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Archive for the 'Twitter' Category

Twitter Rapprochement: Personal Democracy Forum vs. Netroots Nation

Published by William Beutler on July 22, 2008 in #pdf2008, Blogs vs. MSM, Charts and Graphs, Democrats, Earned Media, Internet conferences, Netroots, Tech Blogosphere, Technology, Trend Tool, Twitter, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. 1 Comment

While we’re running Twitter mentions of political blog conferences through Flaptor’s Twist, here’s Netroots Nation (#nn08) this weekend with Personal Democracy Forum (#pdf2008) two fortnights ago:

Twitter hashtags #pdf2008 and #nn08 via Twist by Flaptor.

Even at one day fewer (two if you don’t count #nn08’s low-key Sunday) the bipartisan-ish Personal Democracy Forum generated remarkably more Twitter noise than Netroots Nation, and apparently not much less in the rest of Internet news.

Netroots Nation had House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivering a speech on the main stage, certain to be covered by political reporters on the beat, but PdF had Arianna Huffington, arguably more Internet-famous than anyone in congressional leadership. The partisan nature of Netroots Nation probably attracted many from the substantial New-Old-New Left netroots movement, more than Personal Democracy Forum’s awkward mix of Obama-emboldened NYC progressives and McCain-indifferent DC conservatives. This despite the minor Twitter scuffle over Huffington’s imperious remarks.

It’s worth noting that NN’s location — Austin, Texas — is the same as SXSW (#sxsw) and its Interactive Festival, the locus of Twitter’s first widespread adoption in March 2007. On the other hand, PdF took place in midtown Manhattan, which by virtue of population and proximity surely has more Twitterinos (also, Tweeps) close by enough to at least tweet about not making it up/down.

But I think the best explanation for PdF’s modest Twitter supremacy is that, like SXSW and unlike NN, the audience it attracts is younger and more reliably tech-oriented. After all, the surveys show that liberal blog readers are older and primarily motivated by politics than the average Valley startup founder. One was first about tech, the other politics.

Meanwhile, the ever more ubiquitous micro-blogging service’s strong showing at the political conference probably bodes well for its long-term mass acceptance.

Assuming Twitter isn’t down, of course.

Twitter Fight: Netroots Nation vs. Right Online

Published by William Beutler on July 21, 2008 in Internet conferences, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Metapost, Netroots, Social Networking, Trend Tool, Twitter and Web 2.0. 3 Comments

This past weekend, Austin hosted two conferences devoted to political blogging: the widely covered and heavily-attended liberal Netroots Nation (née Yearly Kos) and the brand new and under-the-radar conservative Right Online (at which I spoke on Friday).

Both conferences designated hashtags for attendees to use when tweeting their experiences and expoundances. For the Twitter illiterate, a hashtag is a short code word following a pound sign — #hashtag, for example — included in the 140-character message for the purposes of associating that particular tweet with a subject others are using the same hashtag to write about. For the conferences just concluded, the hashtags were #nn08 and #rton08.

Like we always do about this time, here’s a chart comparing their use over the past weekend. This time, we’re using Twist by Flaptor:

Twitter hashtags #nn08 and #rton08 via Twist by Flaptor.

According to the historically-fortunate assigned colors, of course. Also, it’s worth knowing that Netroots Nation ran July 17 to 20, while Right Online was only July 18 to 19. [Update: From the comments, it turns out the fourth day agenda included few events, compared to dozens on other days.]

Taking that into consideration, the difference in activity is not especially surprising, considering this was Netroots Nation’s fourth year while being the first Right Online to date. But the trend lines are still interesting:

However, the trend lines are interesting, and I think we can tease out a few observations:

