News is breaking that the New York Senate will pass marriage equality legislation today, despite media reports that the legislative push was "stalled" from as late as last week. (The State Assembly repassed the same bill shortly after midnight last night to facilitate the Senate's vote today.) This has all happened largely under the radar—though Markos "Daily Kos" Moulitsas was apparently in the know, hinting at this "big news" in his Twitter feed on Monday night. Today he writes: "So by the end of the week, gay marriage should be legal in New York. And there are no citizen initiatives in NY to overturn it."
posted by gerryblog on Dec 2, 2009 - 819 comments

It's more of a "how are you paying?" than "what are you doing?" kind of business. Square Inc. is a new startup cofounded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Jim McKelvey which will allow businesses and individuals to take credit card payments from customers anywhere. Receipts and confirmations are paperless and get sent to buyers via text message or email. While the media believes it is set to shake up the credit card processing industry, it has also committed to donate a penny on every transaction a merchant takes to a cause of their choice. Square is starting business with $10 million in venture capital funding and is of course tweeting the process; you can see it in action here or try it at Sightglass Coffee in San Francisco.
posted by cgomez on Dec 1, 2009 - 65 comments

Roger Avary, Oscar-winning screenwriter for Pulp Fiction and many other films, pled guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter and drunken driving, following a crash that killed a passenger in his car in 2008. This September, he began to serve his sentence of one year in jail (followed by five years of probation). Naturally, he also began tweeting about it. The bleak literary quality of his tweets (in which he refers to himself only as "#34") caught the attention of Mark Millan at the LA Times -- and shortly thereafter, of the authorities. [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena on Nov 28, 2009 - 150 comments

sc140: 22 minimal electronica tracks composed in Super Collider using 140 characters or less. Twitter user, computer scientist, and compilation curator Dan Stowell started the trend by tweeting his encoded field recordings of waves crashing on the beach. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Nov 21, 2009 - 23 comments

Internet Vices: various Web 2.0 sites and services, recast as drugs and alcohol. [more inside]
posted by ShawnStruck on Nov 20, 2009 - 29 comments

A message from the future. (SLYT)
posted by juv3nal on Nov 18, 2009 - 35 comments

Michelin inspectors have been anonymous as CIA spooks. Until now. And now. The New Yorker has a rare interview with one.
posted by converge on Nov 18, 2009 - 33 comments

Newmoticons: Fresh new emoticons for happy internet people.
posted by The Whelk on Nov 14, 2009 - 80 comments

"Efficient Mondrian is a tongue-in-cheek art installation which generates HTML table compositions in the style of Piet Mondrian's Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red from the text of The Principles of Scientific Management by FW Taylor. It does this every two minutes, posting the results to twitter." [via mefi projects]
posted by brundlefly on Nov 6, 2009 - 18 comments

A lot of us have had bad roommates. One man has taken it upon himself to chronicle the buffoonery of his meathead roommate, Steve, via Twitter. [more inside]
posted by reenum on Nov 5, 2009 - 80 comments

Michael Surtees latest photo experiment is called #walkingtoworktoday. The rules are simple and open to anyone—while walking to work take a photo. From there the photo needs to be pushed to Twitter via Flickr while containing the hashtag #walkingtoworktoday somewhere in the tile. But there wasn’t one dedicated space outside of Flickr to see the photos, and even then it was only seeing it through one medium—you didn’t get to see the tweets. So that’s why he decided there needed to be a site. Surtees created #walkingtoworktoday using Daylife tools that contained Flickr and Twitter moduals. The main modual streams photos from Flickr while the right rail shows the tweets. It’s an interesting redundancy that works.
posted by netbros on Nov 4, 2009 - 35 comments

Fake AP Stylebook is making Twitter worthwhile. (Single-link Twitter post. But damn, really; it's funny).
posted by emjaybee on Oct 23, 2009 - 66 comments

One day ago, Neil Gaiman wrote the beginning of a story, which was retweeted by BBC Audiobooks America as the first of a thousand or so tweets that would compiled and edited to become an audiobook. People are still contributing, and BBCAA's blog has four scenes compiled (1, 2, 3, summary of scenes 1-3, and 4), for a total of 175 tweets. When 1,000 or so tweets are logged, they'll be edited into a script, and produced in a studio to make the final audiobook, which will be released for free on BBCAA's website. This isn't the first game of exquisite corpse played via twitter that made a piece to be refined and presented in some way. The first Twitter opera was one of a few recent "gimmicks" to garner attention for the Royal Opera House (twitter opera feed, ROH twitter feed, ROH blog). The result, Twitterdammerung, was given a decent review by opera critic Igor Toronyi-Lalic.
posted by filthy light thief on Oct 14, 2009 - 32 comments

