A Quantitave Study suggests that Twitter is not Primarily a Social Networking Site

A lot can be said about Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other social media. What is the best, the most useful, the most popular the most social (and has the least privacy-issues, hehe Facebook)?

You know I love Twitter. Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. The tweets don’t exceed 140 characters, so your message must be very concise. For me Twitter is a very rich source of information and a useful networking site. But it is hard to explain that to others.

Some Most people think that individuals who twitter are just parroting others (hé this is called retweeting, guys!) or are just egocentric bores (“I eat cornflakes for dinner”).

Well, a recent quantitative study by a group of researchers at Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science and Technology suggest that they might just be right. … Or at least their data suggest Twitter may be less of a social site and more of a news site.

According to Haewoon Kwak et al this is the first quantitative Twitter study ever.

The researchers crawled the entire Twitter site and obtained 41.7 million user profiles, 1.47 billion social relations, 4,262 trending topics, and 106 million tweets. They looked at the follower-following topology, looked at the ranking by number of followers and by PageRank, analyzed the retweets and the tweets of top trending topics.

You can read the main conclusions in the power presentation below and their abstract for Proceedings of the 19th International World Wide Web (WWW) Conference, April 26-30, 2010, Raleigh NC (USA). Below the abstract you can also find links to two download files, enabling you to reanalyze the data
Going Social Now and ReadWriteWeb also give a nice overview.

What are their main conclusions:

• Twitter is not very “social”
  • It is “I follow you”, not “lets become friends” and you don’t have to approve or follow back. Following thus means that you “just subscribe” to the tweets of that person.
  • Only 22.1% of the relationships are reciprocal, thus 77.9% of the relationships is one way, just one of two is following the other. Surprisingly, 67.6% of users on Twitter are not followed by any of the people they follow.
  • this low reciprocity is unlike all other human social networks.
• For most tweople, Twitter is primarily a source of information, not a social networking or information dissemination platform.
  • The Majority of topics (54,3%) are headline topics
  • Few users reach a large audience directly.
  • The average path length between two people on Twitter is 4.12. This is much shorter than Stanley Milgram’s original experiment uncovering the “six degrees of separation” phenomena.
  • Any retweeted tweet is to reach an average of 1,000 users no matter what the number of followers is of the original tweet.
  • Once retweeted, a tweet gets retweeted almost instantly on next hops, signifying fast diffusion of information after the 1st retweet.

It is a beautiful study that highlights the topological characteristics of Twitter.

One word of caution. Twitter is analyzed as a whole. There are many subpopulations with their own kinetics and goals. So the majority of people may follow the news, and fans may follow a celebrity by the million, but there are (relatively) small niches on Twitter, like health and medicine (or science) that may not follow the same rules.
I daresay (guess) that more people in this niche follow each other and do use Twitter both as a source of information and as as  network for social communication.
But these small niches are outnumbered by others (news sites, CEOs, celebrities).
At least that is my hypothesis.

Who is going to test this??

Many different Twitter birds in a flock

Credits

• Blue Twitter Bird: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulsnelling/3586152432/in/set-72157616036806501/ (CC)
• Wild Parrot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artolog/267530093/ (CC)
• Many Parrots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11268984@N07/4516341668/in/faves-laikaspoetnik/

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Health Tweeder. A Neat Visual Tool… But is it Useful?

First seen on ScienceRoll (February 1st) and later throughout the Twitterverse & Blogosphere: Health Tweeder (http://www.pixelsandpills.com/tweeder/), a tool launched by Pixels and Pills.

Health Tweeder is a  neat visual tool meant to aggregate tweets (Twitter messages) on specific health areas.

The Landing page consist of petri dishes, each corresponding to a specific medical discipline or disease. The size of the petri dish, and the number of cells in it, reflect the number of captured tweets. The health categories are also shown at the left, ranked by number of tweets. For instance, the second-largest category Pediatrics (in Orange) corresponds to the orange petri-dish of 170 tweets (accessed February 9th).

In Pixels and Pills own words:

The underlying idea was to build a visual tool so that people could review the dialog in specific areas in an interesting way. Using petri dishes to culture cells of dialog, each cell in a petri dish represents a distinct tweet that has been gathered using a range of search terms, hashtags, and people we’ve identified to follow. The cells grow and shrink based on the volume of content at any one time. In totality, they provide a dynamic view of the healthcare dialog on Twitter.

If you click on the orange petri-dish you see individual “cells” or Tweets. Moving the mouse over a particular cell [1] will show the corresponding tweet at the right. You can also search by page [2].

Health Tweeder looks pretty kewl. I love visual tools. They have a user-friendly, intuitive interface and it is fun to play with.  The concept of Health Tweeder -“cells of dialog cultured in petri dishes”- is also original. Perhaps it would have even be more consistent with the petri-dishes concept if each spot didn’t represent a tweet (cell) but a twitter person (cell clone or colony). But then, few clones would be present: the number of sources is very limited. There are only a few per health category. It looks as if the search criteria consist of very specific hashtags used by a very select group of people.

In the Pediatrics petri-dish there were mainly tweets seeded of Autism_Today, TannersDad, PeterBrownPsy, ADHD_News and MDLinx. The tweets didn’t seem extraordinary useful to me. The emphasis is on topics related to autism and ADHD, and incidentally on allergy or H1N1. Pediatrics must cover more than this?!

The same is true for other topics. Furthermore I can’t see any dialogs, as the makers of Health Tweeder suggest. Just one-way-tweets.

That made me wonder as to the real value of this tool.

For me, as a reasonable experienced Twitter user, searches for hashtags (sort of keywords), Twitter directories and Twitter Lists seem much more useful.

Possibly, this tool is suitable for less experienced Twitter users who prefer a narrow choice of Tweets on his/her area of interest. Still it seems rather cumbersome to follow tweets this way. Suppose I want to stay up-to-date on a particular topic. How do I know which tweets are new and which aren’t (if I merely use the petri-dish)?

The petri-dish is nice for stumbling upon, not for quick browsing, and certainly not for keeping up-to-date.

I searched on the Internet for other reviews of this tool, and without exception they were very positive.

Only at Andrew Spong’s blog STewM I found a comment of Sally Chuch, expressing a similar contrarian view. She was rather disappointed after checking out ‘cancer’ (her expertise).

What criteria is the tool using to search on? Are only certain Twitter handles defined as ‘kosher’ and used to select from their tweets?

