Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette, and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And with me as usual as the person for whom
Speaker 1: I usually edit articles, that would be senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry the service is temporarily unavailable. Okay, say wale, Yes,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about everybody's favorite hundred and forty
Speaker 1: character limited blogging service Twitter Twitter. We've talked about Twitter before,
Speaker 1: but this time we're gonna talk about some cool stuff
Speaker 1: you can do using Twitter. That because before we were
Speaker 1: just kind of talking about what the service was, and
Speaker 1: and you know, by now, pretty much everyone's heard of
Speaker 1: it thanks to people like Oprun, Ashton Kutcher and really more.
Speaker 1: They they they used Twitter well noticed ye Ashton could
Speaker 1: could jump off the Twitter bandwagon at any minute, And
Speaker 1: boy are we holding our breath for that announcement, because lord,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I can sleep at night knowing
Speaker 1: that Ashton isn't on Twitter has at least a million
Speaker 1: more followers than I do. Sure, yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: guys got the guy's got plenty of followers. I'm not
Speaker 1: one of them. I have a hundred and nine people
Speaker 1: I'm following or thereabouts, and and strangely enough, he is
Speaker 1: not among that that crew. Yeah, but I follow you, Chris. Okay. Twitter, Now,
Speaker 1: just in case somehow you don't know what this is. Twitter?
Speaker 1: Is this this messaging service. Really. It's used over the
Speaker 1: web and you can access it either through a computer
Speaker 1: or your cell phone, and you can send messages that
Speaker 1: range up to a hundred and forty character at a time.
Speaker 1: And people who first joined Twitter often get overwhelmed by it.
Speaker 1: They don't necessarily see the value in it. And there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who they look at it,
Speaker 1: they decide it's not for them and they leave, and
Speaker 1: that that they don't look back, and that's it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people who are just coming
Speaker 1: to Twitter after being told, hey, you should check this out,
Speaker 1: are kind of put off by the message on the
Speaker 1: home page of Twitter, which is you know, what are
Speaker 1: you doing right now? I have to be what you're doing. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: that's that's I think that's a big misstep. On Twitter's part,
Speaker 1: because that question makes you think, oh, well, I just
Speaker 1: tied my shoes, so I guess I should type that
Speaker 1: in the type of I just tied my shoes, and
Speaker 1: everyone who's following you, assuming that you have followers, looks
Speaker 1: at that and thinks, I don't need to follow this person.
Speaker 1: All they do is type about tying their shoes. It's
Speaker 1: not interesting to me, it's not relevant, and it's not entertaining,
Speaker 1: so there's no reason to follow them now. Um. However,
Speaker 1: if you use Twitter to do things like share interesting
Speaker 1: news stories or tell some jokes or or things like that,
Speaker 1: if you're entertaining or informative, or if you're a famous person,
Speaker 1: people will follow you and continue to follow you. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: And um, you know, that's one of the cooler things
Speaker 1: to do with it. In my opinion, it's really sort
Speaker 1: of mundane if you think about it, because it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound sexy and exciting. But you know, make a new friend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to do, and you kind of have
Speaker 1: to get past the what the heck am I doing
Speaker 1: with this thing? And I think everybody has that moment
Speaker 1: of what the heck am I doing with this thing?
Speaker 1: You know, you sign up, you throw a few comments
Speaker 1: on there, you follow a few people, and nothing happens,
Speaker 1: and you go, do I really want to keep going
Speaker 1: with this? If you do, you know, there are some
Speaker 1: simple things that you can do to kind of push that,
Speaker 1: and you can start actually talking to people and having conversations,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of a neat thing, right, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the first thing you would end up doing is um
Speaker 1: probably trying to find a few people that you want
Speaker 1: to follow. Whether these are people you know in real life,
Speaker 1: like good friends or family and you just wanna keep
Speaker 1: up with what they're doing on a daily basis, Well,
Speaker 1: you can follow them. If there are any journalists that
Speaker 1: you particularly admire, or news agencies that you know that
Speaker 1: you think provide a valuable service, you can see if
Speaker 1: they have a Twitter account and follow them. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of news agencies that have Twitter accounts, Twitter feeds,
Speaker 1: and you can keep up with breaking news that before
Speaker 1: before it hits any major news source, you can find
Speaker 1: out about it on Twitter, which can be very useful
Speaker 1: if you happen to be heading in an area that,
Speaker 1: let's say just is about to get hit by a tornado.
