"I've decided to take this one step farther attach a web cam harness to myself along with a wifi transmitter, gps and blackberry to myself. Then I will transmit every single instant of my life to the internet, never taking the harness off, or using a second harness when I need to itch under the first."

http://www.justin.tv/ - It's been done.
posted by simonw at 5:32 PM on March 28, 2007

Apparently Leo Laporte and Robert Scoble are the most prolific "celebrity" Twitterers. Yeah, the term "twit" is more accurate.

(But Laporte already does a series of podcasts called "This Week in Tech", abbreviated "TWiT"... I smell conflict of interest)
posted by wendell at 5:50 PM on March 28, 2007

shit ... makes me feel like skynet
posted by ginbiafra at 6:50 PM on March 28, 2007