In ‘cancer’ it includes mainly a couple of news outlets and one of two physicians, for example. There’s a lot more out there! (…)

Also, searching on ‘cancer’ will give you mainly solid tumours and not hematologic malignancies such as leukemias, lymphomas, myelodysplastic syndrome etc,

Andrew answered that he was more looking at the tool from the perspective of ‘what it could be’, not from the perspective of ‘what it actually is’. Andrew:

As we all head into the cloud and anticipate a time when much of the data we actually end up reviewing will be filtered according to our evolving preferences, it’s nice to begin to conceptualize a time when visualization tools will be added into the search mix.

So we will wait and see how this tool evolves…

The looks are great, the idea is original, but Love needs a little bit more.

video made by Andrew Spong

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#FollowFriday #FF the EBM-Skeptics @cochranecollab @EvidenceMatters @oracknows @ACPinternists

FollowFriday is a twitter tradition in which twitter users recommend other users to follow (on Friday) by twittering their name(s), the hashtags #FF or #FollowFriday, and the reason for their recommendation(s).

Since the roll out of Twitter lists I add the #FollowFriday Recommendations to a (semi-)permanent #FollowFriday Twitter list: @laikas/followfridays-ff

This week I have added 4 people to the #FollowFriday list who are all twittering about EBM and/or are skeptics and/or belong to the Cochrane Collaboration. Since there are many interesting people in this field, I also made a separate Twitterlist: @laikas/ebm-cochrane-sceptics

The following people are added to both my #followfridays-ff (n=36) and ebm-cochrane-sceptics (n=46) lists. If you are on twitter you can follow these lists.
I’m sure I forgot somebody. If I did, let me know and I’ll see if I include that person.

All 4 tweople have twittered about the new and much discussed breast cancer screening guidelines.

1. @ACPinternists* is the Communications Department of the American College of Physicians (ACP). I know ACP from the ACP-Journal club with its excellent critical appraised topics, in a section of the well known Annals of Internal Medicine. The uproar over the new U.S. breast cancer screening guidelines started with the publication of 3 articles in Ann Intern Med.
   *Mmm, when I come to think of it, shouldn’t @ACPinternists be added to the biomedical journals Twitter lists as well?
2. @EvidenceMatters is really an invaluable tweeter with a high output of many different kinds of tweets, often (no surprise) related to Evidence Based Medicine. He (?) is very inspiring. My post “screening can’t hurt, can it” was inspired by one of his tweets.
3. @cochranecollab stands for the Cochrane Collaboration. Like @acpinternists the tweets are mostly unidirectional, but provide interesting information related to EBM and/or the Cochrane Collaboration. Disclosure: I’m not entirely neutral.
4. @oracknows. Who doesn’t know Orac? Orac is “a (not so) humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone might actually care about his miscellaneous”. His tweets are valuable because of his high quality posts on his blog Respectful Insolence: Orac mostly uses Twitter as a publication platform. I really can recommend his excellent explanation of the new breast cancer guidelines.

You may also want to read:

• Laikas #FollowFriday #FF Twitter-List (2009/11/13)
• Twitter’s #FollowFriday #FF – Over the Top. Literally (2009/09/11) with tips how to use FollowFriday.

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#FollowFriday #FF Dutch @Nutrigenomics @Beatis @TheSofa @DrShock @digicmb

Last week I announced that I would weekly update my FollowFriday Twitter list.

On the FollowFriday list are people I would like to recommend to you.

When you’re on Twitter you can follow my FF-list here:
http://twitter.com/laikas/followfridays-ff/

This week I would like to put several Dutch people in the limelight.

All these people have in common that they twitter mainly in English about scientific and/or library 2.0 subjects. And they are all nice.

@digicmb (medlib, geek, NL, **) and @DrShock (doctor, psychi, NL, **) were already on my #FF-list

@digicmb (Guus van den Brekel) was on Twitter long before I gave it a try. He knows a lot about Second Life, Web 2.0 Tools (especially all kinds of widgets and Netvibes)  and is always willing to share information. A must follow for librarians. His blog is http://digicmb.blogspot.com/. The Google Wave directory of helpful waves! is a recent post that I liked.

I already knew @DrShock as a blogger. DrShock is a Dutch psychiatrist working in a University hospital. His specialty in psychiatry is the treatment of depression. His blog (http://www.shockmd.com/) is regularly mentioned on this blog. It has a beautiful lay-out with a broad coverage of subjects. DrShock even regularly participates in the Medlibs Round and will be a future host of this Medical Librarian blog carnival as well.

Another Dutch psychiatrist, with a similarly well chosen name: @TheSofa. Georg Fritz is only recently on Twitter, but had interesting Tweets right from the start. He also started a posterous account: georgfritz’s posterous. I like the The November poem I by Thomas Hood, that starts like this: No sun–no moon!  No morn–no noon!  No dawn–no dusk–no proper time of day–  No sky–no earthly view–  No distance looking blue–….
No wonder people get depressed at this time of year.

Also very interesting are the tweets of @Nutrigenomics, Professor in Nutrigenomics, Wageningen University and Director of NL Nutrigenomics Centre. Main emphasis of tweets is on genetics, nutrition, science and health. The link at his Twitter account goes to the Nutrition, Metabolism Genomics Groupat the Wageningen University.

Last week I first ‘met’ @Beatis on Twitter. She is still not sure about the value of Twitter. I hope she will stay tweeting, because her tweets -that can be best described as (moderately) skeptic- are certainly valuable. She co-authors the (english-language) Anaximperator blog. The purpose of this blog is to warn against alternative medicine and alternative medicine for cancer in particular.

You may also want to read:

• Laikas #FollowFriday #FF Twitter-List (2009/11/13)
• Twitter’s #FollowFriday #FF – Over the Top. Literally (2009/09/11) with tips how to use FollowFriday.

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Laika’s #FollowFriday #FF Twitter List

In my post Twitter’s #FollowFriday #FF – Over the Top. Literally I explained what Twitter’s FollowFriday or FF means, how this Twitter meme started and how FollowFriday should and shouldn’t be used.

In short, FollowFriday is a way to recommend a few people to your Twitter-followers. For at least 2 reasons: to acknowledge those favorite tweeters and make it easier for your followers to find new interesting people.

However, many people don’t use the FollowFriday correctly. For instance, they spend several tweets just mentioning dozens of @people and they repeat the tweets (retweet) about each recommendation they get @themselves. That is annoying for people seeing these tweets appearing in their timeline.