  • Friday late night through Saturday morning was the second-highest period of activity for #nn08 and the lowest for #rton08, at a total number of zero. Perchance the left went out partying while the right went to bed? This can’t be right. In fact, I know it’s not — for example, here’s E.M. Zanotti directing Friday night’s right-of-center bar traffic.
  • A similar thing happens 24 hours later, on Sunday morning, giving the impression that the entire Twittering contingent of each conference slept in with a hangover. While I am sure this was true for many, it’s flatly impossible that nobody tweeted during the late evening and early morning hours. So, I’ve sent an e-mail to the folks at Flaptor, and if I hear anything back, I’ll let you know.
  • Right Online activity is also likely underreported due to some confusion over which hashtag to use, although this probably doesn’t affect the overall trends greatly. Also worth mentioning, Twist doesn’t allow searching for symbols, so my real search terms were “nn08″ and “rton08″ — meaning even if some forgot the hash mark, as most assuredly happened, they’re included here.
  • It’s also possibly notable that #nn08 activity fell off severely on the last day. Is this evidence that four days is just too long for any convention? Or is it lower because people were busy leaving? I’m guessing it’s some of both.
  • Considering the reported attendance of each, the numbers don’t look so bad for #rton08. Local media reports put Netroots Nation at approximately 2,000, which apparently does not include reporters. Meanwhile, I’ve heard 500 showed up for Right Online, and based on the crowds I saw on Friday afternoon, this is plausible. However, with the exception of that curious Fri.-Sat. reporting period, #nn08 at most only quadrupled #rton08. At other times, it only doubled. Not quite a rallying cheer for Right Online, but that may be one to grow on.

See anything else worth mentioning? Feel free to add them in the comments.

P.S. FWIW, I believe I’m the first, as far as Google is aware, to use the word “expoundances.” Or should it be -ences? Again, your commentary is welcome.

All the Rage #8: Cycle of the Series

Published by William Beutler on May 18, 2008 in Entertainment, Foreign Policy, Television, Twitter, WikiRage, Wikipedia and William Beutler. 1 Comment

Another week, another look at the most-edited articles on the English-language Wikipedia for the past seven days. Big thanks to statistical tool WikiRage and creator Craig Wood for making this even possible. The tenor of my round-up is decidedly American, but as any frequent Wikipedia reader knows, we Yankees have no monopoly on Wikipedia, despite our great numbers. This week belongs to the Brits:

  1. Article: The Unicorn and the Wasp
    Why: The what? The seventh episode of the current season (they say “series”) of Doctor Who, which aired this weekend.
    Detail: The second episode made the list a few weeks back, and as we saw during South Park’s recent half-season run, popular TV shows often show up in the most-edited articles.

  2. Sichuan earthquake, courtesy Divine Rapier on Flickr.Article: 2008 Sichuan earthquake
    Why: Only this week’s worst natural disaster.
    Detail: Did I call it or what? Last week, when the most recent natural disaster was Cyclone Nargis in Burma and the earthquake in China was moving across the news wires (and Twitter feeds), I predicted the resulting page would be on this list. Like the Nargis page, the Sichuan earthquake page is thousands of words long and meticulously sourced — which is relatively easy to do when an event gets this much coverage. And it’s the second major event in China to make this list since we started a couple months back; the first of course was the unrest in and around Tibet. On the other hand… this article was less active than the one about the latest episode of Doctor Who?

  3. Article: Portsmouth F.C.
    Why: Congratulations to our friends across the pond for taking both the first and third slots this week.
    Detail: It’s football season (and by that I mean “soccer”) in England, and Portsmouth is the big winner in the FA Cup after a 0-1 victory (that’s what it says) over Cardiff City at Wembley Stadium. Close readers of this feature may woner if “FA” refers to “Featured Article,” the reason so many obscure articles make this most-edited list. Thanks for paying attention, but I must report it is actually the Football Association Challenge Cup. Why not FAC Cup? I’d like to know that myself.

  4. Avenue of the Giants, courtesy pete4ducks on Flickr.Article: Ted Kennedy
    Why: The so-called liberal lion of the Senate was admitted to a Boston hospital on Saturday after reportedly suffering a seizure.
    Detail: Although the story dominated cable news this weekend, there ultimately were not many details released, and the incident appears to be less serious than it first seemed. To some extent that’s it — many people came through with unverified information which had to be removed — but it also spurred a closer look at the page, including updates to the section on Chappaquiddick.

  5. Article: Redwood National and State Parks
    Why: The Featured Article for May 17.
    Detail: From the discussion page: “[P]lease refrain from tree-hugging, which this article drips of tree resin. Happy highways, everyone, thanks for putting it up on the front page. Off to gold panning American River, kudos”

  6. Article: Walter Gropius
    Why: Founder of Bauhaus — the German school of design, not the English rock band.
    Detail: A Featured Article? One might think, but in fact the page was linked by Google on May 18, what would have been his 125th birthday. And you know what? Though this may not be surprising, the visitors from Google are worse vandals than the Wikipedia regulars. This article was locked down briefly to keep new and unregistered contributors from weighing in; other editors had applied for the same protection to the Kennedy page, but that protection was not granted, and this one was. Sorry, Googlers.

