Tina Fey, twitter, and the Elections October 3, 2008
Ok. I admit it. I never really "dugg" twitter. While I did tweet for awhile, it was simply a different way for me to update my Facebook status. I killed two birds (not the cute twitter bird) with one stone. I guess that composing snappy 140-character or less haikus isn't my cup of tea, and I only drink herbal tea…
Beyond that, anyone who simply replied to me likely got ignored due to my ignorance of the rejoinder. No, I don't like desktop applications for twitter. Half the time this ignorance was caused by twitter birds focusing on hefty the infamous whale instead of processing tweets. Then there is the seemingly vast cottage industry of companies and products who owe their existence to twitter. You can upload photos, shorten URLs, track your analytics, and probably submit your taxes via twitter, but nothing piqued my interest that much until now.
While checking someone's twitter feed today, I noticed links to twitter's election page at http://twurl.nl/npo6wl (shortened for mere kicks and giggles). Through this page twitter displays tweets with specific words. For instance, you can click on a link to see what people are tweeting about Tina Fey-impersonator Sarah Palin. Now, I find that interesting and useful. This service, however simple in theory, aggregates the tweets — from the serious to the snarky — in a way that enables me to quickly check the pulse of how the twitterverse feels about specific topics.
Granted, I've seen other services that aggregate tweets around specific events and topics, but this is the first time I've seen it on twitter itself. Hopefully, we'll see more of these useful pages instead of the birdies and the whale.