In this FollowFriday post I suggested some Twitter Etiquette Rules as well as some alternatives for the FollowFriday approach.

Now there is another alternative, which can either be used alone or as an adjunct to the normal FollowFriday-tweets:

Twitterlists!

The Twitter List feature is designed to make following and suggesting groups of tweeters easier. Everyone on Twitter can create up to 20 lists with a maximum of 500 Twitter people each. Others can follow these lists as well. So instead of FollowFridays you could construct lists of your favorite Twitter people for others to follow. There is one disadvantage of this approach: context is lost. You can only put people on a list without any further explanation why. Of course, you can create separate lists of categories of people, in my case librarians, doctors and funny people for instance, so others have an idea what to expect.

Some people think Twitterlists make FollowFridays obsolete. However Twitterlists and FollowFridays could reinforce each other. At least that’s what I will try using the following approach.

I will construct a FollowFriday Twitter list on basis of my FollowFriday-tweets. They provide the context. Because Tweets get lost, I will gather those tweets on a separate page, so you can always find my elaborated FF-recommendations there.

For Twitter-newcomers, who know me, but find it difficult to find interesting people to follow, this may be a useful starting point.

In selective cases I also plan to write a #FF post to put someone in the limelight. I intend to do the same with bloggers.

By the way I only include people with useful tweets on the lists, so people with great blogs but with not so interesting or very infrequent tweets won’t be included.
As time goes, I may also prune the list, because the number or quality of the tweets or my preference may change.

What is a good tweet? That is personal, but I think that people should be original, helpful, social and up to date and provide good information (with links) .

When you’re on Twitter you like you can follow my FF-list here:
http://twitter.com/laikas/followfridays-ff/

The Following people are included on my FF-list (listed chronologically according my tweet-timeline)
** means that I often have a chitchat or social talk with that person and/or that he/she is very helpful).

1. @allergynotes , currently @drves (doctor, immunology, health 2.0, **) 2x
2. @berci (doctor, scientist, **)
3. @conorato (health 2.0)
4. @shamsha (medlib, **)    3x
5. @amcunningam (doctor, education, skeptic, **)  2x
6. @pudliszek (medlib, **) 2x
7. @eagledawg (medlib, **)  2x
8. @pfanderson (medlib, geek, **)
9. @digicmb (medlib, geek, NL, **)  2x
10. @sarchet62 (lib, med. anthropologist, geek)
11. @dreamingspires (publishing, Aussie, **)
12. @staticnrg (survivor, health 2.0, science, **)
13. @bonnycastle (education, **)
14. @andrewspong (publishing, skeptic)
15. @DrShock (doctor, psychi, NL, **)
16. @aarontay (lib, geek)
17. @MarilynMann (science, cancer survivor, lawyer, skeptic, pharma)
    Following tweets could not be traced back:
18. @flutesUD (scientist, PhD-student, **)
19. @palmdoc (doctor, geek)
20. @doctorblogs (doctor, EBM, health 2.0)
21. @bgaustin (EBM)
22. @northerndoctor (doctor, GP, EBM, Skeptic)
23. @Blue_Wode (EBM, Skeptic)
24. @precordialthump (doctor, ICU, Aussie, **)
25. @sandnsurf (doctor, ICU, Aussie, **)
26. @bitethedust (Remote Pharmacist, Aussie, Art, **)
27. @giustini (medlib, web 2.0)
28. @jstaaks (lib, psycho, UBA, bieptweet, NL, **)
29. @ENTHouse (doc, ENT, **)

Based on the Next #FollowFriday recommendations (as far as I could trace them back):

• #followfriday @allergynotes @berci @conorato @shamsha @amcunningam 2 name just a few #Nextfriday I will mention other people w/useful tweets
• #followfriday “medlibs” bc of their TWEETS! @shamsha @pudliszek @eagledawg @pfanderson @digicmb @sarchet62#nextfriday More
• #Followfriday 4 truly responding 2 tweets and providing good tweets themselves @dreamingspires @digicmb@AllergyNotes @shamsha @Pudliszek
• RT @alisha764: #followfriday This week, shout out 2 @eagledawg 4 great updates, keeping @medlibs running, & Friday Foolery posts! – YEP!
• #followfriday @staticnrg 4 describing her own journey as a cushing patient, doing a lot 4 her fellow patient, while keeping a broad interest
• The other #followfriday goes to @bonnycastle who has designed a beautiful medical education wiki and is always willing to help (via twitter)
• #followmonday instead of #followfriday follow @andrewspong 4 Open Access Week October 19-23, 2009 http://www.openaccessweek.org/ #STweM
• This #followfriday goes 2 @DrShock. Perfect Med Blog, good tweets & nice guy, always ready 2 help and give advice.
• #Followfriday @amcunningham bc this GP is nice, soundly critical, likes discussions ; specialized in education, but has a broad interest.
• My #followfriday goes to @aarontay , a techy librarian from Singapore. Has many tips as a tweeter and a blogger http://is.gd/2ssJ3 #ff #fb
• #fussyfollowfriday #followfriday @MarilynMann 4 her excellent, original tweets i.e. about pharma & clinical trials – but pls another avatar

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Twitter Lists of Medical and other Scientific Journals

In the previous two posts (“Biomedical Journals on Twitter” and List(s) of Tweeting Journals: Your Votes Please!) I introduced the Google-spreadsheet of (Bio-)medical Journals, manually compiled by the concerted effort of many people on Twitter. At a certain point other non-biomedical scientific journals were added, which made the list more complete, but less useful for most health care people, for whom the list was designed. In the last post I therefore asked people whether they preferred one complete list (as it was), one lists with different tabs for each discipline or different spreadsheets.

The results of the poll:

Twenty-seven people responded. Although this is a small sample, it is clear that people either preferred one separate medical or biomedical list (30% and 26%) or one spreadsheet with all types of journals on separate tabs (33%). There was little or no interest in separate lists or all journals on one lists (without separation in tabs).

Discussion about the design of the spreadsheet has become somewhat superfluous by the recent roll out of Twitter Lists. The Twitter List feature is designed to make following and suggesting groups of tweeters easier. Everyone on Twitter can make up 20 lists of maximal 500 Twitter/people each. On the web you can easily add each account you like to your lists.

I have created 3 Twitter Journal List. In line with the outcome of the poll, I made  completely overlapping sets, where the Medical journal set is part of the Biomedical journal set, which belongs to the All/Science set.

