I always wondered if Twitter would make it to the mainstream. I wasn’t sure if it would. Most people were too busy “poking” each other on Facebook or stalking lil’ kids on MySpace. But, it made it…and I’m a bit surprised to be honest.

Twitter just hit the one-billion tweets milestone today. Its not official or anything. The number of tweets were being counted by a 3rd party site called GigaTweet. Twitter might have hit this milestone long time ago since we don’t know when GigaTweet started counting. But, at least we know that we have more than a billion tweets.

You know Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart? Well anyone with a TV knows them. So, they were talking about Twitter on Indecision 2008. That probably got the whole “Twittosphere” twittering. Colbert and Stewart? They like took Twitter to the next level that day. Now the average Joe knows about Twitter and probably even started using it (or at least gave it a shot).

What really convinced me that Twitter got into the mainstream was when I was seeing this presentation by a few folks from a local tech company at my school. They were talking about Facebook, MySpace, Xbox Live, etc. And then they mentioned something that really surprised. Guess what it was? Yeah, it was Twitter.

I was like “Woah! WTF! They know about Twitter? They don’t look like the type of people who would use Twitter. WOAH! Holy shit! That means little birdie made it to the mainstream.” I was really happy for Twitter actually. Its a great, unique idea and its pretty useful too. It deserves to be more popular than Facebook (not kidding).

Well Twitter just took its first step into the mainstream. I’m not sure if it will be as popular as Facebook. It might. It might not. Who knows. But, it sure is on the right path and its getting more popular everyday. Until then follow my tweets!

Yep that’s right folks, Twitter got a shiny new design and its lookin’ good.

Its funny how moving a few things here and there can it more user-friendly. Twitter now has that little at home, warm and welcome feeling. Makes you wanna use it more and go on a tweet-rampage. Just go check it out and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Here’s the changes I’ve noticed:

1. Moved the tabs from the top to the sidebar.
2. Displays the number of followers, followings and updates under your name.
3. Got that whole round corner thing going on.
4. Displays your latest tweet at the top.
5. Got a colour wheel on the custom profile design’s page.
6. Put a tab for favourites on your public profile.

Apparently they added some AJAX magic on the Home and @Replies tabs, but I don’t see them. I checked both in IE and Firefox. Weird. Maybe they’re still working on it.

Well anyways, here’s the official post from Twitter about the redesign. Check it out since its got everything detailed. So, how do you like the new design? I love it.

BTW, this is like the get-a-new-design-day since FriendFeed also rolled out theirs today. I didn’t post about it because I don’t really use it since I don’t see what’s the point of it. Like… oh whatever. And yo, follow my sweet lil’ tweets (please).

Update (Sept 19): There’s a little bug when you go to someone’s profile and click on “Follow” it doesn’t change to “Following” right away, you need to refresh the page.

I cannot believe it! Barack Obama is spamming Twitter! Oh man. I now see why Fox News was comparing Obama to Osama. Oh I feel bad for Fox now. No one believed them. I didn’t believe them!

Okay lets cut the drama queen (should be drama king, right?) crap now. But, I did notice something weird about Obama’s twitter. He is following way too many people. We’re not talking about a few hundred or even a few thousand here. We’re looking at a 5-digit number. 76K!

Man is that normal? Is the guy working on his campaign or just following people on Twitter? I guess he got hooked or something. Oh man I’m going to jerk-mode now. But, seriously 76K is a lot. And he’s got only 73K followers.

You wanna know how he followed back so many people? He’s using a script which automatically follows you back once you start following him. Just add him and then look at the list of your followers). But, he doesn’t actually respond to your tweets (and he’s not even interested in them). Twitter’s servers are constantly having “technical difficulties” (aka downtimes). I wonder if Obama’s account caused all of this. Probably not.

So, is he actually “follow spamming“? Well I personally wouldn’t say that. Maybe it technically falls under follow spam, but he doesn’t mean to. He’s just trying to keep people updated about his campaign. I don’t like the fact that he’s using a program to automatically follow people back, but it was probably the nuthead running his account’s idea. Well that’s a different thing.

We all get spam and find a ton of them on the web. So, we kind of go into our anti-spam/ninja-killer mode whenever we see something that looks a bit like it. We don’t really think about it and see if it really is spam. We don’t look at people’s true intentions. Well look at the definitions!

