We just had a bit of a shaker in the San Francisco Bay Area. Magnitude 5.6
to be exact. No damage here but it was certainly felt across the twittersphere.
You know you’re a technology geek when…
Neat to see the real time responses, and glad everyone is alright. Picture
below of the shake map.
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[…] All well and good. But let’s take a look at an example of some of the earthquake intelligence that rolled in via Brian McNitt’s Twitter stream. […]
I just started Twitter recently, and I was curious about your usage of the “#” sign…is that support for groups or channels?
Hi Tim,
Good to meet you! Regarding the use of the “#” sign, that’s the basic idea. The idea is championed by Chris Messina (@factoryjoe). For the full discussion, see Groups for Twitter; or A Proposal for Twitter Tag Channels.
Brian
Ahh that makes a lot of sense, but let me get this straight, there’s no official support for it? I mean can I subscribe to a channel and its twitters?
No official support as far as I know. Seems like an opportunity for someone to create a web app using the Twitter API.
Not the same but Twitterverse tracks basic word usage. From there you can pseudo track topics. For example people talking about all things happy.
I was in Boston at the time (I live in the Bay Area though) and I remember seeing that exact moment on Twitter. Your screenshot is hilarious! Thanks for sharing. It’s incredible how fast I’ve picked up on some events thanks to the TNN (Twitter News Network). That one in particular was wild for me, hearing about events at home when I was on the other side of the country.
To add to the #hashtag conversation – there are some Twitter apps that are hashtag-enabled, using third-party means. My Twitter UI http://itweet.net supports inline #hashtags and also Twitter search using the Terraminds API. You can use it from a browser or on an iPhone. I think that the AIR apps Snitter and Twhirl support hashtags in some fashion too.
There is also the new(ish) http://hashtags.org web service which is quite reliable for tracking your hashtags, but you must be following the @hashtags bot. Their site is pretty cool, they provide related content (Flickr photos, links etc) to hashtag searches, and feeds are available as well.