If you’re on Twitter you can follow these three journal lists:

• A (All) = http://twitter.com/laikas/scientific-journals-all : 90
• B (Biomedical) = http://twitter.com/laikas/biomedical-journals: 68
• M (Medical) = http://twitter.com/laikas/medical-journals: 48

The spreadsheet still forms the basis. You can make adjustments here and if you mark them (color) or let me know, I will include them in the Twitter lists.
Found any new journals/magazines? Please feel free to add them.

If you’re interested in following (bio-)medical and/or scientific journals you can follow the list(s) you want, or your own selection from the journals in the lists.

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De Ivoren Toren van Thomése

By way of exception I write a Dutch blog post to respond to an article in a Dutch Newspaper ridiculing speakers, writers, chatting and twittering people in a long-winded (3 pages) pompous, “literary” way, saying that they are terrorizing dictators. Although the writer, Thomése, might be right in some respects (all people  want to express their opinion, want to be heard, but nobody listens), his critique just hits the topic superficially. By doing so, the article adds to the already existing misunderstandings regarding social media. I finish my review by expressing the wish that Thomése mastered the art of Tweeting: be social, clear and comprehensive in 140 characters.

Image by PjotrP via Flickr

Bij uitzondering een Nederlands stukje op dit blog. Ik schrijf meestal alleen over medische-wetenschappelijke zaken -in het Engels-, maar in dit geval kon ik het niet laten. Ik kreeg namelijk een aanval van acute, persisterende jeuk toen ik het stuk van Thomése in Het NRC Handelsblad van afgelopen weekend las. Een blog bericht van Jeroen Mirck (“P.F. Thomése is een kleine dictator”) kon mijn jeuk slechts enigzins verlichten.

Het stuk van Thomése in de Opinie & Debat bijlage, heeft als kop: Sprekers, schrijvers, bellers, sms’ers, chatteraars, twitteraars: allemaal kleine dictators. Eerst vallen je ogen op chatteraars en twitteraars (oh het is weer zo’n trendy anti-Twitter story op zijn Volkskrants [1]), maar dan zie je ‘sprekers, schrijvers en bellers’ staan en je vraagt je af: “wie blijft er over”?

Het vervelende van dit stuk is dat het dermate ‘literair’ (en quasi-intelligent [1]) is dat je eerst twee-en-een-halve krantenpagina door proza heen moet worstelen voordat er uberhaupt iets over deze groep “Sprekers, schrijvers, bellers, sms’ers, chatteraars, twitteraars” gezegd wordt.

Thomése wijdt ettelijke kolommen aan de introductie, een klassiek verhaal van Sartre (Erostrate uit le Mur), wat kennelijk nodig is om later zijn “kritiek in beeldspraak” te vervatten. Dit -op zich prachtige verhaal [2]- komt erop neer dat de hoofdpersoon, Paul Hilbert, gewoon is van bovenaf (de zesde etage) “neer te kijken” op mensen als waren het mieren. Hierdoor abstraheert hij mensen, ze ontmenselijken. In gedachten doodt hij willekeurige mensen -ja iedereen zou wel eens bepaalde mensen neer willen knallen, inclusief Thomése-. Wanneer Hilbert dit daadwerkelijk doet daalt hij (ook letterlijk) af naar een lager niveau en verliest hij daarbij zijn uitzonderingpositie. Hij wordt mier onder de mieren en wordt vanwege zijn daad opgejaagd tot aan het nederige toilet.

Thomése ziet in elke hedendaagse multimediale burger een Paul Hilbert, die met een killersblik op zijn eigen zesde verdieping “de gebeurtenissen op de voet volgt, zappend en surfend, alles en iedereen verwijderend uit zijn bewustzijn.”

“Er zijn te veel sprekers, te veel schrijvers, te veel bellers, sms’ers, chatters, twitteraars, allemaal kleine dictators, en allemaal willen ze laten weten – wat eigenlijk? Dat ze bestaan, om te beginnen. Hallo met mij even en dan komt het. Te veel mensen laten ongevraagd weten wat ze doen, wat ze willen en zullen (….) Maar waar zijn de lezers, de kijkers, de luisteraars? Wie moet dat allemaal aanhoren, aanschouwen, ondergaan? Zonder luisteraars kan er ook geen onderscheid meer worden gemaakt, is alles even belangrijk geworden. Er is niemand die nog tegenspreekt.”

De voorbeelden die Thomése geeft lijken vooral quotes uit discussielijsten of tweets. Het is een lukrake verzameling van uitspraken als:

“Ik mag hem wel die Scheringa”.
“Ik vind het een glibber”
Einde discussie.

Nietzeggend, inderdaad. Maar om dit nou een terroristisch-dictatoriale uitspraak te noemen die -in het openbaar gangbaar is geworden… pfff.

Een mening over iets hebben en in het openbaar ventileren is iets van alle tijden. De kruidenier van weleer ventileerde ook ongevraagd zijn mening over de heren politici, de economie of anders wel het weer. En iedere klant had ook weer zijn mening. Dat veel mensen niet de kunst verstaan te luisteren is ook niet uniek voor deze tijd.

Aan de andere kant zijn tijden zijn inderdaad veranderd: het is jachtiger, vluchtiger, consumptiever en platter geworden. Maar dat komt niet persé dóór het gebruik van multimedia.

De vergelijking van het multimediale plebs met de terroristische dictator die van 6 hoog alles oplegt loopt eigenlijk mank. Dictator ben je alleen als je mensen tot luisteren kunt dwingen en als anderen daar dus niet aan kunnen ontkomen. Luidruchtige mobiele gesprekken in de tram en stalkende schrijvers zijn uitzonderingen die deze regel bevestigen. Al zijn bellen en praten toch tamelijk pre-21ste eeuw.

Reacties op krantenartikelen, berichten, lijsten en blogs zijn wellicht vaak ontzettend eenzijdig en van een hoog wat-ben-ik-toch-origineel-en-leuk gehalte, maar het mooie is dat je het niet hoeft te lezen. Als multimediale burger (zender en ontvanger) ben je geheel vrij hierin.

En dat geldt zeker voor een nieuwe tool als Twitter. Zoals ik in een recente workshop aangaf: “Twitter is wat je er zelf van maakt.”

