Twitter Tuesday - Twitter is not a social network, according to Twitter

Twitter Tuesday - Twitter is not a social network, according to Twitter

Filed under: Social Software, Microblogging, Twitter

All this time, we've been referring to Twitter as a social network, and all this time, we've been wrong. That's if you believe Twitter VP Kevin Thau, who presented at Nokia World 2010 today. Thau focused on Twitter's potential as a news source (and all the traffic it gets from people who don't even have Twitter accounts) and threw up a slide that said "not a social network." Huh? Well, my mind is blown.

Of course, that's not the only reason Twitter was at Nokia World. Nokia is launching a new Twitter widget on its N8 phones, which just goes to show that you don't need a fancy iPhone or Android device to tweet.

Plus, Twitter's got a big announcement coming up this evening, and we don't have any idea what it is yet. The suspense is killing me! Although it's too late to make this column, I promise to pass along whatever Twitter announces as soon as I find out.
Last night, Twitter founder Evan Williams revealed how much he paid for twitter.com: $7,500. For the price of a used car, Ev bought the URL that would soon become the home of one of the Web's biggest social networks. Or not, because Twitter is apparently not a social network. But I digress: $7,500 sounds like a lot of money for a domain name, but it's just a drop in the bucket when that domain name is Twitter.com.

John Mayer, one of the first celebrities to get noticed for mouthing off on Twitter, has left the service. Why did he quit when he had a soapbox to talk to 3.7 million followers? He says it's because his tour is over and he doesn't need it anymore, and that he's mostly switched over to Tumblr now. But his Tumblr has tens of thousands of followers, and his Twitter account had millions. Surely he could have found a use for so many followers ...

Meanwhile, other celebrities are auctioning off follows, replies, and retweets in a Twitter charity event called TwitChange. You can bid money for the attention of celebs like Alyssa Milano, Eva Longoria, and Joe Jonas. The money goes to rebuild a children's home in Haiti. The whole list of participating celebrities is available, and it ranges from the awesome to the who-cares: Joel McHale is participating (woo!), and so is Oprah's best friend, Gayle (meh).

If Twitter or other social networks (I know, I know, but I'm not going to stop referring to it that way) are going down more often than normal, you might want to check out WatchMouse's new social site uptime tracking tool, SocialDownOrNot. It shows today's uptime and current ping times for a dozen social sites. There are some odd choices of sites to include, here, though; alongside Twitter and Facebook, you'll see Hyves, Netlog and ... Classmates, really? I'm pretty sure that was a scam that ended in litigation and refunds ...

In apps news, Mashable has broken out the iPads again and listed 10 iPad apps for Twitter power users. They've listed one of my favorite newsreaders ever, Flipboard, along with some dark horse Twitter clients I haven't had a chance to try: TwitRocker and Tweetings HD.

That's this week's Twitter Tuesday! See you next week!

Twitter Tuesday - Twitter is not a social network, according to Twitter originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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