Gee's Blog World: Twitter Tuesday - Twitter is now in real-time, and it's breathtaking

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Twitter Tuesday - Twitter is now in real-time, and it's breathtaking

Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Microblogging, Twitter

Twitter's real-time streaming API is the biggest deal in Twitterland this week, as it enables Twitter apps to show you every tweet as it happens. Only a couple of apps have access so far -- including Tweetdeck and Echofon -- and the demos we're seeing are startling. You knew there were a lot of tweets flying around out there, but it's a totally different and overwhelming thing to see them like this. It makes Twitter look like The Matrix (which, I suppose, is why Tweetdeck is calling its new test version "the Matrix Edition").

Only 5,000 users were allowed to download the new Tweetdeck beta, and you need to register and pay $20 to get in on the new Echofon with live tweets. Keep in mind, the new API has only hit desktops thus far. I haven't seen a mobile app that uses it yet, but it would be amazing to have live tweets on an iPhone or iPad.

To see what this new hotness looks like, check out the Echofon demo video that Zee from TheNextWeb put together, or check out Tweetdeck: Matrix Edition after the jump.

If you're the kind of person who likes to read Twitter and drive (shame on you), Ford's got a lame new product called AppLink for you. In new Ford Fiestas and the UK version of the Ford Focus, AppLink can read your Twitter stream out loud to you. Seems safe and innocent enough, although maybe a little bit obsessive. And of course, jerks are going to take out their phones and start responding to tweets which increases the likelihood of accidents. Doh!

If you get involved in a conversation on Twitter that turns too big for @replies, you might want to check out Choip.me (is that supposed to be a New York way of saying "chirp?"). Choip.me mashes up Twitter and the Disqus comment platform, allowing folks to post longer comments on your short tweets. It's an interesting idea, but we already have a format for long-form ideas with comments: it's called a blog.

Some sad news in the Twitter world: Twitter's oldest user, Ivy Bean, passed away last Wednesday at age 104. She was an inspiration to older people who wanted to get into technology and the web, and she'll be missed on the web.

Twitter is cracking down on third-party followers-for-sale services, maybe in advance of launching its own. Anyone who signed up for certain suspicious services that promise thousands of followers for a fee is being forced to change passwords, in order to block the services from accessing their accounts. That's because the shadiest of these services don't use oAuth and link to your Twitter account, so a password change will lock them out.

Hey, Twitter's 20 billionth(!) tweet happened this week! It was posted by Japanese user GGGGGGo_Lets_Go. Google translate says it means "minutes, uncovered, may come later." Does anybody who actually speaks Japanese have a real translation? Let me know in the comments. Incidentally, this relatively boring tweet was retweeted over 100 times.

Alright, folks, that's all the time I've got for Twitter Tuesday this week, but I'll be back again next week with more of the hottest Twitter news and apps. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think about this whole real-time Twitter thing. Will you use it? Does it change everything, or does it not matter at all?