Doorzoek je Twitter real life op “Scheringa” of “H1N1″ dan zie je een woud aan allemaal losstaande meningen en uitspraken, meestal erg flauw of gewoon onzin. Ik doorzoek Twitter vrijwel nooit op te algemene termen en zeker niet op “trending topics”.

Veel mensen komen, net als Thomese niet verder dan deze verrekijker-visie op Twitter. Sommigen dalen even af, twitteren wat en zijn dan enorm teleurgesteld: niemand reageert. Wat ze niet begrijpen is dat Twitter een SOCIAAL MEDIUM is. Je moet een netwerk opbouwen van twitteraars die jij  interessant vindt en je moet zelf ook interessant genoeg zijn voor anderen om je te volgen. Althans als je zelf ook gehoord wilt worden.

Twitter kent nauwelijks hierarchie, er zijn geen dictators, dat werkt niet. Om beurten is iedereen schrijver en iedereen publiek, maar zo dat er een wisselwerking is. Ideaal gesproken, niet iedereen verstaat die kunst. [3]

Degene die ik volg zijn mijn menselijk filter voor ruis. Twittert iemand van de mensen die ik volg over ‘Scheringa’ of ‘H1N1′, dan is dat in de meeste gevallen waar, interessant of grappig.

Ik ontken niet dat er niet-luisterende leuteraars zijn. De kunst is om mensen te vinden die je wel boeien. Op dezelfde wijze als dat je vrienden maakt: het moet klikken. Het is allemaal eigen keus, zeker in de nieuwe (sociale) media.

Wat ik mis in Thomése’s stuk is de nuance, het is typisch de blik van iemand op de Eiffeltoren die naar beneden kijkt en enkel mieren ontwaart. Van bovenaf lijkt dat een hopeloos gewirwar en is iedereen eender.

In zijn stuk haalt Thomése Herostratus aan, de provocateur uit de klassieke oudheid die dacht: “ik kan misschien geen tempel bouwen, maar ik kan er wel een in brand steken”. Ik kan niet nalaten een vergelijking te trekken met Thomése, die wel in een ivoren toren woont en uitkijkt over de massa, die sociale media als Twitter niet doorgondt noch beheerst, maar het wel weet af te branden. Helaas verstaat hij niet de kunst dat op zijn Twitters te doen. In 140 leestekens….

1. Bron: http://www.jeroenmirck.nl/2009/10/pf-thomese-is-een-kleine-dictator/
2. Begin jaren 70 behoorden Simone de Beauvoir en Sartre tot mijn favoriete schrijvers.
3. Het is voor mij mogelijk wel wat makkelijker omdat mijn aanwezigheid op Twitter vooral werkgerelateerd is.

A Personalized Twitter Times: useful to others too.

Yesterday I posted my “Introduction to Medicine 2.0″ presentation on this blog and on Slideshare (where it is currently featured at their homepage).
Looking back I think that half of the participants found the Twitter part (and the way it is interwoven with other Web 2.0 tools) the most interesting, whereas this was the part where the other half was beginning to gaze. Later, Chris said that it should be no surprise that people not used to such a tool as Tweetdeck think: “What the hack is that, all those columns, with @, RT, names and links?” – it seems meaningless and such a waste of time. No matter what you tell them.

Today I received my personalized Twitter Times, which is constructed of blogposts that are most popular (most tweeted about) by my friends -the people whose ideas and interest I share on Twitter-. I find it a really neat overview of -indeed- very interesting posts. Certainly useful when a congress doesn’t allow me to follow tweets: I can read my newspaper late at night instead.

The Twitter Times is useful to other Tweople too, because they can find like-minded people they didn’t know by then.

Furthermore,  it might be useful for absolute beginners who don’t grasp the meaning of Twitter. Such a Twitter Times offers a far better overview and reads much more easily than tweets on Tweetdeck, which barely seem useful without their context.

Perhaps The Twitter Times could convince these skeptics to use Twitter as well. Or would they rather be inclined to say: “Thank you for the trouble, I rather read yours”….

Here is my real life personal ” Twitter Times” (and here is the PDF of Todays Twitter Times)

You can get yours at: http://www.twittertim.es/ (but it takes a few days)

Hattip: Francisco van Jole @2525

Silly Sunday [5]: Best use of Twitter so far!

I had no time to post a Friday Foolery post. So I make it a Silly Sunday post.

The comic is posted at: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-10-04/

Thanks to @Pharmagossip (for strip and title)

Oh and here is another Twitter-comic: Twitterous girlfriend by meerasapra

picture taken by erben, hattip: @matushiq

Twitter’s #FollowFriday #FF – Over the Top. Literally

Last Update: Sunday (2009-13-09), text added in blue

The Twittermeme #FollowFriday (or #FF) was started January this year by Micah Baldwin (@micah) with one single Tweet: “I am starting Follow Fridays. Every Friday, suggest a person to follow, and everyone follow him/her. Today its @fancyjeffrey & @w1redone.”

A friend of Micah suggested to add the hashtag (a community driven tag) #FollowFriday to the tweet, some other friends helped to spread the word and a tweetmeme was born: now, all over the world #FollowFriday is a Twitter “trending topic” on Fridays (see Mashable)

http://ec.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/followfridaychart.png

The concept of FollowFriday is that every Friday you recommend a few people to your Twitter-followers. For at least 2 reasons:

1. it is a way to acknowledge those particular people
2. it is a very efficient way for your followers to find other interesting Twitter people

Ideally (at least IMHO) the #FollowFriday tweets (message of 140 characters or less):

• should consist of:
  • the hashtag #FollowFriday,  #FF or both
  • 1-3 names of people you would like to recommend (the tweet should not start with their names, because otherwise only the recommend person himself and your mutual friends will be able to read the tweet, -this doesn’t make much sense)
  • a short explanation why you recommend him/her.
• are tweeted on Fridays
• are more or less unique (just one or two tweets, not dozens in a row)
• should only recommend the best people in a particular field
  

Two examples, one by me and one by @jpardopardo (it was my one and only #FF recommendation in two weeks)

1. 
   laikas My #followfriday goes to @aarontay , a techy librarian from Singapore. Has many tips as a tweeter and a blogger http://is.gd/2ssJ3 #ff #fb 21 Aug 2009 from TweetDeck
2. 
   jpardopardo #followfriday Cochrane tweets you can not miss: @cochranecollab @radagabriel @MESOttawa @laikas @TSC_OH @DavidTovey 04 Sep 2009 from web

– this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

In these examples the hashtag #FollowFriday is followed by one or several names with the reason one should follow the person.

