Tag: Tweets

7 Reasons That Peter Allen Should Be On Twitter
Hello 7 Reasons readers! I hadn’t intended to write about Peter Allen or Twitter today. I had originally intended to write about Hitler and the British plot to add oestrogen to his meals but then, in a fleetingly overheard snatch of BBC Radio 5Live’s Drive programme, I heard Anita Anand exhorting broadcasting legend and curmudgeon’s curmudgeon, Peter Allen to open a Twitter account. Amazing idea, I thought, as all notions of one charismatic pint-sized despot receded from my mind, to be replaced by thoughts of Peter Allen using Twitter. That would be amazing. Here are seven reasons why.

1. The Username Potential Is Great. Anita Anand is presenting Drive all week alongside Peter Allen. Her Twitter-name is @tweeter_anita. Peter Allen could take the name @tweeter_peter. Could anything be sweeter than @tweeter_anita helping @tweeter_peter take his first tentative steps on Twitter? Well, yes, kittens and just about all other things in the known world, but the matching names sound like fun. They’d be the Howard and Hilda of the Twitterverse.

2. We’d Learn More About Him. What do we really know about Peter Allen’s life? Very little. I checked his Wikipedia entry and this is all of the information contained in the Personal Life section:

He follows Tottenham Hotspur, owns a barn and has a trademark grunt.

While every 5Live listener will be aware of the first and third things mentioned, that he owns a barn is a revelation that has piqued my interest and raises many, many questions:
- Why does Peter Allen own a barn?
- What colour is Peter Allen’s barn?
- What does Peter Allen keep in his barn?
- Where is Peter Allen’s barn?
- How long has Peter Allen owned a barn?
- Does Peter Allen allow other people into his barn or is it like a rural Essex-based version of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude where he goes to hone his opinions and polish his hair?
- Did Peter Allen wake up one morning and think, “You know, what I really need to complete my life is a barn”?
- Does Peter Allen actually live in the barn?
- Why can’t I stop thinking about Peter Allen’s barn?
I’ll try to contain my curiosity about Peter Allen’s barn for the moment. Essentially we’d get to know more about the man behind the microphone and the barn behind the man behind the microphone. That would be great.

3. He Would Bring Something Different To Twitter. According to people that spuriously concoct statistics on the internet* rather than researching things properly, the average age of a Twitter user is thirty-one. That isn’t high enough to make Twitter truly representative of society. Peter Allen is more than twice that age. He’d bring a rarely seen perspective of experience and the benefit of time-accrued wisdom to the social network. Twitter is – in my experience – also predominantly a happy and joyful medium. He’d soon sort that too.

4. He Would Be Better Informed. During Drive, he regularly solicits listener feedback via text and email. If he were on Twitter, he’d get feedback 24 hours a day, whether he’d asked for it or not. He’d get feedback about travel, he’d get feedback about news, he’d get feedback about sport, he’d get questions about the barn from me, he’d get tweets from his colleagues poking fun at him (which would stop Aasmah getting out of practice during her week off) and he’d get feedback about things that he didn’t even know he wanted feedback about. Peter Allen would be better informed than he’d ever been in his life. If you need an opinion on anything, it will find you on Twitter.

5. There Would Be Pictures. Radio is a non-visual medium, so the ability to post pictures on Twitter would probably be liberating for Peter Allen and enlightening for the rest of us. We’d get pictures of Essex, we’d get pictures of the studio, we’d get pictures of the most bountiful and luxuriant silver barnet in the known universe and – most importantly – we’d get pictures of the barn. Please.

6. He Would Be Good On Twitter. A lifetime spent in journalism and broadcasting is the ideal preparation for the successful use of Twitter. After all, the distillation of the essence of a news story down to a headline or the dogged pursuit of an insightful quote from a radio interviewee are pretty much the same skills that are involved in condensing a thought, experience or opinion down to 140 characters on Twitter. Peter Allen’s tweets are likely to be provocative, incisive and sharp. Or at the very least he’d be able to say “Go away!” with alacrity and authority when confronted with the ninth question of the day about the barn or the fifteenth about his hair. Probably by tweeting “Go away!”.