So, next time think about it and check if it really is spam. And if it is, then rape that fucker spammer. Until then subscribe to my blog via RSS or email if you liked this post (at least a tiny bit).

People have been talking about this thing called Twitter “follow spam“. So, what is this thing? And are we defining it correctly? Today I’ll talk a bit about it.

Follow spam is the act of following mass numbers of people, not because you’re actually interested in their tweets, but simply to gain attention, get views of your profile (and possibly clicks on URLs therein), or (ideally) to get followed back.

That’s what the people at Twitter wrote on their blog. Well that explains what “follow spam” is. You just follow tons of people, so that they add you back and/or click on the link on your profile. Now I would agree that this is pretty annoying. But, not everyone is trying to “spam”.

On rare occasions we may see a person who is mass following and actually cares about every tweet.

See Twitter is also saying that. Yesterday, an old lady was bitching at me and was accusing me of spamming Twitter. Hmm how so? She said that I added a “zillion” people on Twitter, so that they click the link on my profile.

Okay I’m actually interested in people’s tweets. I reply to a lot of them and have like a small conversation. I agree that I added a bunch of people on Twitter. But, that wasn’t “follow spam”. Now of course, I wanted them to follow me back. What’s the point of tweeting if only a few people are following you?

Did I add random people? No. I added people who were interested in tech & web. Most of the people I added were TechCrunch’s followers. Did I start spamming them with links to my site? No. I made like 2 or 3 tweets about my sites. 2 or 3 out of 171 tweets? Is that really spamming (or huge self-promotion)?

Is Obama spamming Twitter? He is following 64K people and he’s got about 61K followers. I’m not sure how he managed to add 64K people, but I don’t think he wants to spam. He just wants to keep more people updated.

I don’t agree with the current definition of follow spam. It should be when you follow thousands of people (who you’re not interested in) and want them to follow you back. And you spam them with your links! Maybe this would define follow spam a bit better.

I know that there are lots of spammers on Twitter. I mean the REAL spammers. But, not everyone is a spammer! So, What do you think? Do you think my way to define it is better? And what about popular bloggers who keep posting links to every single one of their posts? What about Obama?

Rejaw is a new micro-blogging platform which launched about two months ago. Now the question is, is Rejaw just another Twitter clone or is it something really unique? Well lets find an answer.

The basics

First of all, I like their design. Its nice and simple. Maybe they could use images instead of using those big ass texts for the headers (ex: shouts, replies, etc). They could make it look a lot better by doing that. But, the colour scheme rocks.

Oh and the name, Rejaw. I’m not too sure if its a good name. I guess its a memorable name.

Profile Customization

Nothing special. Just lets you upload a profile picture, lets you write a bit about yourself and you can enter your location. Doesn’t let you edit the CSS like in Plurk or change the colours and upload a background image like in Twitter. So, that sucks.

Friends & Fans

It’s like Twitter. They have followers and following. Nothing to explain here.

Shouts

The shouts are a bit like Plurk. You get like a page with all the replies. So, that’s good. And it updates real-time. That’s a really good feature. They also have this thing called “whispers” which is like private messages.

The community

The people over there looks pretty active. I made my first shout and I got a few replies within seconds. I was pretty surprised. I guess its because they display all the latest shouts on the front page. Now that’s a good way to keep the level of activity up.

How popular is it?

Its not really popular. I would say its just hyped. So, that means there isn’t a lot of users or at least, active users. People signup for new stuff, they use it a bit and then they leave. I found a lot of users like this on Plurk, so you should be expecting the same from Rejaw too.

Is it just another clone?

No, its not just another Twitter clone. Its more like a clone of Twitter and Plurk. They took the basic idea from Twitter, copied the reply page idea from Plurk and added their own unique feature which is the real-time updates.

Would I use it?

Well I’m not too sure. I mean I’m already using Twitter and Plurk. And now, Rejaw? Plus its not even that cool, to be honest. I might try it out for a bit if I get a few followers there. Right now its 50/50.

Would YOU use it?

Are you going to try it out? Or are you already using it? What do you think of it? Do you think it can compete with the big guys, Twitter and Plurk? Please share your thoughts with us.