I joined twitter on the 13th of February 2007 and i don’t remember for how long the service was already out and running.

At the beginning I was not really active tweeting then became addicted to a certain extreme limit and lately I am controlling this addiction and this control led to one of my new year resolutions which is being less active on twitter and more on Quora (which I believe will be big in 2011 because of the accumulating knowledge the site is carrying).

This post is not about discussing the blogging or micro blogging services and their impact, it is about how Lebanese tweeple communicate and tweet. Since joining twitter i have followed and unfollowed lots of people, i have seen the clever and stupid, the smart and dumb, the useful and the useless and filtered my time line very often, but what kept coming to my head is the Lebanese way of tweeting (not everyone but most of them) and below is a typical time line out of my imagination.

Tweeple #1: morning Lebanon

Unlimited number of tweeples: morning tweeple #1, long time no see, long time no hear, we miss you, i love you, how are you, bla bla bla

Tweeple #1: oh thank you thank you i miss all of you too

(knowing that they had a tweetup 24 hours before this conversation)

Tweeple #1: i feel like having a breakfast, what should i eat?

Unlimited number of tweeples: have a man2ouche, no a croissant, i suggest labneh 3al saj, no eat healthy, i adore nutella, bla bla bla

Tweeple #1: ok i will have all what you have suggested

Tweeple #2 (girl): i was thinking of buying a new bag and shoes, what about we make a tweetup and discuss it???

Unlimited number of tweeples (girls): akid charchoura, i have wonderful ideas for you, chefet skarbineh mbere7 bel Hamra bett tayyer el 3a2el, yiiii la2 ana ma fiyeh ajlouwa please, bla bla bla

unlimited number of retweets for the tweetup via twitvite starts filling your time line

Tweeple #3 (boy): Guys, i am thinking of buying a new Camaro model el 2015, haydi special edition ou ma fi menna ella 100 cars worldwide, i need to have one of them to feel i am aligned with life ou se3ra bass 75,000 dollars bass iza bjiba men dubai bwafer fiya chway (knowing that he can barely afford to buy a Nissan Sunny 1995 model, with all my respect to people driving Nissan Sunny cars).

Unlimited number of tweeples: no dont buy that camaro, it is not good, i heard that there is a strange noise in the engine and they cannot locate it, so fiya deffo menel cherkeh, no buy this car, much better, no buy that car, and the discussion goes on the “lebanese style” analyzing and finding what all the engineers of Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari and Porsche missed while designing their cars.

OK, let us have a tweetup and design our own car and while we are there we can also discuss the political situation in Lebanon and the region and analyze what will happen next.

unlimited number of retweets for the tweetup via twitvite starts filling your time line

Tweeple #999: I feel so down today because my cat did not feel OK yesterday, took her to the vet and i could not sleep all night long as i wanted to make sure she is sleeping peacefully.

Unlimited number of tweeples: yiii sorry to hear this, walla bssayentik ma btesstehal, bassita allah karim, ra7 dawila cham3a la tsso7

Tweeple #1025: i became the mayor of restaurant “best hamburger in town” (and this check-in is number 3,752 at the same location) ya khayeh walla fhemnna enno bet 7ebb el hamburger taba3 “best hamburger in town” ou jarabneha ou btekhod el 3a2el ou ra7 na3mellak wassel fiya.

Tweeple #3710: let us have a tweetup because i did not eat sushi since our last tweetup at “best sushi in town”

unlimited number of retweets for the tweetup via twitvite starts filling your time line

Tweeple #2762: I cannot believe my eyes, i crossed the line of 50,000 tweets, i feel great!!!

Unlimited number of tweeples: mabrouk el 50,000 tweet, walla ma 7ada addak 3al twitter ya chabb el twitter enta, ya allah my wish is to have the same number of tweets, starting this moment i will tweet everytime i use the bathroom, maybe it can help raising the number.

Hey you, “Stupid with 50,000 tweets”, i am sure that barely 1% of your tweets might have something useful for me or for others, you got to that number because you tell good morning every morning to the 1000 people following you and every time you take a breath you tweet about it.

And it goes on and on and on … so please go and download a messenger.

Having caricaturized the twitter time line the Lebanese style, i cannot hold myself saying that there are lots interesting tweeple out there who can easily fill you time line with useful tweets and information and point to interesting subjects. No need to make a list of names, you know who you are.

And then came Facebook… and I am trying hard to remember when I first joined this social network after many insisting requests from my work colleagues and it happened, I had my profile with very limited gadgets and accessories when FB took the internet by storm and became the story to tell in every gathering of friends and family, even between strangers having coffee in the same shop.

I got so excited about it that I even registered 2 domain names, facebookist.com and facebookism.com and later on to be contacted by the law firm handling worldwide intellectual properties of FB asking me to handle in the 2 domains and after long email communications where we got to nowhere, I still have the 2 domains and shut down my FB profile for almost more than a year, for no specific reason, I just felt I can live without it and moved into more professional social networks.

fbtwt

Then one day re-activated my account again without any justification, but here came the status quo where I really did not care about it and started logging-in once a week and sometimes every 2 weeks, it did not mean much, while lots of freelancers and companies were developing new add-ons and applications to enhance your FB experience, from games, to places I have been, to pets to do you like me or not, and on and on and on… but all this did not really attract me. Also not long time ago FB re-engineered their total look which was also another dull thing to me.

To summarize the above, I got bored from Facebook.

Then earlier this year I found myself attracted back again to Twitter, for those who are not aware of what this is all about, Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called “tweets” of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.

I first joined Twitter for more than 2 years now, my below twit is my first one, since then, the service did not change much, still have the same interface, no extra stuff added to the menu, even lots of people and companies are building amazing apps and sites around their API, but still the Twitter guys are keeping it simple, so far!

1stwit

Nowadays I really enjoy twitting, from the office, while on the go, from bed, while driving, from anywhere, but for how long? I even got excited the same way I got for FB and registered 2 domains twtfight.com and twtwar.com with the idea of making a stupid site where people can twit and fight over a given subject, mainly it was about men vs women.

So will twitter keep me excited the same way it is doing now or I will get bored soon?
We will see and I will let you know if it ever happens.

twitter-logo-small1
Happy Birthday Twitter, you are 3 years old now and still online. It all started on 21st of March 2006 when Jack Dorsey sent his first Tweet and, together with Evan Williams, Biz Stone and others, created a social media company that has grown over 1300% in the last year.

According to a post on Nielsen Wire, unique visitors to Twitter.com increased 1,382 percent year over year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009. This growth earned it the title of “fastest growing member community site,” a term that encompasses not just social networks but any online community – even one such as online wiki community Wikia, which, incidentally, came in at number five on the list. Zimbio and Facebook followed Twitter, growing 240 percent and 228 percent, respectively.

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This set was designed by the talented Mirjami Manninen, an illustrator from Finland who released the beautiful RSS feed set Feed Me Animals on Smashing Magazine last year. This new set contains eight transparent PNG icons for Twitter, available in resolutions of 128×128 pixels, 256×256 and 512×512. The sources are in EPS files (for CS4 and CS3), PSD files and AI files (for CS4).

Large preview (JPG, 0.4 Mb)
Download the set (.zip, 2.2 Mb)
Download the sources (PSD, AI, EPS, .zip, 13,1 Mb)