Twitter: The Best Of The Week (April 11-17, 2009)

This is a weekly series that looks at the best Twitter-related stories, news and articles within the Twittersphere over the last seven days. You can read previous entries in our archives. Twitter Gets Hacked By A Worm (And His Name Was Michael Mooney) This past week was really all about one thing: worms. Twitter got hit hard and fast last Easter weekend, and for a little while things looked pretty bleak. I did my part by helping out folk with the cure, but is this just the beginning, and what can you do to protect yourself? Twitter Goes Pay-Per-Tweet, And Big Business Is Buying Magpie is a new pay-per-tweet service on Twitter. It's got many up-in-arms, but that hasn't stopped the likes of Apple, Skype and others signing up. What exactly is going on? How Fast Can You Tweet? Not sure? Check out Fast140.com and find out. (Note: some people are clearly cheating.) Every Time You Tweet, A Kitten Is Killed The Daily Mail did its usual bit for humanitarianism by claming that Twitter can make you immoral, after scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) made vague suggestions that the rapid updates on Twitter could lead to some folk never fully experiencing "emotions about other people's psychological states and that would have implications for your morality." Uh huh. To be fair, the USC researchers later stated they'd been misquoted and further exploration was necessary, but of course none of that matters to Britain's most honourable tabloid. The 10 Most Extraordinary Twitter Updates Marriage proposals, tweets from the womb and Mars, are visible at Mashable, as well as Twitter's first-ever submission. Ever Wanted One Of Your Tweets On A T-shirt? Really? Well now you can, thanks to those kind folk at the oddly-named Twitoshirt (Tweeshirt was already taken). Better yet: if your shirt sells - and heck, why wouldn't it? - you get a slice of the pie. The Jonas Brothers: Why? That's too broad a question for this humble blog, but this Jonas Brother's upload on Twitpic this week got over 80,000 views. No, I don't get it, either. Isn't the average user on Twitter somewhere in their mid-30s? This Isn't CNN Well, it is now, but for 900,000+ followers, the @cnnbrk account was actually being updated by one James Cox. CNN have now made arrangements to take over, but why didn't Twitter act sooner? And is it true that @cnnbrk was up for sale for $50,000? (More from me on this in the week.) Ashton Kutcher Hits One Million Followers Thanks to a lot of buzz, charity donations and a ton of last-minute support (including possibly from Twitter themselves, who seemed to freeze the ability to unfollow for several hours yesterday), Ashton Kutcher, aka @aplusk, became the first user on Twitter to boast one million followers. Later today (in the USA), Oprah Winfrey will submit her first tweet, and most-likely will become the fastest user to one million strong. You can even predict how many followers she'll have in a month from now. Has Twitter finally gone totally mainstream, or is it about to jump the shark? This Week On Twittercism.com So Ashton Is The First To One Million Followers. Will Oprah Be The Fastest? (April 17) How To Configure TweetDeck To Save API Drain And Engage With Your Followers (April 16) Breaking News: Just Not From CNN (Also, Why Being Able to Change Your Username On Twitter Is Really, Really Dumb) (April 16) Exclusive: Alan Carr Throws Caution To The Wind, Follows Three People (April 15) And The First Twitter Account To One Million Followers Is... (April 15) How To Use Twitter To Leverage Your Blog (Part One) (April 14) Twitter Worms: How To Tell If You're Infected (April 13) HOWTO: Remove Mikeyy From Your Twitter Profile (UPDATED) (April 12) HOWTO: Protect Yourself On Twitter (Lessons Learned From The StalkDaily Twitter Hack) (April 12) Was StalkDaily A Phishing Operation? Either Way, I'm Locked Out Of Twitter. (UPDATED) (April 11) HOWTO: Remove StalkDaily.com From Your Infected Twitter Profile (UPDATED) (April 11) Enjoy. :)

Social Pro Daily

Twitter: The Best Of The Week (April 11-17, 2009)

Twitter Gets Hacked By A Worm (And His Name Was Michael Mooney)

Shea Bennett

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

Twitter Gets Hacked By A Worm (And His Name Was Michael Mooney)

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Shea Bennett