Google Buzz slipped out yesterday with a minimum of fuss, or at least, a minimum of fuss compared to the launch of Google Wave. Still, at least expectations were dampened down, and today Gmail users have found Buzz arriving in their inbox.
What to make it of, though. Mark Cahill says it’s the moment that social media has finally reached the mainstream, calling it a “Facebook killer of epic proportions”.
Literally, ooh, dozens, perhaps handfuls, of people may have gone into shock at the revelation that 50 Cent isn’t keeping it real and has a web person writing his Twitter updates for him.
It does raise an interesting issue though. Many celebs and others – brands, CEOs, etc – are rushing to get onto Twitter (largely, I suspect, because it’s the flavour of the month). It’s a fair bet that more than a few aren’t actually Tweeting themselves but employ somebody to do it.
There’s a brand new sport in town. It involves shaping a Twitter-shaped stick and bashing the hell out of whatever purpose that stick’s shape is best for.
Sometimes the target of this is Twitter itself and involves beating the stick repeatedly on the ground. Sometimes the Twitter-shaped cudgel is the right shape for giving something else a good thumping. And occasionally the stick turns into a scattergun.
I imagine that if the rules of this sport were ever to be written, they’d probably be quite similar to Brockian Ultra Cricket.
Earlier today, on an Exeter City mailing list I subscribe to (yes, such things exist), Mike Blackstone posed the following question:
“What if the only players who were allowed to play in the Premier and Football League were to be born in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern ireland and the Republic of ireland? Would this not make the respective international teams stronger (eventually) as more home grown players
came through the ranks?”
I started replying, the realised it was turning into an epic consideration of all things foreign, football politics, and quite possibly ill-thought through economics of the sport. So, what the hell, I’ll post it on here.
Another day, another Twitter application springs up. And while Tweet Manager looks useful, it’s also a somewhat dangerous, especially if used by PR agencies or companies who know nothing about the web and social media. Or, worse still, think they know about social media.
On one hand, Tweet Manager is useful for the prolific Twitterers to manage their accounts. You can auto-post a Tweet at a pre-set time, set up an autoreply (useful for holidays) and manage multiple accounts.
The latter is especially useful for people who handle several brands or feeds across Twitter – or want to perhaps split their personal and professional Tweeting, while the pre-set Tweeting could be very useful in certain circumstances.
This may well be a first (and hopefully not too common an occurrence). Via Jeff Jarvis, a passenger who was in a plane crash in Denver literally Twitters from the scene as soon as he gets out.
Surely cynical hack X can’t still now say Twitter isn’t useful to journalists. There you go, a perfect eyewitness for a pretty major story (although it probably helps to be on Twitter so you can introduce yourself before leaping in for an interview request).
The weblog is dead, long live the blog. Or, if you’re Paul Boutin, who wrote an obituary for blogging at Wired magazine the other day, blogging is just dead and we should bury it now:
“Thinking about starting your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.”
Blimey, that’s a cheerful start to the day, and the prognosis just gets worse:
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece at Soccerlens about John Batchelor’s proposed takeover of Mansfield Town, and his possible changing of the name to Harchester United.
Oh God, was roughly the thought I had when I was researching the piece.
Now the excellent David Conn has picked up on this in the Guardian:
“Batchelor’s business record, available for scrutiny via Companies House, will not reassure any Mansfield fan that he has greatly changed. Of 24 companies of which he has been a director, 14 have been or are about to be struck off the companies register, six have been insolvent, three are still going but he is no longer involved – he says he sold them on successfully – and only one small company in which he is a director is active.