Huntington Tweetup

Nicholas • 5th May 2009 • technology • twitter, web 2.0

Some tweetup twitterers

Last night I attended my first ever tweetup in Huntington.  I was surprised at the turnout — 12 people.  That may not seem like a lot but for our area I was expecting maybe 5 if we were lucky.  I thought it was a great opportunity to meet some fellow local twitter users.  Surprisingly, only a few people were IT professionals.  Most everyone else had a love for technology, but it was not their career (maybe they smarter than the rest of us lol)

First up, twitter itself.  It seems like most people at the tweetup had begun using twitter when it was fairly new.  I think the point to glean from this is that the newer users seem to be joining twitter because of its popularity — which is fine — but they they are not as actively involved in the “twitter community” as those of us that have been there for quite some time.  There is nothing wrong with this, but it does show one of the main problems I have with twitter.  Twitter has turned into a popularity contest (Ashton, CNN, all the “social media gurus”).

Second, aggregation of twitter posts.  I actually really like the idea of twitter updates aggregated by geographical location.  One of the guys at the tweetup, @mcneely, has created a great site called WVTweets.  This site shows all the twitter updates posted by people in WV both statewide and by city.

Lastly, let’s talk about web stuff in general.  The topic of Second Life came up.  I have to say I’m not a huge fan of Second Life and I’m pretty sure I gave that away at the Tweetup.  Most people though seemed pretty into it, but I’m not sure how many people actually have accounts, or are just going by what they hear.  @jkhewett attended an autopsy in Second Life that combined actual medical footage with buildings and objects in Second Life for an immersion experience.  I haven’t logged into Second Life in ages.  The next “big thing” that everyone is really wanting is a powerful social aggregator.  I realize there are already services out there for this (Fuzer, SocialThing, FriendFeed), but the functionality isn’t quite there yet.

Final thought, unanimous consent that the blip.fm DM’s are really annoying.  Also, don’t link your blip.fm account to twitter.  No one wants every song you listen to cluttering their feed.  So if you do that, trust me, I’ll unfollow you.  And besides, last.fm already does a better job of tracking what you listen to.  So use that instead.

I’m looking forward to the next Tweetup. And if you want to see some photos from the tweetup check Julie’s Flickr set.