7. His Presence Would Provide Encouragement For Curmudgeons. Having such a high-profile, self-confessed Twitter-sceptic jump into the fray would be an interesting experience for the man himself, his listeners and Twitter users. What better way to introduce other sceptics, doubters, technophobes and the plain hostile to the medium than to hear someone with a similar mindset coming to terms with its use? He might even learn to love it or, at the very least, loathe it less; which possibly amounts to the same thing in his world. Peter Allen could blaze a trail for the timid, the wary and the sceptical to become late-adopters of Twitter and would probably entertain his listeners royally into the bargain. I’ve loved listening to him since Radio 5 (as was) started and I can’t help thinking I’d enjoy his presence on Twitter every bit as much. Anita Anand is right. #letsgetpeterallenontwitter as soon as possible. Then we can teach him what that hashtag means.

*Source: 7Reasons.org, 2011.
August 15, 2011
7 Reasons Following Henry Blofeld On Twitter Makes The Mind Boggle

Don’t worry if you’re not on Twitter, you don’t need to be to read this post. Do worry if you don’t like cricket though, you’re an odd one. Henry Blofeld, for those of you who don’t know, is best known as a pigeon-loving, bus-spotting cricket commentator on the most glorious of radio shows, Test Match Special. Less well known are his forays on to the social media platform, Twitter. Now I don’t wish to upset the apple cart by saying he hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet, but occasionally, just occasionally, he puts something into the public domain that clearly shouldn’t be there. Sometimes it’s an erroneous punctuation mark, other times it’s a message clearly meant for someone in particular – he’s just forgotten to include the recipients username. Every time this happens though I can’t help but wonder what he was trying to do or say. Nor can I help wondering what conversation he is in the midst of. To my mind it usually involves pigeons. Being curious I have gone through his Twitter feed and found the last seven tweets that make little sense. After much analysis, I have discovered something that is rather alarming. Prepare yourself for a shock.

The Twitterati Know Him As @blowersh

1. “My Dear Old Thing. Many thanks for sending me news from the ship! Let’s hope we succeed in packing them in!” – 29 Mar 2011. Good golly gosh! Blowers is smuggling pigeons into Britain! He has a man – who he has unsurprisingly dubbed ‘My Dear Old Thing’ – and he has a ship. A ship that no doubt sits somewhere in the middle of the English Channel. And this man on the ship relays news to Blowers as and when he has packed as many pigeons into the vaults as humanly possible. No wonder Blowers doesn’t commentate as much as he used to. He’s far too busy preparing fake British pigeon documents.

2. “.X” – 10th Apr 2011. Interesting. Is this a kiss for a young lady who Blowers is embroiled in an exotic dalliance with? Or does it mean ‘X marks the spot’? Is it code for his man on the ship? Is that a full-stop or is it a dot? Google Maps indicate there is a place called Dot Cottage near Winchelsea Beach in Sussex. So this is code! It means, ‘X marks the dot’. Blowers is unloading illegal pigeons at Dot Cottage!

3. “My Dear Old Thing. I suppose it takes one to know one. Anyway, good to hear from you. Pip pip Blowers.” – 12th Apr 2011. What is one? A cricket commentator? Is this message for Aggers? No, he wouldn’t say that to Aggers. This must be a reply to another pigeon smuggler! I bet it’s Boycott. Blowers’ message contains hints of a brush off. The use of ‘anyway’ signifies that Blowers doesn’t have time for this. He’s got things to do. My only conclusion is that Boycott is also smuggling pigeons and therefore they are fighting for business.

4. “#” – 22nd Apr 2011. A hashtag. But without the tag. So really it’s just a hash. Oh crikey! Someone’s made a terrible hash of things haven’t they? The man on the ship! It must be him. Has he been captured by a ghastly pigeon immigration official at Dot Cottage?!

5. “Yes please! What a terrific idea! Where do you suggest?” – 4th May 2011. Yes! It looks like I was right. Blowers’ man on the ship is now imprisoned. And even worse Dot Cottage is now a no go area. But it looks like someone else has approached Blowers with an offer. An offer Blowers really likes. We can only presume it’s an offer in a similar business and a new arrival port is being sought.

6. “My Dear Old Thing. Just arrived back in London. See you at 1.30 and look so much to meeting you. Pip pip Henry.” – 7th May 2011. Where’s Blowers been? Has he been to the new Dot Cottage or has he been to the printers to get the fake pigeon passports? And who is he meeting at 1.30pm? Is it his new pigeon supplier? The other option really isn’t worth thinking about. The idea of Blowers being caught in a honey trap by the pesky RSPCP (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Pigeons) fills one with absolute fright. Oh, Blowers, do be careful.