Speaker 1: It's good to be able to see that before it happens.
Speaker 1: That's true, providing you have time to actually check your Twitter,
Speaker 1: and all depends on whether how you're receiving the messages
Speaker 1: to um, but there are lots of Once you start
Speaker 1: following people and you start seeing how this works, you
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind people who follow you, they
Speaker 1: are going to receive the messages that you send out
Speaker 1: for the most part. There are a few exceptions. Will
Speaker 1: get into those little bit a little bit later. And
Speaker 1: then there's a public timeline that unless you change the
Speaker 1: settings in your account, your messages will also appear on
Speaker 1: that public timeline. So anyone looking at the public timeline
Speaker 1: around the time you you post a message will be
Speaker 1: able to see what you type. So it's not just
Speaker 1: the people who are following you who see that, unless,
Speaker 1: of course, you've, like I said, adjusted your settings so
Speaker 1: that your messages do not appear on the public timeline. Now,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that that the only people who will
Speaker 1: ever see anything you write are either following you or
Speaker 1: watching the public timeline. You can actually direct messages at people.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's using the at reply UH method, and
Speaker 1: it's simply the AT symbol followed by the person's handle,
Speaker 1: and that message will appear in that person's Twitter feed.
Speaker 1: And if the person is getting tons and tons of
Speaker 1: Twitter messages, they may not see it anyway. But if
Speaker 1: they aren't getting tons, then there's a good chance they'll
Speaker 1: see your message. So it might be someone that you
Speaker 1: know who isn't aware that you're on Twitter, and you
Speaker 1: can let them know and then maybe they'll follow you back.
Speaker 1: If someone is following you and you're following them, you
Speaker 1: can send a direct message, which is a private message
Speaker 1: between the two of you and no one else can
Speaker 1: see it. And it's much more likely that they're going
Speaker 1: to see a direct message, and they would, you know,
Speaker 1: with a simple at reply, right. Most Twitter clients have
Speaker 1: some sort of special notification for things like at replies
Speaker 1: and direct messages and uh. Those can be applications that
Speaker 1: are either on computers or on your cell phone smartphone,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, UM and you can you can adjust.
Speaker 1: Most of these have have sayings that you can adjust
Speaker 1: so that it will alert you whenever there's either a
Speaker 1: new tweet, which is of course the noun version of
Speaker 1: the message UM or at least one of them. There
Speaker 1: are also people who call them twitters uh or if
Speaker 1: that's a little overwhelming, and it might be because, like
Speaker 1: I follow a hundred and nine people, if I had
Speaker 1: my phone and alert me every time there was a
Speaker 1: new tweet, it would never stop vibrating. So in my case,
Speaker 1: I just have it where it alerts me for replies
Speaker 1: and direct messages. So that's the basics. Now let's get
Speaker 1: down to some other kind of interesting things that you
Speaker 1: can use Twitter for two to really get the most
Speaker 1: of your experience. Okay, do you want me to start
Speaker 1: or you want to you know, I could go either way.
Speaker 1: Why don't you go ahead? All right? Sure? So hashtags?
Speaker 1: Hashtags are good, that's appropriate. Right on the end of
Speaker 1: the after so as Chris, as Chris goes on a
Speaker 1: rampage through the studio, apparently hashtags or something. He feels
Speaker 1: very passionately about hashtags. So hashtags, h you're using the
Speaker 1: little hash symbol, which is the pound sign or the
Speaker 1: nice the octathorp busting now the octathorm. So yeah, when
Speaker 1: you're using you use that in front of uh, whatever
Speaker 1: term that you are are talking about, like if you're
Speaker 1: talking about a specific subject, and that allows people to
Speaker 1: search for that term in a in a more effective way,
Speaker 1: they can put the hashtag in front of it. They
Speaker 1: put the term there, and then they you can use
Speaker 1: a Twitter search engine to pull up all the tweets
Speaker 1: that relate to that topic, so you can actually follow
Speaker 1: group conversations about a subject. And the interesting thing is
Speaker 1: about in the in these group conversations, you may only
Speaker 1: see three or four the people in that discussion from
Speaker 1: your Twitter feed, and you can even participate in that discussion.
