Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [64]
Figure 9-16: Color Wars!
You can use Twitter for creative games, as well. TwitStory is a game in which people create a story tweet by tweet, all collaborating on the outcome by adding individual lines. You use other people’s tweets, rather than your own, to build the story, fitting unrelated lines together like a puzzle. You can read how TwitStory #3 came out on its creator’s blog at http://andypowe11.net/blog/?cat=10.
Web sites for Twitter games are popping up. One of the first of these sites is Twoof (http://twoof.doof.com), which lets you play interactive games with your Twitter friends. Individuals have also tried to amass people to play a Twitter-enhanced game of Battleship by using the hashtag #twitships (http://www.squidoo.com/battleships-board-game-twitter), but the game does not appear to be active.
In addition to games, many Twitter users like to use its potential to spread virally, from one person to another, to create memes — trends that flow through the Twitter stream with many people participating. Sometimes, users create hashtags to spark discussion, such as #favoritehappysong or #favoritefallfood. When Twitter users see the hashtag go by in their Twitter stream, they voice their own opinions, answering the implicit question and tweeting it out with the hashtag attached. You can have fun going back to visit these games in Twitter Search later, and you can also use them to find out a little more about your Twitter connections.
One popular meme that doesn’t seem to ever die out is the Overheard meme. You may have noticed a lot of tweets containing OH and wondered, “What’s the deal with Twitter and Ohio anyways!?” OH just abbreviates “overheard” and is usually followed by something funny or awkward or even quite horrible. The twitterer is sharing it as if to say, “Can you believe this?!” Hear something funny or crazy in real life and want to share it? Just type OH and then put the quip you heard in quotes. Most of the time, you don’t use any names, keeping the OH anonymous — it’s funnier out of context. Some OH tweets are racy or raunchy, but most are just average things people say that seem funny at the time.
With all the creativity on Twitter and its general fun-loving nature, you may well create your own Twitter game or meme — either just for kicks or even as a marketing strategy. Don’t be shy!
Tag Clouds
TwitScoop, Cloudlet, trending topics, and hashtags all have something in common: They all can generate a Twitter tag cloud, a visual display of words where the relative size of the word corresponds to how many times it has been mentioned. Tag clouds provide an easy visualization of what’s going on in the twitterverse in real time. Words that twitterers are using a lot will appear in the tag cloud, and the more mentions a word gets, the larger, darker, and bolder its display will be as well. It’s another, often quite visually appealing, way to see what is really going on.
You may enjoy watching tag clouds. Applications such as Wordle (www.wordle.net) even let you play with tag clouds a little so that you can generate graphical representations of whatever your topic is (as shown in Figure 9-17), which you can then use on slides and Web sites. Tag clouds are an interesting way to present what topics and keywords around your subject are interesting to the group at large and can give your presentation or blog entry a little more punch and relevance.
Figure 9-17: This Wordle-generated tag cloud.
Keeping in Contact with Visualization and Listening Tools
Sure, building connections and influence on Twitter is a great objective, but there is even more value in the Twitter experience when you take the opportunity to tune into what people are saying about you, your company, and your favorite topics. Also, a finely attuned listening program