Tag: twitter

Cowbird: the Lovechild of Twitter and Traditional Blogging

Published on by Paige DoltonLeave a comment

If you have never heard of Cowbird, do not fret; you are not the only one. I was introduced to Cowbird in my Emerging Technologies class at Clemson University and I can honestly say that I am so very thankful. In essence, “Cowbird is a community of storytellers.” Like the title of this blog post states, it is very much the lovechild of Twitter and traditional blogging. Cowbird is a social network for stories. Unlike Twitter, users can go way over 140 characters to tell their stories, as well as use video and audio to enhance their stories. And unlike traditional blogging, the user interface is much more heavily based on interaction with the other users, making it much more social than traditional blogging. According to the Cowbird, this is how they describe the site:

We build the world’s simplest and most beautiful storytelling tools, and we offer them for free to anyone who wishes to use them. When you tell stories on Cowbird, we automatically find connections between your life and the lives of others, forming a vast, interconnected ecosystem, in which we all take part. Our goal is to build a public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as part of the commons, available for this and future generations to look to for guidance.

I recently posted my first story to Cowbird called ‘The Color Orange’ and it is about my journey through college. For those of you that know me well, you know this story all too well. For those of you that don’t know my college story in detail, it’s something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a long time now, but for some reason, the setting of Cowbird made it much easier to express and put out in the open. Besides the basic idea that Cowbird is much more social than traditional blogging, the site gives off a much simpler vibe than most blogging platforms, allowing the author to focus on what’s important: the content. This being said, Cowbird users need to be dedicated to their storytelling and to engaging with other storytellers; if they want to have an audience for their work, they need to actively seek other authors and ‘join their audiences,’ so that they’re story can be read. Users most also know how to use all of the functions of the site, including the topic tags, location tags, etc., otherwise, their story will not be heard.

As much as I enjoyed my experience sharing my story on Cowbird, I am having trouble deciding whether or not I want to become an avid “citizen,” as they call it, of the online community. Whereas a blog can serve as a platform for individuals who want to get their voice heard by all netizens, Cowbird gives off the vibe that your voice will only be heard by citizens of the Cowbird community. In that same sense, even though there are multiple traditional blogging platforms that have different user interfaces, all blogs are mostly straightforward and easy to navigate, even for non-blog users. In contrast, Cowbird, while simple, uses a very different interface that might be striking to people unfamiliar with the site. Nonetheless, I really do enjoy the artistry and seriousness of the content that is posted on the site. It reminds me of why I am so passionate about writing. Like the creator of the site, Jonathon Harris says in this NYTimes article, “It’s soul food, not fast food,” and that is why I truly do appreciate the all-encompassing goal of cowbird.

In all honesty, however, I do not see how Harris is generating any sort of substantial profit from Cowbird. There aren’t any advertisements on the site, so that source of income is not being utilized. I suppose the site could be used for companies to find new artists, copy-writers, etc. for employment purposes, but do companies really actively go searching for things like that? I do not see the site as having any real business value, but simply as another outlet for today’s artists to get their voices heard. I feel like a majority of Cowbird users already have careers in their line of work and simply use Cowbird as another creative outlet. Not that any of this is bad, though. Even though there might not be any business value in Cowbird, as a creative individual, I truly do enjoy the site and it’s purpose. Whether or not this will take off, though, will be interesting to find out.

Internet + Clemson Fans = wait, what?

Published on by Paige DoltonLeave a comment

Per my usual day-to-day routine, I continuously check my twitter throughout the work day. Yesterday was no different. My timeline was filled with the usual stuff: girls tweeting song lyrics (I was guilty of this yesterday- ew), guys tweeting about sports, and the very plain and mundane details of everyone’s life. Yesterday, however, I was caught off-guard by a tweet, which had been responded to by Pierre Tong, as well as retweeted by many others with a picture of this banner:

Click picture for source

Now, I do not know this person, nor do I know the person who originally posted the picture, but neither of them did anything wrong- so don’t get this twisted, people. They simply saw something of extreme interest to them and felt like sharing it. It’s safe to say, though, that this picture/information went viral almost immediately in the Clemson online community. This “news” quickly spread via twitter and some even took to Facebook to inform their online friends of Clemson’s new and exciting honor.

This had ‘rumor’ written all over it.