Speaker 1: When you do the search, you'll see everything, so you'll
Speaker 1: suddenly get a bigger picture of the discussion that was
Speaker 1: going on, and it actually becomes pretty interesting. There are
Speaker 1: a few people within the Twitter verse who are probably
Speaker 1: the lynch pins for these big discussions. These are usually
Speaker 1: the people who have hundreds of thousands of followers and
Speaker 1: so they kind of end up seeing everything anyway. But
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of you guy, or Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman
Speaker 1: is he's he's sort of the center of my Twitter verse.
Speaker 1: Neil Gaiman and uh and Stephen Fry, the two of
Speaker 1: them together pretty much like it's interesting. I can see
Speaker 1: I can actually see messages from some of the people
Speaker 1: I follow get responded to by other people I follow,
Speaker 1: and I had no idea that there was any connection
Speaker 1: between the two until that happened. So Twitter searches, like
Speaker 1: I said, that has a lot that that ties back
Speaker 1: into the hashtag thing. Those are very useful. You can
Speaker 1: search for pretty much any term you want. I've done
Speaker 1: it for how stuff works before, to see what people
Speaker 1: are saying about us, and it's a it's it's pretty useful. Um.
Speaker 1: The Twitter search function tool if you just if you
Speaker 1: go to the regular Twitter search engine, it'll, uh, it'll
Speaker 1: pull up all the most recent tweet and it will
Speaker 1: even update as time goes on, so as people send
Speaker 1: more messages, you'll be able to see them appear. Mm hmmm. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the the things that I like about Twitter
Speaker 1: is it's great for finding quick answers to questions. Um, crowdsourcing, Yes, crowdsourcing,
Speaker 1: and it's it's um really simple to you know, just
Speaker 1: throw up a question on your Twitter feed, especially if
Speaker 1: you have a reasonable number of followers, and get a
Speaker 1: reasonably quick answer as a result. Uh. Famous people have
Speaker 1: no trouble finding answers to anything on Twitter because hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of followers. Yes, and and it invariably happens
Speaker 1: when somebody will uh post a question and I will
Speaker 1: race to answer it because I like knowing answers and
Speaker 1: and you know, surprising someone and going, hey, I know
Speaker 1: the answer to that, and uh, usually within seconds of
Speaker 1: my trying to type that in and at reply to
Speaker 1: this person, um, I'll get four tweets from the original
Speaker 1: person saying thank you the sixteen people and thank you
Speaker 1: these twenty four people. I'm going, wow, I slightly beaten
Speaker 1: to the punch there. Yeah, but it's it's very easy
Speaker 1: if you uh, you know, even people where you say,
Speaker 1: I've seen people who are teaching classes say I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about this in my class. Can any of
Speaker 1: you tell me why something something happens? And then uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they get the answers they want immediately, you know,
Speaker 1: just in the process of demonstrating Twitter. I've used that
Speaker 1: same method when I was visiting different cities and I
Speaker 1: would send out a Twitter message just saying, hey, any
Speaker 1: of my Twitter followers happened to live in and say, Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: where's a good place for me to grab now a
Speaker 1: really good taco? Stuff like that. You're gonna get responses
Speaker 1: the sort of thing. Now. Now, granted, if you have
Speaker 1: five followers, then your your responses will be somewhat limited.