7. “My Dear Old Thing. How’s the new ‘phone coming along? Pip pip.” – 17th May 2011. Odd. I have absolutely no idea how this relates to pigeon smuggling. Have I got this all wrong? Is Blowers actually something worse than a pigeon smuggler? Does he work in customer service for Vodafone?

*Disclaimer: Obviously this is entirely made up. We are not suggesting for one minute that Henry Blofeld or any of his associates are involved in the smuggling of pigeons into Great Britain. Nor are we suggesting he endorses Vodafone. The only thing we know about Blowers for sure is that he is the sound of cricket, a national treasure and he’s still struggling with Twitter. And, to be honest, we wouldn’t have him any other way.

May 17, 2011
7 Reasons to Follow @BenicioDToro on Twitter

Hello! It’s Groundhog Day today and, to commemorate that event, we’re going to be doing the same thing that we did on this day last year: Not writing about Groundhog Day. Instead, we’re going to be writing about Benicio Del Toro because, as you may or may not be aware, he’s recently joined Twitter. Here are seven reasons that you should follow him.

1. It Might Be Him. Given the level of interaction that he has with his followers it seems unlikely that @BenicioDToro is the real Benicio Del Toro; after all, most celebrity tweeters have little or no interaction with their followers, with some choosing to interact only with other celebs and some not even tweeting their own stuff at all, leaving it to PR minions. Still, given that it’s Benicio Del Toro that we’re discussing, you might expect him to behave a little differently than say, Paris Hilton or Newt Gingrich. You’d probably expect the unexpected from him. So perhaps it is him.

2. It Might Not Be Him. Fake celebrity tweeters are all over Twitter. Some of them are sad, deluded individuals who contribute nothing of interest to proceedings, and some are brilliant, witty, insightful and passionate about spoofing the people they purport to be, or – for fear of litigation – don’t purport to be. I will say this; if it isn’t Benicio del Toro then, whoever it is, they’re doing a damned fine job. Such a good job, in fact, that they probably deserve to be Benicio Del Toro, replacing the real version. After all, pretending to be someone else is, fundamentally, acting, and if Del Toro is being spoofed then the spoofter clearly deserves the promotion. We should still follow though, because if it turns out that it isn’t really him, British followers will be able to sigh, grumble and rant, and American followers will be able to concoct bizarre law-suits for emotional distress suffered or for mail fraud (whatever the hell that is). Essentially we all win.

3. Interaction. He retweets lots of nice things that people say about him (we’re hopeful that he will retweet this). Hmm, you might be thinking, that sounds a little self-serving, but since I’ve been following Benicio Del Toro, my timeline’s been full of people saying nice things, which is a genuine change from the norm. Usually my Twitter feed consists of “Piers Morgan’s a cock” and “the Daily Mail want to shovel us all into ovens” endlessly tweeted and retweeted. So perhaps positivity and kindness will make Twitter a better place. Or maybe they won’t. He also responds to people. Not just glib, cursory responses, but actual considered, thoughtful ones about acting, upcoming projects and the roles he chooses. He just seems really, genuinely nice.*

4. Be An Early Adopter. If you follow Benicio Del Toro now, you’ll be seen as an early adopter and that’s always cool. Well, unless you’re an HD-DVD-9 user (the HD-DVD-9 user?) or a clog-revivalist in which case it isn’t. And if you’re both of those things you’re really in trouble. Anyway, if you follow him now, you can impress people by saying “I was in the first couple of thousand people to follow Benicio Del Toro on Twitter” or, if you’re not talking to an audience of geeks, you could should keep that quiet.

5. He Follows People Back. This might not sound intrinsically interesting, but for a celebrity tweeter, it’s unusual. It’s also a brilliant spectator sport, because every time he returns to Twitter – and we’re probably not helping here – Benicio Del Toro has many, many new followers to follow back. As this snowballs (and it will), how will he cope? Will he have to give up acting, meals or sleep to spend his time following everyone back? Will he be reduced from a fine actor to a haggard, pallid man sitting in a darkened room dressed only in his underpants endlessly clicking the Follow button as he desperately struggles to catch up? This is more exciting than a soap opera.

