confused of calcutta

I’ve been learning a lot from the whole Twitter phenomenon. How, despite its frailties and weaknesses, it continues to attract followers. How, despite it being “down so ***damn long, that it looks like up to me” people continue to build Twitter ecosystem tools. And how it spawns an entire industry around the Fail Whale: the [...]

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I’ve been playing around with FoxyTunes, installing it in Firefox, getting the TwittyTunes extension. And it’s not just because I like music. I think what’s happening here is very powerful.
Let’s start with Twitter, it looks harmless and gormless, what possible use could it have? After all, what can you do in 140 characters? Let’s [...]

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This post is about Twitter, and yet it’s not. I’m trying to deal with a bigger issue.
First, do take a look at these two posts: Phillie Casablanca’s Ten Commandments and Paul Downey’s Twit or Twerp? Both are excellent; I have the privilege of working with both these guys, and I’m delighted that we have people [...]

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While returning from New York yesterday, I read David Rakoff’s Don’t Get Too Comfortable on the plane. Viciously funny. But that’s not the point of this post.
In a chapter entitled What Is The Sound of One Hand Shopping, Rakoff quotes the inimitable Lenny Bruce, saying:
Lenny Bruce described flamenco as being an art form wherein [...]

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When I first heard about Twitter, and during my “observe and learn” time, I worked on the (mistaken) premise that people would answer the Defining Question. “What are you doing?”
And because of that mistaken premise, I was expecting to see things happen that I haven’t really experienced so far. So what was I expecting? Let [...]

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Whenever I come across a new social media tool, I don’t tend to jump in just to be cool, I’m way too old for that. [Sometimes I have to wait anyway, because the thing is in private beta and for some reason private betas find it hard to cross the Atlantic, even in the 21st [...]

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There have been a number of comments on my recent posts re Twitter and the Enterprise; I thought it would be worth while spending a little time answering them in some detail. First, let’s take a look at the questions:

How can a system that uses messages restricted to no more than 140 characters be useful?
What’s [...]

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