Tag: Twitter

On complexity

Sometimes I find wisdom in the most unexpected places.  Not that Matt’s blog is such a place, but I wasn’t expecting to find anything that enlightening in the comments to such a simplistic blog post – about centered backgrounds for Twitter.  The quote that I think more people should know is:

it’s hard to anticipate the complexity of something you didn’t write

Here is a beautiful screenshot for too.

A few times I found myself in the situation that I couldn’t even explain the complexity of a change that seemed so simple from the outside.  And for some time now, when I hear the question “Why can’t they just do it? It’s so simple”, I have the answer ready – “They probably have more than one good reason for not doing it”.

Topsy – a search engine powered by tweets

I came across Topsy – a search engine powered by tweets.  Even though you can search Twitter and see tweets in your Google search results, it looks like Topsy has a place of its own.  Clean interface, tweets and image search, only a few sources, trending topics – all make it a tiny little cool toy.  Check it out!

The Social Landscape

I came across this excellent chart at Omniture web site.  While it is mostly aimed at marketing people, it’s still pretty useful for everyone on the ewb to have an overview of which social networks work better for which purposes.

New York Times on Google Buzz

New York Times runs a good story on Google Buzz.  It’s a gentle introduction into what Google Buzz is, and how it compares with some other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed.  If you are still trying to make sense of this whole Google Buzz thing, you should definitely read that.

As for me, I do enjoy Google Buzz quite a bit.  It removes the almost unnecessary limit of 140 characters per post, doesn’t limit me to only text, and somehow seems to connect me with just the right people.  And what’s even more important, now I get notified of the follow-ups directly in my Gmail inbox.

There are a few annoyances here and there – like seeing follow-ups in both Google Reader comments view and Gmail inbox – but I’m sure they will get sorted out eventually.  Overall, Google Buzz is a useful and simple to use service, and I already see that I tend to Google Buzz more than Twitter.