Speaker 1: Um and the way you get more followers usually happens
Speaker 1: fair organically, unless you're a celebrity, in which case you
Speaker 1: know people already are interested in you, so they're following
Speaker 1: you anyway. But if you get mentioned by other folks,
Speaker 1: like if you are contributing to discussions in a helpful way,
Speaker 1: they will likely reply to you in such a way
Speaker 1: that there are other followers can see that you know,
Speaker 1: what you're saying is interesting, and then they their followers
Speaker 1: may say, hey, let me check out this other guy
Speaker 1: because apparently he knows what he's talking about, and then
Speaker 1: you might end up with followers that way. I've I've
Speaker 1: had that happen a few times, usually whenever I chat
Speaker 1: with anyone, you know, a pretty significant stature in the
Speaker 1: Twitter verse. There's also a thing called follow Friday, which
Speaker 1: is really a meme on Twitter. It's a meme that
Speaker 1: uses the hashtag that that Jonathan was talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: And usually what what follow Friday does is the people
Speaker 1: who participate in it, they just list some of the
Speaker 1: folks they follow that they think are pretty cool and
Speaker 1: that you know, people and more people should follow those people,
Speaker 1: and I've been on a couple of those lists, So, um,
Speaker 1: now I'm still a small fry. I mean I'm talking
Speaker 1: major small fry in the Twitter verse. I have three
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty or so followers right now. But when
Speaker 1: you're looking at people like Ashton Kutcher who have over
Speaker 1: a million, and then you have lots of other folks
Speaker 1: who are in the six hundred thousand, five hundred thousand range,
Speaker 1: three is tiny. Yeah, but uh, I have great followers,
Speaker 1: So I don't mind the fact that I don't have that,
Speaker 1: MANI because the ones I have are awesome, excellent. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I was gonna mention before we get away
Speaker 1: from the using the crowdsourcing aspects of Twitter, A cool
Speaker 1: website that I found that that works for this is
Speaker 1: straw pole now dot com. And you can sign up
Speaker 1: and basically create your own poll and you can ask people, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and log in and give you a graphical
Speaker 1: representation of your you know, it's a two question pole,
Speaker 1: which is better red or blue? Or you know what,
Speaker 1: what do you prefer? Ice creamer cake? You know you
Speaker 1: do do those kinds of either oars but pretty neat,
Speaker 1: little neat, little website and and sticking with the crowdsourcing thing.
Speaker 1: Information on Twitter tends to spread viral e because people
Speaker 1: retweet it exactly retweets. Another important part of Twitter. A
Speaker 1: retweet is when someone takes the message that another person
Speaker 1: is sent and then posts it. And the general format
Speaker 1: is you type in our T meaning retweet uh at
Speaker 1: and the original person's name, and then the message. And
Speaker 1: this way you you hit a larger audience because theoretically
Speaker 1: the second person who retweets the the first person's message
Speaker 1: is going to have different followers or at least a
Speaker 1: few different followers than the first person, and it will
Speaker 1: spread that way now greatly when when something gets retweeted
Speaker 1: by a big name, uh, I mean, you can still
Speaker 1: retweet it, but here's a good chance that everyone following
Speaker 1: you is seeing it somewhere else already. Because when you're
Speaker 1: talking about the big big names, they're just there's so
Speaker 1: many people following them that you know, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a silly thing to retweet something that maybe Stephen Fryer,
Speaker 1: Neil Gaiman or Ashton Kutcher or any of those big
Speaker 1: names have said, because chances are it's gotten around already.
Speaker 1: You can still do it. There's nothing wrong with it,
Speaker 1: and um, so that's a good way to to learn
Speaker 1: about what's going on in the world. And if you're
Speaker 1: interested in a very specific subset of information. Um, I
Speaker 1: find it incredibly useful to follow tech news that way.
Speaker 1: I followed tons of tech journalists and and tech news
Speaker 1: sources and even users. I've I've received some really cool
Speaker 1: information from users that lead to fantastic blog posts. I
Speaker 1: can think of one in particular that is still going
Speaker 1: strong two months after I wrote it. And um, you
Speaker 1: know that's the thing is that that, like I said,
Speaker 1: the information spreads virally. So if you are an information
Speaker 1: junkie like I am, Twitter is awesome. Hey, we'll also
Speaker 1: gradually suck your life away, but in a good way. Yes. Um.
Speaker 1: Something else that's cool to do with Twitter, um, surprisingly
Speaker 1: enough is to promote yourself. Uh. And I you know,
Speaker 1: most of the time shameless self marketing is sort of
Speaker 1: you know, frowned upon because it's you know, shameless, but
Speaker 1: you look at it, and uh, you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: what a lot of people do on Twitter, sort of
Speaker 1: expected depends on on who you're twittering or I'm following. Actually,
Speaker 1: and especially with somebody like, uh, you know, famous famous people,
Speaker 1: famous authors or actors. Um, you're following them probably because
Speaker 1: you want to find out when their next you know,
Speaker 1: big project is coming out, how that's going, or you
Speaker 1: want to find out what's going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: So people say, oh, you know, I I uh, it's
Speaker 1: ten minutes to the show. Little anxious, you know, people go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's kind of that's kind of cool information. It's definitely
Speaker 1: a little bit more interesting than tying your shoes. And
Speaker 1: a lot of people follow uh. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people follow Jonathan's feed because he regularly posts when
Speaker 1: he's got a new blog post up. Um, so you know,
Speaker 1: when people who are interested in reading the tech stuff blog, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, read his Twitter feed to go, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: there's new blog post. And then I've seen lots of
Speaker 1: people do that, you know, So that's uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: not a bad thing to do, and people don't get
Speaker 1: all bent out of shape because you're promoting your latest project.