The general format thus would be:

#followfriday #FF @username Reason why you should follow him/her, area of interest, Their website URL, if applicable

If my followers see that I consider @aarontay a great techy librarian having a lot of good tips, they might find it worth while 2 check him by clicking @aarontay or the link to his blog http://is.gd/2ssJ3. If they go to his Twitter homepage and  find his tweets awesome, than they might decide to start following him.

If you’re interested in the Cochrane Collaboration, then you might try the tweople that are recommended by @jpardopardo. It takes somewhat more time, however, to check all 6 people, but it may yield some interesting new people to follow.

Thus, in principle #FollowFriday is a great tool to find other interesting people, BUT…

…suppose you’re following someone that tweets all this (x 3-5 times) every Friday?

I don’t follow this person (name not shown), but if I did, these #FollowFridays are really meaningless. I don’t know why I should follow the “suggested” people, nor do I want to try all the links. Furthermore if someone produces 10 or more of these kinds of tweets (those people exist!), my twitter account gets clogged with useless clutter. Its worse than an inbox full with spam.

But some people are even worse. They not only tweet a huge amount of meaningless FollowFridays, they also retweet (RT) the FollowFridays in which they are included to let the world know how popular they are (I can’t think of any other reason than that they want to show off).

And it is counterproductive….

Instead of following the recommended people I will unfollow those kind of FollowFridaying people (at the end).

I’m not a CEO or a marketing woman. I don’t want 10000 people to follow me, and even less so do I want to follow 10.000 people back.

I only desire to follow interesting people with a high signal to noise ratio of tweets in a manageable way.

I always thought that I was exceptional in thinking like this, but last two weeks several of my Twitter friends started to talk about the downside of FollowFridays. And when I Googled, o dear, the whole Twitterverse seemed to have written about it. (glad I Googled after I had almost finished this post)

1. 
   DrVes I don’t participate in “Follow Friday” (any day is good to recommend somebody) but @Dr_Steve_Ponder offers great diabetes info as Dr/patient 28 Aug 2009 from TweetDeck
2. 
   sciencebase I think it’s time to abandon #FollowFriday as a twitter meme, unless we can make it more useful and effective. 04 Sep 2009 from web
3. 
   novoseek agree / RT @sciencebase: I think it’s time to abandon #FollowFriday as a twitter meme, unless we can make it more useful and effective. 04 Sep 2009 from TweetDeck
4. 
   laikas RT @sciencebase: think it’s time 2 abandon #FollowFriday as a twitter meme, unless we can make it more useful/effective. wouldn’t agree more 04 Sep 2009 from TweetDeck
5. 
   DrShock RT @laikas: RT @sciencebase: think it’s time 2 abandon #FollowFriday what about #rec? 04 Sep 2009 from Seesmic

– this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

Oh and here is another one today (13-09)
pfanderson @laikas @wichor Yeah, I really hate it on Follow Friday when folks fill up a whole page nothing but people’s names. 22 minutes ago from web in reply to laikas

SO WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS? (blue added after publication)

ALTERNATIVES

1. Abandon FollowFriday
2. Just recommend anyone (special) whenever you like (DrVes , DrShock),
3. @MarilynMann: “What I do find useful is when someone joins twitter and people tweet “please welcome ___ to twitter,” which can be done any day of the week”
4. @sciencebase: “RT is the much better way to show fellow twitters that you care. If you’re RT’ing their tweets then you’re demonstrating that what they’re saying bears repeating, so recommending them indirectly…”
5. @philbaumann ‘s tip mentioned by @problogger in the same post:  Mark tweets from people you want to recommend on FollowFriday by favoriting them and tweet the URL of your favorites page (i.e., see the URL of Philbaumann’s Favorites page).
6. Share Groups of Twitter Users in One Click with TweepML (Mashable) – here are some lists from which you can choose: http://tweepml.org/follow/, including a top librarianlist. Of course there are already many lists and directories around, but the good thing is that you can personalize your own top groups and that another person can add anyone from that list by simple clicking.
7. Use #MrTweet Instead of #FollowFriday, send your weekly recommendation there, get an overview of the most awesome people according to your friends and get recommended yourselves (see bkmacdaddy). [added 2009-09-02]
   
   BETTER USE
   
   
8. Use FollowFriday sparingly and wisely, i.e. as described above. In fact the founder of FollowFriday proposes similar rules.
9. Mention a series of people on Twitter and tell why they’re great people on your blog -there is more room there (sucomments)
10. @problogger: (on his blog Twitip.com) “Spread your tweets throughout the day via scheduling services like Tweetlater (currently rebranding themselves as SocialOomph, Futuretweet or Hootsuite” (while taking care of the twitteretiquette, see above).
11. Matt Stratton proposes to use the hashtag fussy-follow-friday, to discrimate good tweets from bad ones.
12. Maija Haavisto, again on Twitip.com: “ask others for recommendations (such as “female sports bloggers” ..), either as a normal tweet or by posing a question to someone. They reply with names of Twitter users – preceding the initial @ with a period or something else, if they want others to see their recommendations. All tweets should be tagged with #ff or #followfriday, of course.

    EXTRA TIP TO KEEP YOUR Followfriday-recommendations

13. Perform a Twittersearch with (your @twittername  OR your twittername) (#followfriday OR #ff OR followfriday) and take an RSS-feed to that search. You see your recommendations and who has recommended you.
    Thus my search looks like (laikas OR @laikas)(#followfriday OR #ff OR followfriday) (and you can also add “friday”)

To add fussy-follow-friday to the follow friday tweet [10] seems unnecessarily complex to me. Asking others for recommendations [11] is a good suggestion, but I don’t see me applying that approach each Friday. I would (and already do) use this approach on selected occasions. Why not just use FollowFriday as it was meant to be used: recommend one or two people once a week [3]. I still like the idea. Contrary to marketing people and strategists, I’m already happy and honored when I’m FollowFridayed: for me it doesn’t have to lead to tons of followers (for others this is the main goal). In my case it has lead to some new, great twitterfriends. Quality is more important to me than quantity. I’ve  “met” some new interesting people, who I might not have met otherwise.

Option 2, 3 and 4 also seem very sensible to me. I share the mild) critique of @problogger regarding 5: “Not every tweet I Favorite comes from someone I necessarily want to recommend and favorites are not necessarily tweets planned on sharing. But people not using favorites often might find this an excellent option.”

