Twitter

Apparently, Britney Spears took a stroll on the streets of New York last night while her newsless, yet somehow touching documentary For the Record aired on MTV.

She updated her Twitter just a few minutes ago:

britneyspears I enjoyed a relaxing walk last night around NYC. Even though it was raining, it was a lot of fun! ~Britney

This might actually be the real Britney too. Her assistant Lauren, usually signs off on posts she writes, and Brit has been updating as herself for awhile now.

Twitter stepped into the spotlight this week, not only as a charity organizer and possible advertising goldmine during the holidays, but as a legitimate news aggregator.

Lots of tech blogs have been touting Twitter's potential since its inception, but on-the-ground reports from the Mumbai terror attacks put the idea in motion. In some cases, Twitterers were able to be on the scene long before TV and newspaper reporters could get there.

CNN reports that an estimated 80 messages, or "tweets," were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates.

Many Twitter users also sent pleas for blood donors to make their way to specific hospitals in Mumbai where doctors were faced with low stocks and rising casualties.

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Shaquille "Kobe, Tell Me How My Ass Taste" O’Neal wasn't going to let some troll front as his 7-foot-1 basketball behemoth on Twitter. So he started his own account. First tweet: "This is the real SHAQUILLE O’NEAL," came from The_Real_Shaq, early Tuesday morning. It has been a "shaqalicious" romp ever since.

The New York Times' Howard Beck spoke with Mr. O'Neal yesterday to make sure it was him.

“Somebody out there was trying to use my language and trying to speak for me,” he told The Times in a telephone interview. “Rather than have that happen, I thought I’d do it myself.  read more »

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So President-elect Barack Obama will have a Facebook Administration. How about a Twittering Senate?

GovTrack.us, an independent watch-group for Senate activities, has a Twitter account called SenateFloor, with updates on proposed bills and amendments and their voting results. On Oct. 3, they updated on the Senate's Oct. 1st vote to pass the Economic Stimulus Relief Bill, and included a link to a page outlining who voted yea or nay.

Will President Obama utilize Twitter during his administration? It would be a great tool to incorporate into his "open democracy through the Internet" plan. He already used it during his campaign, with 130,000 followers. But, for some reason, his account has been silent since Nov. 5.

Twitter Vote Report, a site that is aggregating voter experiences and problems at polling stations across the country, has been collecting voter tweets on Twitter, call-ins and text messages this morning and afternoon. And, surprise! New York is ranking some of the top wait times in the country.

Results are changing in real time (and the site is having high-volume traffic issues) but some tweets from New York are logging in wait times up to 180 minutes in the Downtown Brooklyn area.

Check out these dispatches:

Billy: The space was extremely confining. I went at 6am when the polls first opened and machines were broken and people had trouble moving around the room to find there district.

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The Web is revving its engine for tomorrow's big night. Here's where you can tune in on your computer and your iPhone:

ABC News is offering live streams of its own TV broadcast and they'll have Web cams at the McCain and Obama campaign headquarters. CBS News will be offering county-by-county, up-to-the-minute results with live blogging, and a simulcast of its TV coverage, starting at 6:30 p.m. Around 2 a.m, Katie Couric will live chat with viewers on CBSNews.com and CNET.com. MSNBC has a neat results widget, which posts real-time results to your blog or Facebook profile. CNN YourRaces allows you to customize your own tracking tool (with local races too), and then watch the results in real time through CNN's site or on your  read more »

Yup, the "real" Britney Spears has joined the Twitter movement. The page includes posts from her publicist "Laura," but Ms. Spears will (allegedly) take over the keyboard sometime soon. "Updates will be on status news music life fans by her team and Brit herself," Lauren "tweeted" recently. Also, this little tidnit: "Hey paparazzi... Rolling Stone cover rumors? Too bad you weren't inside the shoot. Brit had a great time and was dancing around the set."

This Twitter account won't be too interesting until Ms. Spears takes over, but if anything, it allows regular Twitter-user fans to ask questions and get answers directly from Ms. Spears' staff. It's a brave, new Twitter world of PR.

Another week, another article about some amazing new communications tool and how it's changing our lives, like, forever!

This time, we're meant to look at the deeper meaning of a new technology that's bringing people closer together, changing the face of advertising and marketing, and even helping make the world a better, safer place.

Per The New York Times:

Here is the beginning of a personal medium which will—in a generation—be as important as any mass medium is today: for back-fence gossiping; for word-of-mouth selling; for citizen participation in fighting crime without getting overly 'involved'; for remote parental control; for two-step opinion information.  read more »

Last week, The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz wrote about Twitter, the kinda useful, sorta ubiquitous, sure to be short-lived new tool for journalists—and cellphone-enabled journalist-like individuals—who want to bring readers the world in 140-characters or less.

Mr. Kurtz called twittering "the digital equivalent of a sound bite, a throat-clearing, a terse observation or two for a cloistered community online."

If you're hoping to hear Fox News' Greta Van Susteren clear her throat online, you're out of luck: The On the Record host tells The Huffington Post's Danny Shea that Twittering may not be for her:

I'm not sold on it yet... I have so much going—I have a webcam, I have GretaWire, I have Greta LiveWire which is my internet show that I do every night between 9:45 and 9:50, I'm now doing the Strategy Room, I've got my pictures, my video...remember I told you it's that hairline [between being digital and being crazy]? Twitter may be it...

It also sounds mildly obscene. Am I the only one who thinks, like, Twittering... I don't know. Do you Twitter? It's like, I thought we had a don't ask, don't tell policy!  read more »

Who will ensure Twitter tweets uninterrupted? That's the question posed by Silicon Alley Insider's Hank Williams about the popular wireless and web-based application that allows users to share their brain farts on the web in real time. Everyone from Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody ("I'm smoking Virginia Slims today. I've come a long way, baby," 06:43 PM May 03, 2008 from txt) to Slate's political correspondent John Dickerson ("At Dairy Queen with Clinton. She had Blizzard with Snickers I had" [sic.], about 17 hours ago from txt) has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon (bandtwagon?), but what if their tweets wind up in the dustbin of histowy?  read more »