Vic Walczak, legal director for the Pennsylvania ACLU, sees the FBI's action as pure "intimidation," and part of a "much bigger war on demonstrators" in Pittsburgh. [more inside]
posted by acro on Oct 6, 2009 - 69 comments

The Social Media Guru (SLYT)
posted by geekyguy on Oct 5, 2009 - 19 comments

High court serves first injunction via Twitter. [more inside]
posted by puckish on Oct 1, 2009 - 18 comments

The Washington Post has issued new Social Media Guidelines for all employees. From the memo: "All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens." [more inside]
posted by Ike_Arumba on Sep 27, 2009 - 24 comments

"Twits": dramatic readings of our most prized celebrities twitter feeds. [more inside]
posted by pwally on Sep 24, 2009 - 9 comments

Love Helvetica and modernist typographic design? Seen the film? Now, with the power of browser userscripts, you can have the 20th-century high-modernist experience in your favourite web applications. Scripts exist to Helveticise Gmail, Twitter and Google Reader, and work with a variety of modern browsers. [more inside]
posted by acb on Sep 15, 2009 - 69 comments

Found Songs.
posted by StrikeTheViol on Sep 6, 2009 - 12 comments

The dog don't like you planting stuff there. It's his backyard. If you're the only one who shits in something, you own it. Remember that.

Justin posts stuff that his 73-year-old dad says on Twitter.
posted by Foci for Analysis on Aug 29, 2009 - 74 comments

Joshua Green Allen, who has been posting great internet for more than 15 years, if not longer, merges seamlessly with a new technology. If any twitter account is worth being renowned far and wide for hilarity: His Is. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Aug 25, 2009 - 27 comments

Previously, we saw Darkseid rant to the empty air. Now the nightmarish lord of evil -- reduced to selling old Kiss cassette tapes to support his drinking habit, and living in a dumpster behind the Baby Gap -- rants to Twitter as HOBODARKSEID. Along the way, he shares his views on the ending of "Moonlighting," sings Dio's "Holy Diver," and confesses a love for "Mad Men." He also intends to destroy us all. Shudder/enjoy.
posted by kittens for breakfast on Aug 24, 2009 - 14 comments

Several Twitter-based games were launched during the world's first Literary Twestival: Flash Fiction, Collective Nouns, Pass the Plot, and Project Twutenberg (via).
posted by Mr. Palomar on Aug 21, 2009 - 20 comments

Songs in (computer) code (you can also see the Twheat seperated from the Tw-chaff over at Favrd)
posted by melorama on Aug 20, 2009 - 32 comments

the worlds longest poem... I have a twitter account, I hate twitter... but this, somehow, this might define.... well...something..
posted by HuronBob on Aug 19, 2009 - 45 comments

Bing realised combining random tweets with random Dinosaur Comics panels was a good thing. Then Idefex took it a step further. And now you can too.
posted by minifigs on Aug 14, 2009 - 18 comments

Twitter documents the breakdown of Calvin Harris , British electropop musician due to critical reviews. [more inside]
posted by ashaw on Aug 14, 2009 - 93 comments

Peter Guo was held by Chinese police for 16 days, but managed to get himself released. Peter's Twitter profile, blog.

But what lesson can be learned from my experience? I think the most important factor is strong command of the use of Internet, especially Twitter and modern tools for communications.

posted by awfurby on Aug 11, 2009 - 12 comments

When you don't have anything to tweet about, the automatic tweet generator will help you out.
posted by boo_radley on Aug 6, 2009 - 96 comments

On Tuesday, Gawker media was taken offline by a German ddos attack. Today, three of the 'net's largest social media sites: Twitter, Facebook and Livejournal, are experiencing similar outages. Twitter now reports they are under a denial-of-service attack.
posted by zarq on Aug 6, 2009 - 107 comments

The wonderful Ben Schott (previously on Mefi) has posted an awesome excerpt from the 1891 Anglo-American Telegraphic Code, showing how folks got around (economically-induced) character and word limitations over a century before Twitter. Too wacky to be true? Gleam tus!
posted by ericbop on Aug 3, 2009 - 36 comments

7x20 is a twitter zine, publishing 140-characters-or-fewer short stories and poems. [via mefi projects]
posted by filthy light thief on Jul 27, 2009 - 24 comments

Talking Points Memo has put together an excellent resource for keeping up with happenings in Washington.