6 seems more of an adjunct, nice tool, but less personal.

What do you think?

(Solutions may be added to the above list)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why #FollowFriday on Twitter Fails to Satisfy (ariwriter.com)
• Follow Friday (sucomments.com)
• Thanks for helping me get 20,000 Twitter followers in 4 months! (medicineandtechnology.com)
• TweeHits – check your FollowFriday rank (twi5.com)
• Twitroduce – Introduce your twitter friends (twi5.com)
• Woork’s Follow Friday List – Issue 01 (woork.blogspot.com)

suggest a list of people they followed whom they believed others would also enjoy

Read more: http://mattstratton.com/2009/06/10/fussy-follow-friday/#ixzz0QprUkP3o

Beware of Top 50 “Great Tools to Double Check your Doctor” or whatever Lists.

Just the other week I wrote a post “Vanity is the Quicksand of Reasoning: Beware of Top 100 and 50 lists!”

In short this post describes that (some) Top 100 etc lists may not be as useful or innocent as they seem. Some of these lists are created by real scam-sites, who’s only goal is to make money via click-troughs and to get as much traffic as possible, via YOU (and me)!

The scam appears in many guises.

1. As submissions for a  blog carnival, i.e. 100-weight-loss-tips-tricks.
2. An offer of a health care student who asks you to do a guest post (you only have to link back to his/her site).
3. In the form of a mail, dropping you a quick line that you’re included in a top 100 list, possibly worth mentioning to your audience.
4. You just noticed a top 100 list with excellent sites, worth mentioning on Twitter or Friendfeed, so your followers become aware of the sites and pass the message.

The first two are pretty obvious scam. The latter two are more difficult to see through.

Why do I write another post? Because it happened again, today. And I think I should bring the message home more clearly.

Below you see what happens. Berci has found a list with 50 great tools to “Double check your Doctor”. He tweets the link to what he considers a great resource list, and in no time the message and the link are tweeted several times. Some people also post a link on their blog.

1. 
   Berci 50 Great Tools to Double Check Your Doctor http://ff.im/-7q7DA 31 Aug 2009 from FriendFeed
2. 
   lizasisler Good resource list RT @Berci 50 Great Tools to Double Check Your Doctor http://ff.im/-7q7DA 31 Aug 2009 from web
3. 
   bart RT @Berci: 50 Great Tools to Double Check Your Doctor http://ff.im/-7q7DA 31 Aug 2009 from TweetDeck
4. 
   gtherrien RT @bart: 50 Great Tools to Double Check Your Doctor – Online Nursing Classes http://ff.im/-7q9pK 31 Aug 2009 from TweetDeck
5. 
   zorgbeheer DELI 50 Great Tools to Double Check Your Doctor – Online Nursing Classes: You probably know that Googling yo.. http://bit.ly/n1NXc 31 Aug 2009 from twitterfeed
6. 
   ekettell RT@Berci 50 Great Tools to Double Check Your Doctor http://ff.im/-7q7DA 31 Aug 2009 from web
7. 
   RobertLOakes RT @Berci: 50 Great Tools to Double Check Your Doctor http://ff.im/-7q7DA (via @ahier) 31 Aug 2009 from TweetDeck
8. 
   ENTHouse RT @Berci 50 Great Tools to Double Check Your Doctor http://ff.im/-7q7DA 31 Aug 2009 from web
9. 
   sagar13d 50 Great Tools to Double Check Your Doctor. URL: http://tinyurl.com/mlmf47 31 Aug 2009 from web

– this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

Finally this will result in more traffic to the website onlinenursingclasses and a higher rank in Google.

Indeed 12 hours after Berci’s tweet, searching for “50 Great Tools to Double Check Your Doctor” (between quotes) gives just 21 hits (similar hits not shown), many of which can be traced back to the twitter posts.
All but one are positive: the last hit is my warning, which was only received by ahier and TheSofa. Ahier deleted his original positive tweet from Twitter.

Also worrying is that the spam site was bookmarked by various Stumble upon visitors. And that the one person that made the Stumble upon review also “liked” similar sites, like Online Classes and Learn Gasms. So probably a whole team takes care that the site is socially bookmarked. When several people “like” a site others may be attracted to the site as well. That is the principle of social bookmarking sites. And you and I do the rest….

Why is this bad? You can read more in my previous post or in the post “Affiliate sites” at Ellie <3 Libraries.
In addition, Shamsha brought another post to my attention, again from a librarian:

Top 100 Librarian Friendfeeds to follow at cheapie online degrees com at Tame the Web.com.

which refers to

http://www.librarian.net/stax/2970/why-i-dont-accept-guest-posts-from-spammers-or-link-to-them/

Tame the web gives some very good advice

I sometimes see other libloggers linking to sites like these and I have a word of advice: don’t. When we link to low-content sites from our high-content sites, we are telling Google and everyone that we think that the site we are linking to is in some way authoritative, even if we’re saying they’re dirty scammers. We’re helping their page rank and we’re slowly, infinitesimally almost, decreasing the value of Google and polluting the Internet pool in which we frequently swim. Don’t link to spammers.

How do you know that you can’t trust that particular site?

Well here are some features I’ve noticed (for the spam sites in “my”field)

• All the sites that publicized such list were educational, mostly directed at nurses or other health practitioners. Some even end at org. Examples:
  • nursingschools.net
  • associatedegree.org
  • rncentral.com
  • Learn-gasm
  • onlineclasses.org
  • onlinenursepractitionerschools.com
    
  • searchenginecollege.com
  • collegedegree.com
  • ultrasoundtechnicianschools.org
  • phlebotomytechnicianschools.com
  • MiracleFruitPlus.com.
• All sites have a Quick-degree, nursing degree, technician school etc finder. Mostly it is the only information at the ABOUT-section (?!)
• The home page often contains prominent links (clicks) to Kaplan University, University of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University, and/or others.
• People behind the site often approach you actively (below are some examples) to gain your interest.
• It is unclear how the lists are made and who is behind it.
• There is no real information, only lists and degree finders.

So spread the word! Be careful with those list. DON’T LINK TO THEM! And if you see a possible interesting list, first CHECK the site: WHO, WHY, WHAT, WHERE AND WHEN. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all!

The degree finder at the about page

Prominent links to some Universities

An example of a letter drawing your attention to a list

An example of a letter asking to write a guest post.