  7. Article: Coeliac disease
    Why: An an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine that occurs in genetically predisposed people of all ages from middle infancy.
    Detail: Did you really want to know that? Wikipedia thinks you might, because it was the Featured Article on May 18.

  8. Article: America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 10
    Why: Tyra Banks’ reality TV show enters its fourth season and… tenth cycle?
    Detail: I guess it’s not so different from South Park, which airs in two separate half seasons. I assume that both are meant to distribute programming throughout the year in order to increase viewership. This also probably increases editorship of such articles.

  9. Article: Deaths in 2008
    Why: Except for the unusual week when this page was not listed in the top ten at all, this is the lowest appearance on the list for this article yet.
    Detail: An American winemaker, the 1955 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, the oldest Swede ever, some guy who was in Barbarella, the Polish female Oskar Schindler and an American pop artist.

  10. Pro wrestling in Portland, Oregon, courtesy static on Flickr.Article: List of current World Wrestling Entertainment employees
    Why: I’m not really sure, but I suspect vandalism.
    Detail: I don’t necessarily want to reinforce stereotypes about pro wrestling fans, but I can’t resist quoting this comment from the Talk page: “austin hasent made a apperiance in iver 6 months it should just say public relations cuz be fair its missleading someone reads this page and think oh ausin is gonna make a guest apperance but he dont and its been like that for 6 months if he makes another apperance then put it back down but we could put rock there as makeing apperances cuz he made one last year and this year around wrestlmania so either add rock or take apperance bit off of steve austin” The response? “yea good point ill do it”

    11. Holdovers this week: Deaths in 2008

    Falling off the list: Everything from last week.

    Recurring themes: Natural disasters, and reality shows reaching the end of their current season — maybe I should say “unnatural disasters”?

    Honorable mention: Last week Burma was the second-most edited article, in part because it was the focus of a heated debate over whether the main article about the country should instead be Myanmar, the chosen name of the ruling military junta. Good news for fans of freedom — although this is not always the same thing as being a fan of Wikipedia site policies — no consensus emerged from the debate, and for now, Burma it will remain.

Images courtesy Divine Rapier, pete4ducks and static on Flickr.

Automatic For the Tweeters

Published by William Beutler on May 18, 2008 in Twitter, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. 9 Comments

Two of the first blogs I started reading were Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, but thanks to changing schedules and subject matter, my readership of each has waned and waxed a few times over. Seven years and counting is a long while to read any one blogger; I can only imagine what it’s like to be writing the same blog for such a period of time.

Now in the past couple weeks, twinned discoveries have made it easier for me to follow what each writes. As you may have already guessed, the answer was Twitter feeds (click through for the Twitter accounts themselves):

Instapundit on Twitter

And:

Andrew Sullivan on Twitter

Both are straight-up repurposing of each blog’s RSS feed routed through Twitterfeed.com. I contacted both to find out if they had personally created them; Reynolds responded that he hadn’t. The brevity of his response led me to believe that it didn’t seem to bother him, and that he if he did tweet, he’d have characters to spare.

In the time since, I’ve been looking around for other examples of popular blogs with automated Twitter feeds. The list was not a long one — I found @dailykos, @thinkprogress, @newsbusters and @crooksandliars. (Feel free to list more in the comments.)

This also gave me an idea: Why not create such Twitter accounts for a few political blogs that myself and others might want to follow? So I have; all are brand new and as of this writing none have updated. I may have the feed configured incorrectly, but then it’s also Sunday evening. If it still isn’t updating correctly tomorrow, I’ll get in and fix them. If you’re from one of the blogs below and you’d prefer this account not exist or you’d prefer to take control of it yourself, just let me know. In the meantime, click through the screen shots below to see (and follow) the accounts for yourself:

Power Line:

Power Line on Twitter

ABC News Political Radar:

Political Radar on Twitter

Hot Air:

Hot Air on Twitter

TPM Muckraker:

TPM Muckraker on Twitter

Update: Yep, they’re all working.

Could Twitter Ads Help Stop Twitter Spam?

Published by William Beutler on May 6, 2008 in Advertising, Spam, Tech Blogosphere, Twitter, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

Twitter spam is back on my mind as I think about this morning’s TechCrunch report that Robert Scoble, the #5 most-followed Twitter user, has started tweeting paid advertisements. TechCrunch is shocked, shocked! to find out there’s advertising happening on Twitter, and alludes to speculation that Twitter’s founders will renege on a longstanding promise never to put ads on the Twitter website.

