Jesus Banned By Twitter?

Posted on 30. Apr, 2009 by Cameron Reilly in twitter

Someone today pointed out to me that the username “Jesus” hadn’t been taken on Twitter – when you go to twitter.com/jesus it’s blank – and suggested I take the username. I was sure someone would have already grabbed, so I went to check out what would happen if I tried to register it. Sure enough, Twitter says the username is already taken:

Although this is obviously not true.

My question is – what if Jesus comes back, tries to reach his followers via Twitter and finds out it’s already taken?! Is this religious discrimination by Twitter?

Twitterfast Update

Posted on 23. Mar, 2009 by Cameron Reilly in twitter

I’ve been receiving emails from people asking “what happened to your Twitterfast”? The posts that you’re seeing from me in Twitter are automated posts from Friendfeed which keeps an eye on my blogs, delicious bookmarks, Facebook posts, Flickr uploads, etc. I haven’t posted directly to Twitter (except asking for help on uStream last night) for 36 hours and it has been HARD. I have the impulse to post to or check Twitter every few minutes. Just nonsense stuff really… about thoughts I’m having, people I’m talking to, where to catch a bus, plugging sites I’ve discovered, etc. Nothing terribly important or special but it does really make me notice how much I rely on Twitter every day. As I was discussing with some folks in a meeting today, Twitter is really my primary search engine for so many things. I’m finding living without it pretty difficult.

Back in 2001, I gave a series of CIO breakfasts for Microsoft. One of the things I talked about was a rating system I had for evaluating new technologies and services in my life. It went something like this:

Rating 1: If it disappeared tomorrow, I would hardly notice.
Rating 2: If it disappeared tomorrow, I would notice but could happily live without it.
Rating 3: If it disappeared tomorrow, I would feel the absence but would cope.
Rating 4: If it disappeared tomorrow, I would feel the absence and proactively look for a replacement.
Rating 5: If it disappeared tomorrow, I would go to war to get it back.

Where is Twitter for me right now? Somewhere between 4 and 5 I think.

Why I’m Having A Twitterfast

Posted on 22. Mar, 2009 by Cameron Reilly in twitter

I love Twitter. Too much.

Late last night, I was driving home from having a beer with a couple of old school mates and realized I was checking Twitter on my iPhone WHILE I WAS DRIVING every few minutes.

I don’t like feeling that I’m addicted to things. I gave up drinking alcohol for 12 years (from age 18 to 30) because I felt like I had a problem with it. And with Twitter, I’ve been feeling lately like I NEED to check Twitter. Like I’m missing out on something if I don’t check it or tweet something every ten minutes. It’s an urge. A need. It’s physical. I’d love to see an fMRI scan of the hypothalamus when people are using Twitter. I’m sure some people have a greater addiction to activities that generate increased dopamine (one of the neurochemicals associated with pleasure and motivation) than others, and I know I’m one of them. I get easily addicted to short-term activities that give me a burst of quick pleasure and I want to train myself to develop better impulse control. And I’m starting with Twitter.

Over the last ten years I have fasted a number of times (ingested nothing but water) for a week to ten days when I’ve felt like my diet was out of control. Every time I’ve done it I have found that it re-calibrates my thinking about food for pleasure versus food for nutrition. I’m hoping a Twitterfast will accomplish the same thing. By the way, when I used the term ‘twitterfast’ last night I thought I was coining it but apparently it’s been around for quite a while.

IN the meantime… if you haven’t watched Bill Gates’ talk from the recent TED conference, watch it now. I was stunned to learn that more investment goes into finding a cure for baldness than a cure for malaria.

the brave experiment starts tomorrow

Posted on 29. Jan, 2009 by Cameron Reilly in media 2.0, new media, twitter

Tomorrow (that would be Friday Jan 30) at 10am Sydney time I have Antony Loewenstein, journalist, blogger and author, back on the show to discuss the recent and current events in Gaza.

The brave experiment is this:

With the help of my two filthy assistants (sorry Tim and Jonathan, I’ve been reading Transmetropolitan too much tonight), I’m going to be doing a LIVE TWITSTREAM of the interview. You can follow it on the gdayworld twitter account.

If you want to ask questions of Antony during the interview, or debate one of his points, then send a reply to gdayworld and we’ll feed it into the interview!

I’m going to try to take twinterviewing to a new level.

Thanks to Darryl King from iReckon for seeding the filthy idea into my head today over coffee.