Speaker 1: Speaking of self promotion, if you want to follow me,
Speaker 1: my handle is John Strickland j O N S t
Speaker 1: R I C K L A N D. Moving on. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: self promotion is a big part of Twitter. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the people I follow Jonathan Colton, the musician. Yes,
Speaker 1: he uses Twitter to not only announce when he's going
Speaker 1: to have a new tour date or a new song
Speaker 1: is out, he even uses it to ask his followers
Speaker 1: for uh, song requests when he comes to their town.
Speaker 1: So come to He came to Atlanta not that long ago,
Speaker 1: and he sent out a Twitter message saying, all right,
Speaker 1: give me your song requests, and people will send in
Speaker 1: their messages and he played those songs and uh. I mean.
Speaker 1: That's another great thing about Twitter is that it's this
Speaker 1: interactive medium and you get to have some sort of
Speaker 1: interaction with people that you really admire or you just
Speaker 1: you know, your gaga over that particular celebrity. There is
Speaker 1: a chance that you have that little bit of a connection,
Speaker 1: and that's a very enticing thing. You also get to
Speaker 1: see some really cool conversations between different celebrities, Like if
Speaker 1: you follow both parties, you get to see both ends
Speaker 1: of the conversation, assuming they're not speaking in direct messages
Speaker 1: that is. And it's fun. It's like you're at a
Speaker 1: Hollywood party and you're in the corner and you're watching
Speaker 1: two celebrities just kind of gossip and chat and joke around.
Speaker 1: It's awesome. It's so much fun. And that you know,
Speaker 1: social nervousness that comes from being in a big Hollywood party. Right.
Speaker 1: They don't they don't even notice my my profuse sweating
Speaker 1: or my uh habit of cursing at inappropriate moments. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I have another one that's sort of related
Speaker 1: to that, to the cursing. Networking, it's great to to
Speaker 1: meet people. UM. Directory that's become popular, at least one
Speaker 1: of them is that we follow dot com and um,
Speaker 1: you could go on there and basically tag yourself up
Speaker 1: to three tags, isn't it so it was when I
Speaker 1: when I started, when I joined, it was three. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming it hasn't changed. Um, And you know, for example,
Speaker 1: I have myself tagged as an editor and writer on there,
Speaker 1: and you can you can go on there to find people.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you can, you can start to
Speaker 1: find other people who do what you do and add
Speaker 1: them and start conversations with them, you know, retreat, retweet
Speaker 1: some of their their messages and and uh you know,
Speaker 1: mention them and get ato hashtag conversations with them. You
Speaker 1: can actually you can actually network and make new friends
Speaker 1: and and sort of build a community around yourself and
Speaker 1: join in existing communities, which is, you know, pretty neat. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: when I was while I was at the UH the
Speaker 1: Electronic Entertainment Expo E three. While I was there, UH,
Speaker 1: a fellow tech journalist tracked me down via Twitter, followed
Speaker 1: me on Twitter, sent me a direct message, and asked
Speaker 1: me for a favor. Unfortunately, I was unable to help
Speaker 1: Miss Natalie dell Conti of c net. And although she's
Speaker 1: dreamy and a fantastic tech journalist, I had a flight
Speaker 1: I had to catch, so I couldn't help her out.
Speaker 1: But that's a cool opportunity that I never would have
Speaker 1: had at all if I didn't have Twitter. You know.