Some of this is driven by the fact that Twitter.jp, the Japanese-language counterpart, launched with advertising last month. Why ads on the Japanese version, but not the English? The conventional wisdom is that it’s harder to put advertising on the site later. That may be true, but of course, we already know that advertising happens on Twitter: many if not most of the accounts listed on TwitterBlacklist.com are primarily commercial in nature.

Which leads me to wonder, could Twitter ads be a partial solution to the problem of Twitter spam? After all, what these people are trying to do is reach many more people than their actual level of notability would attract. In lieu of other options, they’ve followed many more accounts than they could actually read, often using a bot to follow accounts automatically. How many of them would be willing to pay a small amount to place advertisements in the blank space underneath users’ left-hand sidebar? My guess is quite a few. In fact, so would quite a few others not presently engaging in spam-related activity.

One requirement for these ads could be that they must link to a Twitter account, which could then link out to where ever the advertiser wished. According to Valleywag, Twitter.jp ads do this, and it sounds to me like a fine way to keep the advertising conversational, like Twitter is meant to be. You know what isn’t conversational? A self-help guru whose promotions-only account follows 18,265 others with only 472 reciprocal followers.

Twitter advertising of this type would create an alternative to annoying other users with unwanted follower notifications while putting Twitter’s parent company Obvious on the slow road to profitability. Biz, Ev and Jack say they’ve been looking for a business model. Why not this one?

No Follow

Published by William Beutler on April 4, 2008 in E-mail, Spam, Twitter, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. 0 Comments

Not to turn this into The Twitter Spam Post (besides, that’s Stop Twitter Spam) but I believe I’ve just discovered a new spammer technique.

At 3:42 a.m. last night, I received a notification that a Twitter user going by the name Cardiophile was following me. Twitter Spammer: CardiophileBut when I checked out the account this morning, the sidebar looked as it does in the graphic to the right of these words. For readers who don’t know me, I am not one of the 5 accounts being followed.

So, mark this as the logical next step in the growing sophistication of Twitter spammers. Aware that they’re being identified by the obvious disparity in their following/follower counts, they’re now following an account just long enough — seconds, maybe — to send a notification e-mail and then unfollowing, so there isn’t the dead giveaway. I caught on, but then there are 350-some Twitter users who followed it anyway.

Earlier this week, a Twitter friend suggested that I simply uncheck the e-mail notification option. True, this would keep me from being annoyed. But there are two problem here. First, I would prefer to avoid changing my behavior because of spammers. But more practically, I wouldn’t know about followers I do care anbout and would want to follow back. Follow me?

Update: Stop Twitter Spam has also noticed this new technique, and has posted on the same subject.

Twitter Spam Gets Political

Published by William Beutler on April 1, 2008 in Hillary Clinton, Spam, Tech Blogosphere, Twitter, Web 2.0, White House '08 and William Beutler. 6 Comments

Last week, Mashable’s Adam Ostrow asked whether Twitter was facing a spam problem. I said it already does. Ostrow pointed to a Twitter account that seemed to be following far more people than anyone could know, and for purely promotional purposes.

As of today, that account follows (i.e. has friended) 13,000+ Twitterinos, only to tweet links to images of ho-hum abstract artwork. Amazingly, more than 800 people are still following this account. Shortly before reading his post, I found a teenager in Norway who seemed to be doing something similar. While he may in fact be using the service genuinely, he too was following thousands before he’d posted a single tweet. Today he’s following some 3,700+ others, but hasn’t updated for two days, when he was:

watching random crap on youtube :) — Flyaxe on Twitter

Now Twitter spam has taken a turn for the political. On Sunday, CQ’s Eric Pfeiffer told me that his account (which he updates only sporadically) had recently been followed by a horde of obviously fake accounts named for a current or former presidential candidate, plus a number. Most of the notification e-mails he had already deleted, but the others he forwarded to me. They are… interesting. For example, here’s the latest tweet from ChrisDodd53:

Twitter spammer rips off techPresident Daily Digest

I think we can safely assume there are not 52 other Chris Dodds on Twitter. But did you recognize the content of that tweet? I sure did: it was scraped from today’s techPresident Daily Digest. And this pattern is repeated across all the examples of spam accounts he sent my way.