Where was the link to the actual TIME Magazine article? Sure, a picture speaks a thousand words, but in this case, the only words I cared about were “Source:____” and they didn’t exist. So, naturally, I took to the interwebs to get down to the bottom of the news that was spreading through social media like wildfire, and this is what I found:

This screen-cap is from Clemson’s ‘Timeline‘ located on their website. That’s right, folks: Clemson University was named TIME Magazine’s ‘Public College of the Year’ back in 2001. No, I did not do the research to prove anyone wrong. No, I did not do the research so I could have something to tweet. I simply just wanted to know the facts, and quite honestly, I’m surprised that no one else did the same.

All it took was a simple Google search for me to discover that this twitter rumor was just that: a rumor. And boy, did everyone believe it. People weren’t just retweeting the original tweet and picture above, but they were taking that information and creating their own messages, which people were so quick and willing to believe as absolute truth, thus creating a chain reaction that propelled this false news through the twittersphere. Still, no one thought to fact-check what they were talking about. Then, to continue the chain of events, people started changing their Facebook statuses to inform everyone of this brand-new information. Pierre even attempted to poke humor at the situation by tweeting complete satire involving the gamecocks and TIME Magazine and people even took that to be true. *Face-palm* [I literally would NEVER use one of those star-phrase things that I just used, but the situation demanded it.]

The final straw was when my own brother tweeted about the situation, almost 4 hours after the online action had died down. I had nothing to say to him but this:

Moral of the story: check your facts, people. The incident yesterday really didn’t make Clemson fans look that intelligent.

Disclaimer: This post wasn’t meant to make anyone look bad or to say that all Clemson fans are idiots (come on, now). I simply just have a lot of time on my hands.

What Not To Tweet

Published on by Paige DoltonLeave a comment
Unfortunately for all of us, yes you did.

I get it. You use twitter as a place to get everything out that you feel like you just need to express to the entire internet. Except I don’t really get it at all. It’s not a public journal, people. If you really want to vent, then start a blog and then you have the right to say whatever the hell you want and people have the option of reading it. When I tweeted a link to this blog, you didn’t actually have to click it, right? You chose to. This being said, here’s my rant of things that I’m sick and tired of seeing all over my twitter timeline.

Requests to text you: Are you really that desperate that you feel the need to tweet ‘blahhh i have no friends txt me pleaseeeee’? That’s just pathetic. What, do you think people are going to read that and then think ‘hmmm, I should text that person because they are whining about it on their twitter’? No, I hate to break it to you, people don’t think like that. Maybe you should get your caboose off your twitter and go hang out with your friends, or, better yet, you should go ahead and text them yourself. What a concept.

Play-by-plays of your entire day: So you got a twitter to see what all your friends are up to, or what’s on their mind throughout the day, and they could do the same to you, right? That doesn’t mean that that your friends need to know exactly what time you wake up, where, when, and what you are going to eat for breakfast, or that you’re going to the bathroom right now. I really don’t care that you are currently “sitting on  the couch,” “taking a shower,” or “turning on your light switch.” No one cares about the mundane details of your everyday life.

Tweets to Justin Bieber: Seriously? He’s not going to respond. Write him love letters, I don’t care, but don’t clutter up my timeline. The worst part about this is that some girls have twitters solely dedicated to the Biebs, meaning that they only follow beliebers and they literally only tweet to the Biebs himself. Even if he does retweet you, you are still 100% insignificant to him in relation to his 13 million followers. Go be annoying somewhere else.

Song Lyrics/Bible Verses: Unless you are the actual artist tweeting the lyrics to your own song (no artists do this), then please do not do this. And I know that none of you b*tches are Jesus, so don’t even go there. I don’t care if it is displaying your currently apathetic mood or you want your ex-boyfriend to think it’s about him, I don’t want to see it. I can listen to whatever music I want to and believe in whatever God I want to; I’d prefer if you didn’t try to shove it in my face.

Full Conversations: This has got to be the worst. When you have a twitter conversation from your phone, you know it displays ‘sent from iPhone’, right? Well how about you use that iPhone to text your friend your super important conversation about your drinking plans tonight. There is no need to attempt to prove to other people that you have friends by communicating with them in the most public form possible.

Since this blog is connected to my twitter, I hope to God that some of you reading this right now learned a little something. If you are the perfect tweeter, then I give you a virtual high-five for not annoying the crap out of me on a daily basis.