Speaker 1: But she knew she knew me, she just didn't follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at that point. She's still following me
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast. That could change
Speaker 1: by the time this goes live. She might be like,
Speaker 1: totally don't need this, dude, X. But um, right now
Speaker 1: she's still following me. Ye, So uh should I give
Speaker 1: you another one? Yeah? Go ahead? Um? You could uh
Speaker 1: you could start a revolution. Oh, I say you want
Speaker 1: a revolution. We all want to change the world. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that long ago. We were talking about the
Speaker 1: Twitter and uh I mentioned the UH this sort of
Speaker 1: protest going on in Moldova where people were using Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter to coordinate their activities using hashtags and some
Speaker 1: of the other messaging UH to sort of stay one
Speaker 1: step ahead of the authorities because they would you know,
Speaker 1: message where they were going to be at what time,
Speaker 1: and people would start showing up. Um. However, since that
Speaker 1: podcast went we recorded it before, you know, a ways
Speaker 1: off before one live. Since that time, UH, there has
Speaker 1: been a very major media event that in which people
Speaker 1: use Twitter and not they're not nearly as peaceful, and
Speaker 1: that would be the recent protests in Iran following the elections, Right,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about a a massive chaotic situation in Iran. Uh.
Speaker 1: We're actually recording this podcast just a couple of days
Speaker 1: after the election. So when this goes live, this this
Speaker 1: is gonna be you know, old news, but at the
Speaker 1: moment it's very fresh in our minds. And part of
Speaker 1: the issue was that Iran government officials had started to
Speaker 1: restrict internet access, started to throttle the broadband connections, really
Speaker 1: limiting what people could access and what they could do.
Speaker 1: But Twitter uses a hundred forty characters. It is not
Speaker 1: it doesn't put a huge demand on broadband. It's easy
Speaker 1: to get messages through if you can find a connection
Speaker 1: to the internet. And so a lot of people involved
Speaker 1: in this conflict have been using Twitter to broadcast information
Speaker 1: about what is going on to the general public, who
Speaker 1: otherwise may not ever be aware of the situation. Now.
Speaker 1: To do that, they've had to do things like find
Speaker 1: proxy servers so that they could access sites that were
Speaker 1: not being blocked by the government and UM. But that's
Speaker 1: exactly what's happening right now over in Iran, right now
Speaker 1: being at the time of recording. Yeah, As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, in a show of solidarity, people UH in
Speaker 1: the United States, at least some that I follow UM
Speaker 1: have been tinting their profile pictures green as a show
Speaker 1: of support and retweeting UH messages sent by protesters in Iran,
Speaker 1: basically talking about what events are going on in the street, UM,
Speaker 1: which at the time of this recording, again is forbidden.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to be reporting from what you know,
Speaker 1: what's going on in the street, that what happens. Foreign
Speaker 1: journalists are barred from reporting. So what's going on there
Speaker 1: so people are sharing things and not using their names
Speaker 1: unlike norm when you would typically use an apt sign
Speaker 1: with a person's handle on Twitter, they're not doing that now,
Speaker 1: They're just using certain hashtags. Yeah, and there's a point
Speaker 1: out that it's because they don't want anybody to get
Speaker 1: in trouble, right. And there's been other changes as well
Speaker 1: in normal behavior. For example, for a while you were
Speaker 1: seeing people tweet proxy sites, but now there have been
Speaker 1: tweets coming out and saying that the officials are monitoring
Speaker 1: Twitter and looking for these sort of things. And so
Speaker 1: if you were to publicize the proxy site, then it
Speaker 1: would just speed up the the response from the government
Speaker 1: and have that shut down. So it's interesting there's actually
Speaker 1: like their manifestos out there that explained the right way
Speaker 1: to use Twitter in this kind of situation. It's really
Speaker 1: a cyber war situation. Yep. And uh in a in
Speaker 1: a a move that sort of surprises me. Twitter has
Speaker 1: been planning on some updates to the site, and they
Speaker 1: were going to do some site maintenance and take the
Speaker 1: site down. Because people are using the site for this purpose,
Speaker 1: they're putting off the maintenance. Originally was going to be
Speaker 1: scheduled for June fift but because there were so many
Speaker 1: people depending upon Twitter to get information out from Iran,
Speaker 1: Twitter said, you know what, we're going to delay this,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's an interesting move on Twitter's part, very
Speaker 1: you know, because it is a business after all, get
Speaker 1: one without a business plan. Another cool thing you can
Speaker 1: use Twitter to do? Get out of jail. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean not really, but one guy did it. That
Speaker 1: would be James Carl Buck, who was a student. He
Speaker 1: was in Egypt and Egyptian officials detained him and he
Speaker 1: tweeted the word arrested, and some of his colleagues were
Speaker 1: following him on Twitter read it and they got in
Speaker 1: touch with some authorities who got in touch with people
Speaker 1: in Egypt, and eventually that led to Buck being freed
Speaker 1: by the official So, I mean there are some I
Speaker 1: mean it's kind of hard to argue usefulness of Twitter
Speaker 1: when you're like, well, I got got a guy out
Speaker 1: of a foreign prison. Well that's that's pretty useful. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's one of those things where it might
Speaker 1: have taken days or weeks to get them out through
Speaker 1: normal channels, because it would just take that long for
Speaker 1: the information to get back to anyone who could do
Speaker 1: anything about it. Uh, there are other cool things you
Speaker 1: can do too. Like one of the things I like
Speaker 1: to do, I like to follow various folks over at
Speaker 1: NASA to keep up with what's going on the Space program.