Herewith, a list of these accounts, and a link to the blog whence its latest tweet was scraped:

You know, if these were simply attached to RSS feeds and genuine aggregators of political news, I wouldn’t mind so much. Yes, the aggressive, untargeted following is certainly annoying. But these accounts do not drive traffic to the sites where the words originated. This also makes the creator’s intent all the more inscrutable; they aren’t saying anything, they aren’t promoting anything, and they aren’t updated by hand. The only thing it’s good for, maybe, is souring users on Twitter. But I don’t believe Pownce or Google/Jaiku are really that underhanded. So I remain mystified.

Whatever the cause, this must stop. And it can. Unlike e-mail, which is traded from network to network across yon Internets around the globe, Twitter is administered entirely by Obvious, LLC. They have the same control over the Twitter network as Facebook has over its pages, and it’s within their power to stop it. I’ve previously suggested capping the number of users you can follow, relative to the number of users who are following you. Nothing too restrictive, but something flexible to keep Twitter accounts honest. Jack? Biz? Ev? Little help over here?

In the meantime, there is is already a website carrying the banner against this annoying menace. That’s Stop Twitter Spam, which is currently tracking complaints about spam on Twitter, including my post from last week. The site only barely gets into solutions, and mostly serves to highlight the problem. Most interesting of all is the Twitter Spammer List.

This list includes most of the candidate-based accounts I’ve noted here, and some others I hadn’t. It also mentions the examples from last week, but separates them into two apparent categories of problem Twitter accounts: outright spam and overactive followers. It also notes the number of follows vs. the number of followers and shows the difference as a ratio. The greatest disparity is HillaryClinton5. When the list was last updated, the account followed 2905 others, yet only 25 others followed “her” back. It’s not that HillaryClinton5 has friended the most people — that’s probably the design/art company mentioned above — but that she has the fewest followers. These numbers are a few days out of date, but still give a useful snapshot of the problem.

I’ll admit, I’m a bit nostalgic for the days when Brian Shaler was just following everybody in sight, like it was a game. But then, Shaler is an honest Twitterino. And almost everyone he follows also follows him back.

Twitter Already Has a Spam Problem

Published by William Beutler on March 25, 2008 in Facebook, Spam, Tech Blogosphere, Twitter, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. 3 Comments

Yesterday, Adam Ostrow at Mashable asked, “Is Twitter About to Have a Big Spam Problem?” Well, I wouldn’t yet call it “big,” but the problem is already here. Ostrow wrote:

[L]ately, I’ve been getting an influx of new followers that resemble this character to the right – someone who is following thousands of people, with only a couple hundred following back. In this case, the new follower seems to be a web design studio in Beverly Hills. While I can’t prove it, I have a feeling that this person used a bot to automatically follow me (and a lot of other people) in an effort to take advantage of the fact that a lot of people will simply return the follow – in turn giving this person a new platform to pump their marketing message.

Sidebar to Flyaxe, a suspicious account on TwitterI knew the account he spoke of; I am one of those also being followed by the “Tripix Designs” Twitter account he mentioned. Like Ostrow, I’ve been followed by a handful of these accounts. Aside from inflating my follower count, I didn’t consider it a problem. But this morning I’m convinced.

At right is the sidebar for “Flyaxe” — a Twitter account that added me sometime last night. That’s what it looked like at about 6:30 this morning, Eastern time. Just a couple hours later, Flyaxe is following more than twice as many. Unlike Tripix, it hasn’t even updated once, so it isn’t clearly promotional. Flyaxe appears to be a “19 year-old dude from norway,” as the matching, recent and similarly empty Digg account shows. At least Tripix was honest about its intentions; Flyaxe could be a Trojan horse for just about anything.

The only solution is for Obvious (the under-funded Twitter-makers) to impose restrictions on Twitter accounts. Facebook imposes all kinds of restrictions on its users, and the result is a better experience — at least for those of us who prefer it to MySpace. So let’s say, you cannot follow more than 75% of those following you. Add more followers, and you can follow more people. But we know already that Twitter doesn’t scale well, so anybody following 6,000 people is doing something other than keeping tabs on that many friends. If you want a macro view of Twitter, Twitter tracking exists and so does Tweetscan. The Twitter API and the myriad tools built using it obviate the need to create one account following thousands of other accounts.

