I came across an interesting article this morning via the USA TODAY asking whether Twitter was a spiritual experience.

In the linked article, Frederic A. Brussat raises 25 reasons why Twitter indeed is a spiritual experience. After taking a read of his points, it seems that he took some time to develop his ideas and craft his language carefully to describe them.

There are many things in life that people would consider to be “spiritual experiences”—including baseball games, music concerts and the like. But can we really consider a social networking website to be a spiritual experience? Brussat certainly raises points for us all to consider.

Take a read of his article and vote in the poll below. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.

(Photo Credit: redteam)

Police in Montgomery County in Texas (Houston area) have decided to post the names of drunk drivers on Twitter. While the police in this county will only do it through New Year’s and other holiday weekends, it raises a great number of questions.

First, one has to wonder if the fact will directly affect anyone’s decision to drive after having a few too many to drink. Think about it: a good number of people affected under this “new policy” may not understand the penalties, let alone know what Twitter actually is.

While getting your name published on a website for committing a crime could result in some initial embarrassment, the tweets or updates could be picked up by other websites and indexed in Google for an extended time. This could raise some issues if the intoxicated driver is eventually proven innocent. Google results could get buried but don’t necessarily go anywhere.

According to the news story, Venkat Balasubramani, a lawyer and law blogger, made a good point. He stated that just because facts are available to the public does not mean that the prosecutor needs to actively publicize the facts. Who is to say that police won’t start tweeting about other committed crimes in the future?

Let me know your thoughts on this story in the comments. Is tweeting the names of drunk drivers an acceptable approach to take?

(Source: CNET News)

Now that the holiday season has almost passed, there is no better time to look forward to 2010 and make some predictions and goals. Twitter is always seeming to improve as a platform, but there are still some changes that the service can make to drastically improve the user experience of nearly all of the users.

Here are the five biggest ways Twitter can improve their service in 2010.

• Streamline the retweet system.
  

The old-style vs. new-style debate has to stop: Twitter should come up with a way to make everyone happy with retweets in 2010. It could mean reverting back to the old system, going all out with the new system, or finding a good happy medium (while merging the two retweet ways together).

A recent Mashable poll showed that 64% prefer old-style retweets to new ones, so the question becomes, why change something that isn’t broken? Retweets are such a huge part of the Twitter experience, and this issue should be at the top of Twitter’s changes or adjustments as we head into 2010.

• Free up the dead accounts and expand the username pool.

As more and more people join up on the service, the available number of usernames will continue to shrink. Unfortunately, many Twitter usernames are taken by spammers or automated programs, limiting the choices available to new members.

As noted in an earlier post, the username is very important to the overall Twitter experience. Twitter should find a way to identify the dead, inactive or spam accounts and free up the usernames/handles for others to select.

• Rethink the “Twitter jail” system.

A Twitter user who ends up in “Twitter jail” must tweet over 100+ times per hour, or hit a daily quota of 1,000 tweets. One thing is for certain: that is a lot of tweeting. (Update: Some users have experienced Twitter jail updating under 100 times/hour.)

For repeat high-velocity Twitter jail offenders, Twitter should increase time penalties with each successive violation. More users will be joining up with Twitter, and the last thing that the service needs is more noise (tweets with low or no value). If Twitter raises the penalties, this will likely discourage heavy-volume tweeters from sharing excessive updates.

Twitter should differentiate users who get retweeted often from those who are barely retweeted to allow for variable tweet limits. In other words, users who need the tweets to reply back and share new content should be able to do so without being penalized under the “Twitter jail” system.

• Make a “Mutual Follows” option available to users so everyone can see who they are connected with.

Twitter would greatly benefit from a “Mutual Follows” page where a user could see which Twitter users he/she has in common with another. Similar to the Facebook option under their friend request system, it would make it easier to identify real Twitter users with common follows.

This would also help to better identify spam accounts. If spammers are following each other to game their following/follower number, one would easily be able to realize this. In addition, Twitter would benefit by being able to identify and take out groups of spammers at a time.

• Expand the “Verified Account” system to more accounts in an attempt to limit impersonation and rumors.

Now that Twitter is being indexed by Google and Bing, the services’ use for breaking news will only continue to rise. Twitter should reach out to news sources and attempt to verify them all to stop impersonation and false information/rumors being spread.

In addition, Twitter should contact some of the elite Twitter users (judged by retweets and a list number) and offer a verified account badge to those users as well. Well-respected and widely-recognized Twitter users should be acknowledged just as much as the authoritative news services and sources that enhance the Twitter experience.

Do you have any thoughts on how Twitter could improve in 2010? Let me know in the comments.

The holidays are a great time for everyone—even through the yearly hassles of holiday shopping, most people find time to spend with their family and friends while taking a break from work and other obligations.

With additional free time, it leaves the question: how much do you tweet over the holidays, if at all?

For most, it’s strictly a personal decision. With more free time comes more available time for tweeting—but some opt to use that free time relaxing and with family, away from the computer.

My Twitter stream seems to slow down on major holidays—I noticed a major drop off in tweet frequency on Thanksgiving Day, in particular.

