140pedia....needs you

Yet again it's been a long time between posts, but this will change as I have finally started work again after moving half way around the world....promise. Today, the story that has caught my eye is a rather clever, funny and original mash-up of two giants of the modern digital age by the creators of one of the funniest Internet memes.

So what do you get when you mix all this together, well, you get 140pedia brought to you by the I Can Has Cheezburger guys. 140pedia is the result of mashing twitter up with Wikipedia where everything is given a 140 character explanation/or meaning. For example

Cheezburger (thing)
A misspelling of cheeseburger — a meat sandwich made with cholesterol and fat. Also a coveted food of all cats on the Internet.

Or.....

Viagra (Drug)
The little blue wonder-drug of the 90s that let impotent men to cause headaches in their formerly headache-free sig. others.

As you can see, it's very mush in keeping with the ethos of the I Can Has Cheezburger guys in that it's completely irreverent. The site doesn't have that much on it at the moment, but you can submit your own entries and our course tweet your favourite existing entries.

MyTake - It's like a funny, online version of the Oxford dictionary with a social sharing aspect thrown in to boot. Is this going to spread like wildfire, probably. I'll certainly be submitting a few entries.

Fry's top of the tweets

One of my favourite ports of call when it comes to interesting and original news is The Times Online. During my first stint in London I was actually quite good pals with the online time who I have to say have done an absolutely outstanding job. Today I was reading a story about the most popular celebrities on Twitter, which was really very interesting.... for more than one reason

Top of the list was none other that Stephen Fry, which I can actually understand, but other notables include the likes of Lance Armstrong, Britney Spears and Rick Sanchez..... don't worry if you don't know him, he's actually a US news anchorman.

The really interesting story for me isn't who's the most popular, but it's the relationship between them and their audience. What better way of getting your celebrity fix than checking their Twitter feed? It's real (we hope), up to date and actually authored (we hope) by your favourite celeb - what could be better, how can the likes of OK and Reveal compete with that?

MyTake - Is this the gossip mag for a whole new generation, the celebrity's very own broadcasting channel? It could be, and for me if I actually wanted to find out what my favourite celeb was doing that's the first place i'd look. But what about the people that actually are interested in that kind of content, is Twitter at the point where they even know it exists or is this type of usage that actually pushes it right the way through to the mainstream. Time (as usual) will tell

Change is (dot) coming

Like millions of others around the world, I sat and watched in awe as Barack Obama gave his inauguration speech and felt that I was witnessing a genuine piece of history. But, perhaps more interesting than the handover between Mr Bush and Mr Obama is the handover of the websites. Well...more interesting for me. 

I've blogged quite a bit on the success of the Obama web team and their excellent use of social media on the road to The Whitehouse, but what now? Obama's Change.gov is making the transition to the Whitehouse.gov site and it has already been asking for citizens to email in ideas, the best of which will be ranked then put in front of The President for consideration. But what about the Twitter account, the Flickr account, LinkedIn and Facebook? I guess only time will tell.

MyTake - The conversation has been started, so it must continue. I hope that we are going to see an era of openness and honesty and lets face it, this our best chance. The communication platform offered by social media probably represents the most powerful connection with Obama's audience. After all, a man of the people needs to talk to the people.  

Facebook turns ornithologist...finds whale

News is that Facebook is interested in a little birdie….Twitter. There a lot of news doing the rounds out there and the apparent valuation on Twitter is US$500 million, but Biz Stone has refused to comment on the issue so far which would add more fuel to the acquisition fire. The most reputable source so far is the Financial Times in the UK, who have apparently got confirmation from two separate sources.

There’s been chatter about this proposed tie-up for a while now, so the Twitterati won’t be surprised by this talk. What is surprising are the values being placed on companies such as Facebook and Twitter, with the former having a rather lofty valuation slapped on it when Microsoft acquired a part of them earlier in the year. What will happen to our little birdie pal should Facebook snap it up, more importantly – what will happen to the Fail Whale? Well, rest assured my fellow Tweeters, the one thing that Biz Stone did say is that they want to remain an independent messaging service.

MyTake – this is probably going to happen, there are obvious synergies between the two companies and Twitter is approaching the tipping point, so Facebook will want to catch it just before. Living in Australia, Twitter has yet to get the same kind of following it enjoys in the rest of the world, mostly due to the way the telcos charge us for our mobile plans, but it’s still popular and I could see a move like this thrusting it into the limelight.

The Twitter song

Ahh, Twitter, we love you. You have already spawned the Fail Whale and now you have your own song.  Written by a UK musician called Ben Walker, the song proudly proclaims that "you're nobody if you're not on Twitter, and if you aren't there already, you've missed it".

I have to say, it's very catchy and has a healthy dose of good old fashioned British humour. It reminds me of the London Underground song that came out a few years ago, only without the swearing and stuff.....

MyTake - Don't worry, you've not really missed it, go and join Twitter today and you can even follow Ben or yours truly.  This is yet another example of social media inspiring popular culture (you may have read my post on Facebook: The movie) and I think we are just going to see more and more examples of this. So, next time someone tells you that social media is a waste of time, sing them the Twitter song.