Unless, of course, you’re trying to promote something. However, as I’ve written before, Twitter is not especially useful for broad marketing. Thanks to tracking, one could hand-build a targeted list that could be worthwhile for the marketer and the marketed-to. Flyaxe, on the other hand, is wasting my time and his.

Soren Dayton, John Sasso and the Twitter Election

Published by William Beutler on March 20, 2008 in John McCain, The Politico, Tough Crowd, Twitter, White House '08, William Beutler and YouTube. 5 Comments

Once, this new thing called blogosphere reshaped the 2004 presidential campaign. And then, this new thing called YouTube influenced several contests in the 2006 midterms. So what’s next? Could Twitter change the outcome of the 2008 White House race?

Probably not just yet, but one thing is clear: What’s said on Twitter does not stay on Twitter. My former Hotline colleague Jonathan Martin reports:

An aide to John McCain was suspended from the campaign today for blasting out an inflammatory video that raises questions about Barack Obama’s patriotism.

Soren Dayton, who works in McCain’s political department, sent out the YouTube link of “Is Obama Wright?” on twitter at 12:31 today with the tag, “Good video on Obama and Wright.” It has since been taken down.

Twitter is an online device that allows users to send out short messages and links en masse through computers or PDAs.

An aside: The explanation of Twitter is cute; I remember not so long ago when they did that for blogs.

It should be clarified: the video is still on YouTube but Soren’s Twitter account — which I’ve followed since I first signed up — is gone. I like Soren and would like to think that he could post to his personal account whatever he’d like. The video highlights some Obama statements I think are objectionable and some where I think the outrage is overwrought; none of it strikes me as patently beyond the pale.

Then again, I remember well the controversy over John Edwards’ brief employment of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, bloggers like Soren, who embarrassed the campaign with their outlandish rhetoric. The issue is not whether the video Soren linked was less inflammatory than what they had written; that can be debated. The issue is that their public commentary (even if 140 characters or fewer) ran contrary to the standards of the campaign. In Edwards’ case, they were likely implied, not explicit standards. But as Martin notes,

McCain and his campaign have repeatedly said that they would stay away from personal attacks on Obama, but the temptation has increased as Wright’s words have dominated the race in recent days.

Last week, they included an op-ed that hammered Wright and Obama in their morning clip package emailed to reporters. The same day, a campaign aide they regretted doing so.

Informed that Dayton was circulating the video, McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said he had been suspended and “reprimanded by campaign leadership.”

“We have been very clear on the type of campaign we intend to run and this staffer acted in violation of our policy,” she said.

One difference may be that Marcotte/McEwan had already proved controversial, with conservative bloggers making considerable noise about their independent blogging. Dayton had not yet caused that sort of embarrassment, and I frankly find it unlikely that it would have.

So did the McCain campaign overreact? Probably. Was this unfair to Soren? Maybe. But I’ve spent the last couple days saying that the Obama campaign has been too slow to cover its bases on Jeremiah Wright and Black Theology, so I must note that here the McCain campaign was quick to get in front of a potentially damaging story. Perhaps Republicans should see this as a blessing in disguise.

With 20 years distance, it seems ridiculous that the Dukakis campaign dismissed campaign manager John Sasso for distributing oppo research on then-rival (and onetime 2008 hopeful) Joe Biden. If it’s any consolation to Soren, he shouldn’t forget that Sasso was eventually hired back.

Update: All that said, I’m still joining Trevino’s Support Soren Dayton group on Facebook, and recommend that you do so, if you’re so inclined. Soren is very smart and a good guy for McCain to have. I especially hope they reinstate him so he can post for the campaign on RedState. Their stand is clear; it would be a mistake to turn this suspension into a sacking.

A Match Made in Twitter

Published by William Beutler on March 18, 2008 in Barack Obama, Domains, Seriously and Twitter. 0 Comments

Someone out there knows I’m a connoisseur of “fake” Twitter accounts, and late this morning, forwarded me an e-mail that I cannot help but screencap and share:

E-mail of Barack Obama reciprocally following a fake Jeremiah Wright on Twitter

Twelve hours later, there is one perfunctory tweet. In fact, it appears this account was created with one purpose in mind. That’s reflected in the e-mail above and, publicly, in the sidebar:

Sidebar on fake Jeremiah Wright Twitter account shows only one follower: Obama

Count this as an overlooked reason why Twitter will succeed: its endless capacity for mischief.