How extensively do you tweet over the holidays? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Every now and then, I get a direct message from a service called TrueTwit, which provides an external link to a website featuring a captcha. The purpose: to differentiate the human followers from the spam followers.

Users who decide to implement TrueTwit send an automated direct message to all new follows asking for validation. The perceived benefit is that they will know which followers are legitimate people and which are spam followers.

But does it really benefit anyone? Here are some points to consider with implementing the service into your profile.

• Not every follower will get the message.

Most power users check their direct messages on a regular basis, but for more casual Twitter users, they could go days without checking their direct messages inbox. Realize that even though an automated DM is sent, it does not necessarily mean that it will be read in a timely manner (or at all). The result: an unverified follower.

• Some followers may dismiss it as spam due to the automation or text.

Twitter has gotten better with regard to controlling direct message phishing and hacking attacks, but spam is still rampant in Twitter’s direct message system. A user that has not seen TrueTwit before may not ever find the courage to click through to the link, so a user runs the risk of losing a potential follow due to the automated look of the message.

• Some followers may see it as a waste of time.

People are naturally busy on Twitter: whether it’s with work or tweeting itself. The fact is that some users may simply not want to spend the time verifying themselves to follows.

Unless you are a Twitter superstar with clout equivalent to Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), chances are that some people will not verify just because it takes time.

• Followers could get disgruntled with the captcha.

This isn’t a huge issue on TrueTwit since the captchas are generally very easy to read and retype. But in the (admittedly rare) event that a user types the captcha wrong, it could result in a click away from the website. Yet another way to lose a potentially great follow.

• No guarantee that the user will follow back.

Some followers may opt to not fill out TrueTwit captchas just from the sheer idea that there is no guaranteed follow back. In a Twitter universe that is seemingly hungry for more attention and followers, all that the TrueTwit proves is that you are a real person. There is no guarantee that the user will follow the verified follower back, which could turn some people off to filling it out.

• If the service continues to grow, the chances that all TrueTwit captchas will be filled out decreases.

For TrueTwit: the more users that join and use the service, the worse off the system is. Think about it: if every other DM was a TrueTwit validation message, the odds would fall that the user would take time to fill all of them out. One way that TrueTwit could fix this issue is through a one-captcha form for all outstanding validation requests. This would save the follower a significant amount of time and help TrueTwit grow their service.

Do you use TrueTwit for your Twitter account? What are your thoughts on TrueTwit?

Two days ago, Shellie Ross (@Military_Mom) tweeted as her child drowned in a pool.

“Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.”

Five hours after sending the tweet, Shellie’s child, Bryson, was declared dead.

While countless numbers of blogs and Twitter users have expressed outrage at the incident, let’s examine two main questions that could arise due to the story.

First, is something as personal as a child’s death worth reporting or sharing on the Twitter platform? Many users, especially lifestreamers and life bloggers, tweet personally-focused messages. Death of family members or other close friends are not necessarily something that I would be inclined to share to my Twitter following—obviously, there is a grief process that goes on well outside of any social network.

Since the incident, Shellie Ross has protected her updates from the public.

It’s possible that people got the impression she really didn’t care about her son: “Remembering my million dollar baby” doesn’t necessarily come off as a heartfelt tweet, even though the message is generally positive.

Second, this story should push the point home: does Twitter really take precedence over other important things in your life? Sure, there is the occasional Twitter addiction tweet in my stream—but maybe we should take this story and really examine personally how often we are on the social networking website.

If Twitter is cutting into your time spent with family and friends in real life, perhaps it’s time to reconsider how often you are on the site.

Obviously, this is a sad and extremely unfortunate story. What are your thoughts on this story? Will you approach Twitter any differently as a result of it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Recently, I have seen some debate in my Twitter stream over whether trending topics should be removed. This is a highly debated topic, so examining trending topics from many different angles was necessary.

Here are a few of the most common criticisms of Twitter’s trending topics and why they should ultimately be removed.

• Trending topics are often filled with spam topics or irrelevant hashtags.

If you glance at trending topics at different points in the day, many times you’ll see anywhere from two to five hashtags that most users would consider for fun or unnecessary. While there is little question that noteworthy (even newsworthy) topics are a part of trending topics, many of the top ten hashtags are usually not very helpful.

Trending Topics on December 14, 2009.

• The unnecessary hashtags add to the noise on the Twitter platform as Tweeps try actively to “get topics to trend”.

Sure, we’ve all been a part of it. In attempt to raise awareness for a cause (or even just as a joke), people try to get certain topics to trend on Twitter. What many don’t realize is the sheer number of tweets that it takes to get a topic to hit the top ten—many more tweets than one (or even 100) people could send out in a day.

Many Twitter users simply don’t understand that trending topics is something out of their own personal control.

• Trending topics contributes to false rumors and news being spread around the platform.

We’ve seen it before—trending topics can be a huge contributing factor to a rumor or false news story being spread. Kanye West’s apparent death is one of the latest rumors to be spread, and it turned out to be a hoax. However, when it hit trending topics at #10, it was a matter of minutes before “RIP Kanye” and other like hashtags were at the top of Twitter’s trending topics list.

Do you think trending topics should be removed from Twitter? Let me know in the comments.