patrickbeja.com

“Again with Twitter?!”
Yeah I know… Twitter is here, get used to it.

Alright, so what does Twitter need? First one who says “a business model” gets a cookie. Yes, they do need that, but let me take a detour through the user side of things for a moment and I’ll get back to that in a minute.

As I have said before, Twitter’s simplicity is its strength. I don’t think they should give it up for anything. Others have tried to “enhance” the user experience by adding threading and things like that. An interesting idea on paper, but it does take away some of the product’s usability. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a hater; let’s just say it’s different and the crowds seem to be gravitating towards more simplicity.
So Twitter has to stay simple, but there is still room to expand. And I think topical conversations is indeed something that could enhance the user experience tremendously. If done right, and in the spirit of the product.
In comes the #hashtag. We all know that you can use these to specify what topic you are talking about. This is incredibly useful and I strongly believe Twitter should make it its next big push. So to put things clearly:

@notpatrick thinks @twitter should embrace #hashtags and make them the second arm of the community.

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Alright, so everyone has heard about it. Some of you probably use it. But most people have a very hard time explaining what the heck Twitter even is…
So I’ll try my hand at this. The aim is to write a short description of why so many people love Twitter so much, and explain why it is a major new form of communication, just like email and instant messaging were in their time.

If I do things right, next time your friends ask you about Twitter and you go insane trying to explain it, you can just send them to this article and they should have a vague idea of why it’s such a great tool.

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For the past two years I’ve been watching and listening to a bunch of podcasts. But I only recently discovered one of the best tech shows out there, that pretty much everybody has known and loved forever. And I know you will all make fun of me for it, but still, it made me think that there are probably many of us who miss the big obvious ones because we aren’t reminded of them quite enough. So this is my attempt at bringing other idiots like me back into the fold by hammering it down one more time:

These are the podcasts you should absolutely be subscribed to: they are just that good!

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So I was at the new media expo last week, and Veronica mentioned the fact that she had too much bacon on her computer. At first I thought this was another one of those American things like, you know, when you need to deep fry your cheese and wrap it in solid high fructose syrup to enjoy it. I figured she had left some of the bacon dip from her “BBQ style cereals” on the desk or something. But it turns out it wasn’t quite that.

She was actually talking about “bacn”. And if you don’t know what bacn is, let me fill you in. Bacn is kind of like spam, except it’s the kind you sign up for. Twitter saying you have more imaginary friends, forums telling you that DeathStar34b replied to your thread about the practicality of Klingon motorcycle helmets, or Facebook letting you know that people need you to be a zombie-pirate or want to buy you for thirteen bucks or so.

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Well I finally succumbed to the temptation, I have a blog. Let’s start in pure blogging fashion: a top 10 list overloaded with links. So here are my 10 random thoughts from the New Media Expo in Las Vegas:

1. At an event like this, the iPhone to person ratio approaches unhealthy levels.
2. I really don’t care too much for their show (I don’t own tools), but the spags are awesome.
3. The New Media Expo wasn’t “new media” at all. It made me think of something called “Podcast Expo”.
4. When you are Jonathan Coulton or Felicia Day, you cannot walk 10 feet without someone stopping you to say that Ilovewhatyoudoandyouarereallyawesome- canItakeapicturepleaseIloveyou. I’m guessing it would get pretty annoying pretty fast, but they stay friendly. A mystery.
5. I already knew it, but I got confirmation that Veronica Belmont is a real real geek: she knows Joco’s songs by heart and sings along when he’s on stage.
6. Being on Twit Live can get you a hundred+ Twitter followers in two minutes.
7. Tom Merritt might very well be the nicest person on the planet.
8. Randy Jordan is a real cowboy. Also, he secretly swore a few weeks ago that he would get more Twitter followers than me. And he did.
9. Even with geeks like us, the real fun happens after hours… Jim Kirks and Molly Lynn are party animals.
10. I’m really not a Trekkie (or trekker or whatever), but going to the Star Trek Experience with Len Peralta, Brent and almost all the people I talked about here was definitely worth the 38 hours I spent in airplains and airports in those five days. Also, Randy screamed like a girl during the 3D ride.

All in all I had a really great time, and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be part of such an amazing community. A thousand thanks to all of those who were there, a million thanks to the people who chose to listen to what I have to say, and I hope we get to do it again as soon as possible.