It's The Beard!

6. The Beard. Benicio Del Toro’s beard is one of the most awesome, luxuriant, manly examples of facial fuzz there is and we should all see that in our timeline every now and again. For men, it would be inspirational, a paragon of masculine virtue that, if we look at it long enough, might just rub off on us. For women, it would be aspirational, a paragon of masculine virtue that, if they look at it long enough, might just rub on them. Let’s face it, a proper beard is something we all love and if you follow Benicio you’ll see it a lot in your timeline.

7. Quantity. The most surprising thing is not that Benicio Del Toro is tweeting, retweeting and responding to people (after all, that’s how most of us non-celebrities use Twitter), it’s that he’s responding in such quantity to people. He’s tweeting hundreds of times a day. Yes. Hundreds. It must be quite a Herculean task to tweet that often (@7Reasons manages to tweet four or five times a day and there are two of us). And it’s not just the sheer dedication to tweeting that’s amazing, it’s the potential consequences. After all, he’s retweeting things that people are saying about him, and then they’re retweeting his retweets of the things they said about him, and then their friends are replying to the retweet of the retweet – and probably retweeting it themselves – and then they’re following him and saying nice things about him which he’ll retweet and the whole process starts again (but bigger because there’s now a wider circle of people involved). Essentially, BDT (How I wish he had a shorter name) is going to break Twitter and probably the internet as well. And if you follow him, you’ll be the first to know when that happens.**

*The bastard!

**Probably.

February 2, 2011
7 Reasons That Twitter Will Alter All Human Existence

Twitter: Fun? Yes. Useful? Yes. A culture-changing behemoth that will fundamentally alter all human existence? Yes. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Opinion. Twitter is a hotbed of instant opinion and, thanks to the medium, our ability to express opinion will remain undiminished. Unfortunately, also thanks to Twitter, all human opinion will eventually come to be expressed in 140 characters or less. Thus Machiavelli’s view of history as a tool for learning will change from:

“Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.”

To:

“He’s just like his dad. Men are all the same. LOL.

And Albert Einstein’s,

“The population of the civilized countries is extremely dense as compared with former times; Europe today contains about three times as many people as it did a hundred years ago. But the number of leading personalities has decreased out of all proportion. Only a few people are known to the masses as individuals, through their creative achievements. Organisation has to some extent taken the place of leading personalities, particularly in the technical sphere, but also to a very perceptible extent in the scientific.”

Will become:

“People are becoming more stoopid. LOL”

And where we would once have had wordy treatises extolling considered opinion on the omniscient nature of the supreme being, we will have:

“God knows. LOL.”

2. Mimicry. And it’s not just that opinion will be condensed to insubstantial gibberish. Some people will eventually be reduced to saying nothing at all. Thanks to the retweet button, the lazy and unoriginal will find it possible to maintain discourse with others without ever stating any of their own thoughts or opinions at all. This will be familiar to anyone who has ever conversed with a Daily Mail reader or a viewer of Fox News but, the spectre of it escalating further is worrying indeed. Perhaps thanks to the constant retweeting, the world will be reduced to having just one opinion on any given subject. Rupert Murdoch’s, probably.

3. Courage. And it’s not just that we’ll lack opinions and the capability for extended expression. Humanity will eventually develop to lack courage. Because when we disagree with the opinion that someone has just retweeted: “Pink is for sissies. LOL”, we won’t reply, “No it isn’t. Chuck Norris wears pink underpants. LOL”, we’ll send a direct message to someone else saying, “Did you see what @RupertMurdoch1874 just said? Where does he get off saying that? LOL.” Because as people fear losing followers or public ridicule they become more and more timid and secretive and would rather whisper things to their friends in the corner. Sadly, however, they don’t become any less stupid.

4. Shame. Shame will disappear completely as a human emotion. As we increasingly rely on Twitter for information that we would previously have acquired through knowing stuff and learning and having a modicum of sense and whatnot – or even just old-fashioned googling things – we will eventually attempt to acquire all of our important life information from Twitter.

“Is Twitter down? LOL”

“Can I eat lamb that’s been in the fridge for over a day? LOL”

“Is it weird that my period’s six weeks late? LOL”

“Why am I getting so fat? LOL”

Seriously, if our dead ancestors came back from the grave and saw the things that people tweet, they’d…er…die again, of shame. And spin too. (Okay, I really didn’t think that metaphor through but at least I’m not brazenly parading my stupidity on Twitter full-time. No. I’m busy writing this. I’m saving my Twitter-stupidity for later).

