7:00 AM 04/16/2008
So @JasonCalicanis was given a Dash GPS by a vendor. The JasonNation decides tobook in the ama give said GPS away on Ustream.tv. So he announces it on Twitter and asks that the word be spread. Suddenly, there are about 440 users all talking at once with Jason scrambling to lower the video quality. It got pretty crazy in there.
Last night @indiekid tweets: this just in...pick up @garyvee's new book from amazon right now and get him in the amazon top 10! http://tinyurl.com/4qojcb please retweet about 7 hours ago from twitterrific
It would be so cool to see some sort of engine that would sketch out the 'I told 2 friends.' word of mouth marketing. Anyway, I digress.
Then @indiekid tweets again let's do this guys! power of community! get @garyvee 's book in the amazon top 10! ...get two copies.
I check at that time and his book ranking was at 292. Dude! It's not even available yet - this is preorder. Before I went to sleep last night the book was at 192. Out of curiousity I check this morning and its 120. 392 to 120 in seven hours. I think that's Twitter. Of course Twitter fits nicely around human tendency to want to get involved, to make a difference and of course, jump on the bandwagon. And voyeurism, can't forget that.
Heh. What do you think?
Oh.. I forgot to mention. I am a Twitter victim too. I bought 2 copies. That fear of being left out is driving...
*** Update ***
7:54 AM.
Kind of interesting that I come across this news article today:
U.C. Berkeley student's Twitter messages alerted world to his arrest in Egypt
Excerpt:04/15/2008 BERKELEY _ When Egyptian police scooped up UC Berkeley graduate journalism student James Karl Buck, who was photographing a noisy demonstration, and dumped him in a jail cell last week, they didn't count on Twitter.
Buck, 29, a former Oakland Tribune multimedia intern, used the ubiquitous short messaging service to tap out a single word on his cellular phone: ARRESTED. The message went out to the cell phones and computers of a wide circle of friends in the United States and to the mostly leftist, anti-government bloggers in Egypt who are the subject of his graduate journalism project.
The next day, he walked out a free man with an Egyptian attorney hired by UC Berkeley at his side and the U.S. Embassy on the phone.
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Nice. It's quite apparent that the Twitter community gets things done. Sure, people use it for stupid shit - but all in all.. It's starting to take on the wonder of staring up at the stars in upstate NY, You feel so small, yet part of something glorious.
