Monday, April 20, 2009

Lots of bogus accounts on Twitter


I don’t know anyone in my personal life who uses Twitter. But everyone in the “Star Wars” universe has an account with the micro-blogging service.
Darth Vader and Princess Leia each have at least two accounts. Obi-Wan Kenobi has at least three. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2-D2, C-3PO and Yoda all have accounts. Even lesser characters like Grand Moff Tarkin and fish-faced rebel leader Admiral Ackbar have accounts. So do Lando Calrissian, Darth Maul, Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett. And on and on.
None of my friends or family members use the short-message posting service. But Twitter is estimated to have 14 million users in the U.S., according to Compete.com.
Those users include Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Tarzan, Jack Bauer, Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Buddy Holly, Adolph Hitler, Jesus Christ, Damien Thorn, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, Prophet Muhammad, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson and, of course, Tweety Bird.
Famous writers like Shakespeare, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald also are Twitter users.
Twitter doesn’t release statistics on users, much less active users. I can see why the San Francisco-based company doesn’t want to give out those statistics.
There are a ton of joke accounts and dead accounts, many of which only have a couple of posts and were abandoned long ago.
Based on all the publicity the service has generated thanks to a few celebrities using Twitter to promote themselves, many people have signed up to see what all the fuss is about. Based on what I’ve seen, they’re not going to stick around for long. For mainstream Americans the service has little utility. It’s a novelty.
A lot of jokesters have signed up for accounts with funny names based on the Twitter user-page greeting that reads, “Hey there! (FILL IN THE BLANK) is using Twitter.”
So, you get “Hey there! YourEvilTwin is using Twitter.” Also, YourMom, YourDad, Your Grandmother, etc. Then there’s ALoser and ALoner who are using Twitter.
Comedian George Carlin said there are “seven words you can never say on television.” But they’re all being used as Twitter user names.
Other Twitter users: YourPenis, YourScrotum, YourAss, MyPenis, MyBigPenis, MyBoner, MyPussy, and so on. Not surprisingly, they don’t have much interesting to say.
Twitter has many critics. Some of them are using Twitter. They have user names like IHateTwitter, TwitterSucks and FuckTwitter.
But Twitter has put a stop to that. You now can’t sign up with names like TwitterIsDumb, TwitterStinks, TwitterMustDie or TwitterBlows. You get this message, “User name can’t include Twitter.”
I guess they grandfathered those other guys in.

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