Whatever else Twitter might be, we've found it a good way to keep tabs on politicos and reporters, what they're doing, saying and so forth. Pols make unguarded or revealing statements, sometimes just helpful heads-ups on events or statements; reporters give early tips on stories. And just atmospherically you can get a feel for what certain groups of people are thinking and talking about.

With that, enjoy Twitter feeds aggregated at TPM for Elected Democrats on Capitol Hill, Elected Republicans on Capitol Hill, Democratic and liberal insiders, Republican and conservative insiders, and reporters and bloggers.
posted by lazaruslong on Jul 24, 2009 - 29 comments

TechCrunch claims it has been sent hundreds of internal Twitter documents from passcodes to meeting notes. Today the site released several of the documents, including financial projections. The documents were provided by "Hacker Croll" and were accessed in May. [more inside]
posted by uaudio on Jul 15, 2009 - 72 comments

PingWire is an (almost) live feed of images being posted to Twitpic. Clicking on a thumbnail will take you to the full sized photo. As it's a live, unfiltered picture feed, you can expect some inappropriate content will make its way on there as well. Best considered NSFW.
posted by jim.christian on Jul 13, 2009 - 36 comments

The Twitter Fail Whale, designed by Yiying Lu, became an internet phenomenon a year ago when Twitter became so unstable that the image popped up to hundreds of thousands of users on an almost daily basis. As a result of this exposure, games were created and many a mashup was made up. Lu has created a site with all of the Fail Whale related images she could find (Google cache). It’s an amazing (and huge) collection containing tributes, to statues, to cakes and beer labels.
posted by Effigy2000 on Jul 8, 2009 - 20 comments

Negative reviews prompt author meltdowns: Alice Hoffman. Lee Oi-soo. Alain de Botton. Ayelet Waldman. Previously on MeFi. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Jul 1, 2009 - 30 comments

Crap Detection 101 Howard Rheingold offers a fairly in-depth primer on media and internet BS detection. Lots of links to resources for enabling critical analysis of various information sources included.
posted by telstar on Jun 30, 2009 - 17 comments

World War III Propoganda Posters. Someone tweeted!
posted by crossoverman on Jun 25, 2009 - 35 comments

"At 1am on June 19, police and funeral cars arrived at the hotel, wanting to take the body away. 2,000 Shishou residents blocked the hotel entrance to protect Xu's corpse."
posted by sswiller on Jun 21, 2009 - 38 comments

Michigan Congressman @petehoekstra: "Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House." The response, from the series of tubes? 21st century sarcasm mixed with a hint of cyberwarfare.
posted by mark242 on Jun 18, 2009 - 52 comments

So^* you want to learn the Language of Birds? There's the mnemonic route and the youtube guide. You can listen to the birds in your local habitat or geographic area: New York State^**, Florida, Southwestern US, Tropical America^***, for example. Or, just find your favorite bird out of 104,517 audio and 33,693 video samples at Cornell's Macaulay Library, and listen. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display on Jun 16, 2009 - 19 comments

The Twitter feed from Chuck Grassley, senior United States Senator from the state of Iowa
posted by thirteenkiller on Jun 8, 2009 - 64 comments

With the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on Thursday, China's ever-vigilant censors have stepped up the reach of the "Great Firewall," blocking Western sites like Twitter, Flickr, and (just one day after its launch) Microsoft's Bing. via [more inside]
posted by infini on Jun 3, 2009 - 54 comments

The top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. Twitter is dominated by men, whereas other social networks tend to be dominated by women. Is Twitter biased towards men?
posted by desjardins on Jun 2, 2009 - 153 comments

Oversharers. More than you want to know.
posted by crossoverman on Jun 1, 2009 - 21 comments

Richard Wiseman's Psychic Twitter Experiment starts today at 3pm UK time. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Jun 1, 2009 - 20 comments

Tweeting Too Hard
posted by Blazecock Pileon on May 31, 2009 - 96 comments

Dennis Skillicorn was sentenced to die in 1996 for the murder of businessman/good Samaritan Richard Drummond and two other deaths in connection with a 1994 crime spree. Yesterday morning, local news outlet Missourinet, with a slight time delay, tweeted his execution. Elyria, Ohio's Chronicle Telegram is discussing plans to tweet an upcoming execution, but they are not sure if they should.
posted by cashman on May 21, 2009 - 42 comments