And possibly one of the Tweets of all-time:
Link to the original Tweet, and to Hugh’s own blog post on it.
And take a look at the other Tweets of the Week…
Celebrities and relationships on Twitter
March 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment
So apparently Jennifer Aniston ended her relationship with John Mayer because he didn’t have time for her, but did have time to keep updating Twitter. Meanwhile Ashton Kutcher makes national news in several countries after posting a Twitpic of wife Demi Moore‘s bikini-clad bottom.
For those of you with an inquisitive nature, the image is still available.
Besides the gossip angle of celebrites on Twitter (For that I’d recommend @heatworld, one of the titles I work on), it raises interesting questions about both the nature of celebrities when they’re increasingly interacting online, and also the nature of relationships playing out in public.
Will Twitter mean more ‘real’ celebrities?
Twitter undoubtedly gives the appearance of closing the gap between the public and celebrities, even with follower numbers of top stars reaching huge numbers (hundreds of thousands follow Ashton, Demi, and John etc). But does it also put more pressure on celebrities to produce content which previously would have been filtered by their relationship with the press?
Rather than deciding to work with the press and paparazzi, or spend their time trying to hide from the media, will celebrities feel they need to increase their popularity by updating on an ever-increasing basis, and perhaps giving more insight into their lives than they might have usually allowed, in the same way as ‘regular’ people?
Will it also start to change the current mainstream obsession with style over substance, leading to a greater popularity of celebrities capable of creating content of interest?
What about relationships?
As more couples and families are likely to appear on Twitter, as they have on Facebook, it could have serious implications for the people involved. Already there have been tragic cases involving social networking, such as in the UK, when a man murdered his estranged wife after she changed her Facebook status to ‘single’. But Twitter could be potentially more problematic due to the space it occupies between instant messaging and previous social networks.
The nature of @replies, and the speed of interaction could see public arguments occurring when couples monitor who their partner is interacting with.
Will we all have to think about not just how we present ourselves, but also how our families and relationships are presented and available online – in the same way as celebrity couples have needed to manage themselves in the past. And will that effectively flip for those celebrities who have a happy and interesting partnership, as they’ll benefit from the ease with which they can reveal details and interact publicly online?
Is this the blurring of the celebrity continuum, so that the megastars at the head of The Long Tail, and those in the tail, are seemlessly joined without some of the segregation between those who are labelled as famous and those who aren’t?
With Twitter just celebrating it’s third birthday and social media still in the troublesome teenage years, the pace of change and the effects it will have are only going to accelerate in the future – it might be worth checking with your significant other about their online plans now, rather than later!
When data can take your breath away
March 25, 2009 By 2 Comments
Wow.
Click through to Youtube to watch the video below in all it’s full-sized glory.
It’s a 24 hour observation of large airline flights condensed into just over a minute, found via Musings of an Opinionated Sod. And his closing sentence beautiful sums up how the ways we produce great content can, will, and has changed, whether it’s editorial, advertising or marketing, by making so much more information and so many more tools available:
‘If we open our eyes enough, we can see there’s real beauty in information, not to mention the fact we can make information, beautiful.’
Celebrating women in Tech: Ada Lovelace Day
March 24, 2009 By 1 Comment
In celebration of the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace, Suw Charman Anderson has encouraged people to blog, Twitter and celebrate women in tech who we admire.
The aim was to get 1000 people to sign up, and at the time of writing, 1678 have pledged on the site.
So what’s my contribution?
Well, there are plenty of admirable women in technology, but picking one or two has been quite tricky. So I’ve ended with a bit of a compromise list of three, four!
The first two are both very personal choices, as they’re both friends and colleagues of mine at Bauer Media. And sadly both of them are so in-demand that their time for online profiles is limited. They’re both in marketing, rather than hardcore developers or programmers, but technology is all about successful implementation, rather than technology for technology’s sake.
But there are definite reasons for admiring them as well as liking them – I’ve worked with Charlie Watson for many years, and she has an amazing ability to combine research and insight to make intelligent decisions about how to use technology to the best effect, and then to present it all in the right way to colleagues and users so that they understand the benefits without feeling patronised in any way.
Meanwhile I’ve also recently started working with Danielle West, but gained a lot of admiration in a short space of time for the fact she not only combines integrity and plain-speaking, but always has the facts to back up whatever she is proposing.
And to balance the internal recommendations, I’d also say that my online interactions with Laura Fitton had shown there was a lot to recommend her, but her efforts in raising money for Charity: Water raised a lot of money and awareness about an important problem. It’s a great example of using new technology to try to make things better in world, including for those that don’t have access to laptops, broadband, or even clean drinking water. Technology doesn’t improve things by itself – it needs human intervention and interaction to make a difference.
Bugger – writing about Laura reminded me about a fourth person who I have a lot of time and admiration for – @amanda, who I met when she asked if she could interview me about my Twitter usage. And within a short space of time became one of the leading people behind Twestival, which became a global phenomenon in 202 cities around the world, and so far has raised $250,000 for Charity Water.
There’s definitely no shortage of fantastically admirable women in the technology sphere, and I’m sure there are quite a few more in my network which I’ve failed to mention, so apologies! And that’s not counting the admirable women who have helped and supported people like me (like my wonderful partner and my incredibly intelligent mother), so that hopefully I’ll make some kind of difference by using technology effectively.
