I don’t know if anyone is credited with creating the word “Tweet” but it seems to have been synonymous with Twitter since the start. So many Twitter scripts and Twitter related websites use the word “Tweet” in their domain name because of this, including this one.

Twitter is obviously aware of this so they have taken steps to trademark the word :

We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of “going after” the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.

So it seems that they are happy for people to use the word “Tweet” on their websites, as long as it is used in a responsible manner and isn’t hurting the Twitter brand in any way.

Link : May The Tweets Be With You

Sadly veteren actress Mollie Sugden died yesterday at the age of 86. Mollie was best known for her character Mrs Slocombe in the 1970s BBC sitcom ‘Are You Being Served?’. Though her passing has caused a minor bit of a stir on Twitter.

One of the running jokes on ‘Are You Being Served?’ was Mrs Slocombes references to her pussy (i.e. her cat!), a classic sexual innuendo misundertanding.

To pay his respects, TV presenter Johnathan Ross left this tweet :

The tag #MrsSlocombesPussy proved to be very popular because of this tweet with lots of Twitter users using it to pay their respects.

Clearly the people who work in the Twitter spam department are not familar with Mollie or ‘Are You Being Served?’ as they promptly banned the tag from the trending topics. I can understand how someone who was not familar with the joke could misintepret the trend as some sort of spam campaign but it does illustrate that the current system is far from perfect.

I will leave you with a classic montage of Mollies classic character Mrs Slocombe and her well known catchphrase. Enjoy

I was looking at my followers page tonight and noticed that Twitter have upgraded it a little. Both the following and the followers page have been improved cosmetically : now there is a drop down link to mention someone in your tweet, direct message them and block them (and follow them if you are not already following them).

You also have the option to view your following page as a list. This method shows a little less detail so makes it much easier to browse your follower pages.

Although this is just a small change in design, it is still the first time that Twitter has changed it’s main site in a long time. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come

I was reading yesterday about how best selling author Alice Hoffman’s reacted angrily about a negative review via Twitter. Hoffman was particularly unhappy about this review from Roberta Silman.

Yet Hoffman has a huge reputation and has built a large audience. There may be lots of readers who crave books that have their feet planted both in reality and fairy tale, complete with mysterious passages like those introducing each chapter of this puzzling, and, in the end, unsettling book.

She has sinced deleted her Twitter account but Gawker managed to do some screen captures before the account was taken offline.

The tweet below illustrates how nasty Hoffman got with her tweets (this was one of the 27 tweets directed at Roberta Silman) :

No apology has been issued by Hoffman or her agent yet but it’s something that I recommend she does do, less she loses even more fans. Check out some of these replies yesterday from some of her followers :

Ron Charles

Islinda

I don’t think this will be the last time we see a celebrity lose it on Twitter. Not that I’m complaining as it makes for good reading!!

The world was saddened yesterday by the news of pop legend Michael Jackson passing away. The internet went into meltdown with the LA Times, one of the first sites to report the death, shutting down because of the volume of traffic.

Just like many other people, I was a big fan of Michael Jacksons music. Thriller was the first album I bought as a child and I recall my mum even taking me to his awful film Moonwalker! And just like most other people, my opinion of him as a human opinion dropped considerably over the last 10 years due to all the allegations from minors etc, something which I don’t think I need to go into in this post.

Nevertheless, the response from the world about his passing has rightfully been positive. One person who wasn’t respectful was self professed internet celebrity Perez Hilton. When the news first came out Perez wrote a post suggesting that his reported death was just a stunt to generate interest in his upcoming tour.

The backlash he received was huge and he duly took the post down, but not before many people screenprinted the post.

The above post was quickly replaced with a few respectful posts including a rememberence post, however the damage was done. You only have to read some of the replies to see how angry people are about Perezs actions.

At the moment there is a huge campaign on Twitter to unfollow Perez (see #unfollowperez). Twitter themselves appear to be editing the Twitter Trends area so that this campaign doesn’t show however it doesn’t seem to be slowing it down.

I have to agree with Pete Cashmore that this kind of thing (speculatative posts) undermines the crediblity of all bloggers. Fake death reports on the internet are common but I think those with a large readership need to do a little more research before posting pure speculation.