5. Emotions. Human expression of emotion will also come to be affected by Twitter. People will no longer smile, cry, or frown, they will merely write “*smiles”, “*cries”, “*frowns”, “*throws self under a bus. LOL”, to denote emotion. Whether this will extend to mainstream media is a matter of conjecture (which is fortunate as that’s what I’m doing. I’m conjecting. I’m a conjector), but it’s easy to imagine rolling news channels with banners stating “M6 Traffic Jam Reaches Sixth Day *sticks bottom lip out”, “Man Found Guilty Of Sex Act With Goat *eeuuggghhh” and “Osama Bin Laden Captured *punches air with fist”. Well, actually the last one is hard to imagine. But at least emoting by using the asterisk is some progress from using smileys and emoticons, which is just abusing perfectly good punctuation-marks in order to make a stupid bloody sideways face.

6. Internationalism. As cultures interact on Twitter, entire national traits will disappear as the world becomes a more homogenous place. After all, anyone who is aware of the Twitter phenomenon that has been @theashes, will have noted that, after 234 years of trying, an American has been finally converted to following the glorious sport of cricket. This means that, in a mere 71,839,532,700 years, the entire population of the United States will be cricket lovers, and the world will be all the better for that. And then we can start converting China. Seriously, Cricket will be the world sport in…(Nope, my computer isn’t powerful enough to compute that. Probably at about the time when people return to the sea and the dinosaurs come back in their meteor).

7. LOL. As the phrase “LOL” becomes so ubiquitous that every last feckless bastard ends their tweets with it (this will probably happen in about six days time) and we come not to notice that we’re doing it altogether and forget its original meaning, there will come a moment when someone actually wants to write “laughing out loud” which, as it takes up too many characters, they will abbreviate to LOL. And as all tweets will already be suffixed “LOL”, the tweet “LOL. LOL.” will eventually occur. And that will be the moment that Twitter, or humanity (or both) will implode. Or explode. Either way, there will definitely be a plosion of some sort. LOL.

December 7, 2010
7 Reasons That Twitter Should Replace The Fail Whale

Tharr she blows! It’s the Fail Whale. Don’t panic though, dear reader. This doesn’t mean that our website is down. We’re just fed up of the Fail Whale, Twitter’s iconic image which surfaces whenever the social media network isn’t functioning. Beautiful as it is, we think that it’s time to replace it. Here are seven reasons why.

1. It’s Not Fair To Whales. Whales have enough problems without Twitter tainting them with failure by association. Zeppelins, like Twitter, are cool. Yet they’re already associated with failure. What better way to show that the network is down?

2. Sometimes It Appears Erroneously. Sometimes the Fail Whale appears once, only to disappear when you refresh the screen. This means that Twitter isn’t wholly down, it’s just working slowly. For that eventuality, they require a Fail Snail.

3. Because Twitter Is Down A Lot. Twitter is a huge success and has grown rapidly. Yet their servers seem unable to cope. This constantly frustrates users and, in turn, leads to ill-will towards the network. If they don’t sort their technical issues out soon, they may find themselves becoming extinct. The Fail Dodos would remind them of this.

4. It Doesn’t Suggest A Helpful Alternative. The Fail Whale doesn’t really tell you much. This image though, suggests an alternative and more reliable – though archaic – method of communication to use while twitter is down. Behold, the Fail Mail.

5. The Image Suggests Functionality. The Fail Whale image shows a whale being held aloft by Twitter’s cute little birds. Rather than suggesting that Twitter isn’t working, the Fail Whale image suggests that it is. A far less plausible, and therefore more accurate, image would be the Fail Bird: A large Twitter bird being kept airborne by school of fail whales.

6. Sleep. Because the Fail Whale image is slightly reminiscent of Dali’s Sleep, which is a much more interesting thing to look at. And it’s important to be stimulated while you’re unable to communicate with people.

7. It Doesn’t Go Far Enough. It’s a pretty picture, but the Fail Whale image doesn’t state what is occurring in clear enough terms. This is far more descriptive.

And yes, we did put most of these images together last night, while Twitter was down.

August 6, 2010