Speaker 1: You can follow astronauts, and the astronauts are sending messages
Speaker 1: while they're in space down to NASA, who in turn
Speaker 1: are posting it to the astronauts Twitter accounts. So you're
Speaker 1: not actually reading tweets sent by you know, an astronaut
Speaker 1: typing on his iPhone up in orbit, but you are
Speaker 1: reading real time information about what's going on during the mission,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. Some of the uh, some of
Speaker 1: the equipment even has its own Twitter feed. Sure. One
Speaker 1: of the Mars rovers had one of the most famous,
Speaker 1: the Phoenix Lander, had one most famous Twitter accounts early
Speaker 1: on and had devoted fans following. And when the Phoenix
Speaker 1: Twitter Twitter account had the last message from the Phoenix Lander,
Speaker 1: there are people who are crying because they had an
Speaker 1: emotional attachment to this artificial construct that had kind of
Speaker 1: a humanizing effect because of the tweet. The tweets, and
Speaker 1: I mean the same thing is true just about any
Speaker 1: Twitter account. If you're following someone from Twitter, you start
Speaker 1: to feel like you get to know this person, and
Speaker 1: even if you have no other connection other than through Twitter,
Speaker 1: you might get upset if you find out something has
Speaker 1: happened to this person. We're seeing that with the Iran
Speaker 1: issue as well. People are starting to get emotionally attached
Speaker 1: to these names and there's no real name attached to
Speaker 1: these these handles, but they're getting attached to these personalities
Speaker 1: and there's genuine concern about what's going to happen to
Speaker 1: these people. It really puts a humanizing effect on on
Speaker 1: situations around the world and in space. Actually, I guess
Speaker 1: it's not just around the world. You know, I have
Speaker 1: one that's much eight er in mood. What's that? No
Speaker 1: crying involved? Shameless corporate promotion, but not on not on
Speaker 1: the part of the UM, you know follower, because a
Speaker 1: lot of companies now are starting to offer coupons to
Speaker 1: follow their company UM and they'll they like doing stuff
Speaker 1: that's timely, I guess, because it's cool to be, you know,
Speaker 1: social media oriented. Now he'll see, you know, hey, come
Speaker 1: in between three and four and get off or get
Speaker 1: a free something donut or you know, cup of coffee
Speaker 1: or something, and people show up. I thought you were
Speaker 1: going to go with Skittles. I wasn't aware of the
Speaker 1: Skittles I wasn't aware of the Skittles thing. There's the
Speaker 1: Skittles thing. You haven't heard about this. So what Skills
Speaker 1: did was they they they change their wealths different now,
Speaker 1: but they change their website so that their website was
Speaker 1: publishing tweets that had the words Skittles in them. So
Speaker 1: if you went to the website, all it was was
Speaker 1: a Twitter fee of various people that said something about now,
Speaker 1: and then people began to post ridiculous or rude or
Speaker 1: obnoxious things that had the word Skittles in it, just
Speaker 1: to troll the Skittles website, which, come on, you had
Speaker 1: to expect that. How could you not know that was
Speaker 1: gonna happen. It's the Internet. I mean, I'm a decent person,
Speaker 1: but even I would find it difficult to resist not
Speaker 1: putting some goofy joke that has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: Skittles and then just add the Skittles tag at the end,
Speaker 1: just so it goes up on the site. You know.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the General Motors promotion that they
Speaker 1: did a couple of years ago, where they would let
Speaker 1: you do. Put whatever messaging you wanted to on an
Speaker 1: ad and put it online, and people started talking about
Speaker 1: gas guzzlers and environmental stuff and all sorts of profane things.
