Twitter Addiction Tom Whittaker

Yes, I am addicted to Twitter.  I admit it and that is the first step toward recovery, right?  If so, then step two is finding new ways to extend my addiction and that has happened with my discovery of Twittervision and Twitterment.   These two sites take Twitter to a whole new world.

Twittervision takes the public timeline for Twitter and places it real-time on a map of the world.  As the tweets are entered for other users, they pop-up with a push pin on the map with the twitter’s name and pic.  You are probably thinking, who cares what people you have never meant are saying in 140 character of less? It is not necessarily the messages I find interesting, but how many people are tweeting all over the world at the same time.  You see a tweet from Tokoyo, Japan and one from Philadelphia, PA just seconds apart.  The next is in Idaho and the next Chile.  You suddenly start to realize how small our world has become and how connected we all actually can be.  It is amazing to watch.

Twitterment is a search engine that searches public twitter messages and return results based on relevance.  Again, a very interesting concept to me because you can now search terms to see how many tweets contain that keyword.  For example, enter Beowulf and you see a ton of tweets of people telling what they thought of the movie (apparently people who use Twitter, loved Beowulf).  This is another interesting way of how social networking can change our behavior.  Would someone be less likely if the majority of tweets were negative to see this movie?  Perhaps.

So if you do not Twitter yet, give the micro-blogging site a try.  Once you are addicted, come drink the punch and try sites such as Twitterment, Twittervision and the dozens of other cropping up each day.

• Posted In Tom & Becki's Prom Stories