List(s) of Tweeting Journals: Your Votes Please!

In the previous post “Biomedical Journals on Twitter” I showed a spreadsheet of biomedical Journals

This list was made on request of and for doctors, hence the original list name: Medical Journals.

As this Google-spreadsheet serves as a wiki, anyone (having g-mail) can edit the list. This was quite successful, as there were many additions made.

However, some of the journal titles I would not regard as biomedical. For instance purely (analytical) chemistry, physics, social sciences or history Journals. To me, Medical Biology is Medicine, Biology and disciplines on the interface (histology, anatomy, etc).

But let’s not discuss semantics and be practical. How would you like to see it?

Just like it is (see here) , with all disciplines mixed, all disciplines in a different spreadsheet or one spreadsheet with different tabs (per discipline).
In case of the latter two options, we could also add humanities/social sciences, such as suggested by Dean Giustini

I made a (non-editable)* sample of a spreadsheet with different tabs per discipline to see what it looks like: see here
Below is only a Figure (showing the Medical Tab). Click to enlarge.

The choice is yours.

*The alternative spreadsheet is not editable, because it is not manageable to have two spreadsheets. Data might get lost.

Related articles by Zemanta

• List of biomedical journals on Twitter (casesblog.blogspot.com)

Biomedical Journals on Twitter

Because of my vacation I was unable to publish about the list of Medical Journals on Twitter that I had initiated in the form of a spreadsheet.

Meanwhile this list has been widely covered in the medical blogosphere, i.e. here, here (nature blogs, yeah), here, here and here, (without -correct- attribution) and here (Ves Dimov) and here (Andrew Spong) (with attribution). And possibly many more.

Do I have anything to add? No not really.

Nevertheless, I would like to point my readers who may not be yet aware of this list. It is open to anybody to edit. Thus if you know of a medical journal on Twitter that is not included, then please feel free to add it to the spreadsheet (if you have Google mail) or ask me to do it for you.

For those who are not used to editing Google spreadsheets, please follow the detailed description of Andrew Spong at his blog.

The reason why I started this spreadsheet was that Walter van den Broek (drshock) asked me “how to find which medical journals on Twitter (see part of the Twitter discussion rescued from Friendfeed (tweets get lost after a few days).

I made a spreadsheet, and asked input from the twitterverse: the easiest and most efficient way to compile a list. There were many initial suggestions of @artadobbs: (see @UCONNHealthLib). She already followed many e-resources updates, as a service for UCONN Health Library users. Ves Dimov (@drves) also had great input. The other editors have added their names on the spreadsheet (and I have added mine too now ). Thanks to all! With Ves I’m truly impressed of how well Google Spreadsheets work as a structured wiki.

Here is a Figure of part of the list (click to enlarge), the actual spreadsheet can be found here.

Yesterday drshock asked me “Any pharmaceutical drug companies using twitter?” so the Medical Journal spreadsheet may not be my last one.

Twitter discussion. Read from down up

QuoteURL: a new Twitter Tool to Quote, Save and Publish Tweets

Ever tried to catch and publish a twitter conversation? Hard, isn’t it, especially at WordPress.com where the lay-out is often difficult to control, if you just copy and paste.
Tweets also tend to disappear after approximately 3-4 weeks.  Thus if you want to capture them you should do it (relatively) soon after they have been tweeted.

A month ago I gave a presentation where I showed medical students a real fancy twitter-application with tweets of  doctors, patients and nurses giving them advice on how to use web 2.0 tools in medicine. Now the tweets have all gone….

But the new Twitter Tool QuoteURL, developed by Fabricio Zuardi, offers a perfect solution.

It is a very intuitive and easy tool that allows you to collect several tweets, for instance answers to a question. A maximum of 4 tweets per quote are allowed for unregistered tweeps and 10 after free registration. The 10-tweet limit is only meant to keep Twitter API quotas under control, but you can twitter @fczuardi or email fabricio at fabricio dot org to ask for an exception (source: comment of Fabricio at onlinejournalismblog.com)

You can collect tweets in two ways:

1. Enter the Twitter status URL or ID (click on the date or on “view tweet”, depending on the interface). For instance http://twitter.com/laikas/statuses/2115296397. You can easily gather the tweets in a text or word file, till you need them. This is for instance suitable for the series Top of the Tweets, where I collect funny tweets over time.

Method 1: copy/paste permalink

2. Drag or drop the tweet-URL’s from a split screen that shows pop-ups of  Twitter Home or Twitter Search in a separated window. Perform a search (figure) or go to your Twitter home page to drag permalinks into the text-field. Just drag the line that would show the url when you click on it.

Method 2. Drag and drop from split window (click to enlarge)

QuoteURL arranges tweets chronologically, so you can drag them in in any order.

After you have collected the tweets you press the Save button and the permalink is created. To embed the Quote in your blogpost just copy the <!– QuoteURL styled embed start –> (lower right) in the HTML-view of your blog and the code appears)

Summary.

• Tweets can be collected by copy-pasting of the tweet URL’s or by dragging and dropping.
• Tweets are ordered chronologically
• The Quote can be saved as a permalink
  
• You can mail the URL to someone or you can post it directly on your blog by copy-pasting of the embedded code
• The individual tweet-URL’s can still be produced (click on dates).
  

Below is an example of a Quote made with QuoteURL. I thought it would be nice to show a recent discussion with the maker of QuoteURL @fczuardi. The permalink is: http://www.quoteurl.com/by608
WordPress.com shrinks the lay-out after saving. Other hosts may let the style intact. Still I find the result pretty awesome.

1. 
   laikas @fczuardi Hi, I like your Quoteurl – although the lay-out becomes less when saved on WordPress. Questions: can you add tweets (days) later?? 13 Jun 2009 from TweetDeck
2. 
   laikas @fczuardi Q2: do the quotes remain stable over time? (tweets normally disappear after 3-4 weeks) ; and the avatars? 13 Jun 2009 from TweetDeck
3. 
   fczuardi @laikas regarding the layout on wordpress, you can get the unstyled version of the embed code and use your own CSS 14 Jun 2009 from web in reply to laikas
4. 
   fczuardi @laikas the avatars breaking later is a known issue, the right thing to do would to cache those images, but the code does not do it yet 14 Jun 2009 from web in reply to laikas

– this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

The video gives more details about the whole procedure.

more about “QuoteURL“, posted with vodpod

http://laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/top-of-the-tweets-3-elections-omigod/