Speaker 1: Sad trombone. Yeah, that's sort of opens yourself up for
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I got one more before we Uh, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to start. We can wrapping this up
Speaker 1: because it's this is a long one. So m you
Speaker 1: can complain about stuff. Oh yeah, you can get responses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Chris and I have both had this happen where
Speaker 1: and it wasn't our intent to get a response from
Speaker 1: anyone based upon what we were talking about, but we would.
Speaker 1: You know, you you something not work, that isn't working
Speaker 1: the way you expected it to. You might you feel
Speaker 1: like you said nolla tweet about you know, you have
Speaker 1: this thought, Hey I really wish this would work the
Speaker 1: way it was advertised, you said alla tweets saying hey
Speaker 1: I really wish blah blah blah would work properly. And
Speaker 1: then before you know it, you have an executive right
Speaker 1: to you and say, hey, I work for such and such,
Speaker 1: how can I you know, help this? What's what's going on?
Speaker 1: And then suddenly you've got very personalized customer service. It
Speaker 1: doesn't always work out the way you might want to to,
Speaker 1: but and not everyone has it. I mean, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: go on Twitter and just start complaining about every major
Speaker 1: company you can think of, because that's not really you know,
Speaker 1: first of all, people are gonna notice it. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: second well that's not what Twitter is for. But it
Speaker 1: can happen. I mean I've I've had it happen, so um,
Speaker 1: you know I've got more. But we're thirty minutes into
Speaker 1: this already, So why don't we just go on to
Speaker 1: listener mail? I don't know about that. So this is
Speaker 1: from Ben from London, Ontario. Hey guys, just listening to
Speaker 1: your podcast on Vince Surf and the listener mail you answered.
Speaker 1: By the way, I can't help sheldy listener mail along
Speaker 1: with you, even when at work when there's people around.
Speaker 1: I bet you're going to get that one. And you
Speaker 1: equated an IP address to a street address. However, I
Speaker 1: think this is analogy is not right. I've worked tech
Speaker 1: support for several US Internet companies and I found a
Speaker 1: better One way to talk about this is say the
Speaker 1: IP addresses like a phone number. The number can change,
Speaker 1: however the physical equipment will not. What I would say
Speaker 1: is more like a street address, the MAC address associated
Speaker 1: with the Ethernet card slash modem slash router. Each street
Speaker 1: address MAC address is assigned a phone number I p address,
Speaker 1: but that phone number can change even if the street
Speaker 1: address is the same. That That was all air quotes.
Speaker 1: The best response I got to that analogy was a
Speaker 1: customer that said, well, wouldn't that be confusing if the
Speaker 1: phone company kept changing my phone number all the time?
Speaker 1: And I replied with, well, that's why you and your
Speaker 1: friends would get speed dial. Then all you do is
Speaker 1: dial my friend John dot com and you can talk
Speaker 1: with John. Suddenly, this older man understood how the Internet
Speaker 1: works and was overjoyed with how simple it is when
Speaker 1: you strip away the more complex stuff. Sure it's not
Speaker 1: exactly how it all works, but it's enough to get
Speaker 1: someone who's completely lost get a general idea of how
Speaker 1: the internet works. Thanks for the great podcast, and please
Speaker 1: keep up with the listener mail. Then you're I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna sit here and say thank you. Um. Also, I
Speaker 1: will deal with all the email I get for saying
Speaker 1: listener mail like that so many times in one address.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's a that's a great point. Um, it
Speaker 1: is more like a phone number than a street address.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of it in a sense of,
Speaker 1: you know, delivering mail, the way you deliver packets of
Speaker 1: information across the Internet. But you're right, when it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to relate to a physical location, it does tend
Speaker 1: to confuse things a little more. I guess I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I was checking my Twitter feed all right, So if
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about Twitter, you can go
Speaker 1: to how stuff Works dot com, where we have a
Speaker 1: great article written by who's that hack? Uh? Oh right, Strickland,
Speaker 1: that guy. Um, if you want to follow that guy,
Speaker 1: remember John Strickland over on Twitter. I expect to see
Speaker 1: lots and lots of followers after this, and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and be sure to check out the new
Speaker 1: tech stuff blog. Now on the house stuff What's homepage
Speaker 1: brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you