tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Twitter)

Scott Morrison comments on "Twitter" (5536)

2010-05-12T09:28:21-07:00

@Regenbogen: remember that David and Anton and I are all in offices on the same hallway!

David Zureick-Brown comments on "Twitter" (5529)

2010-05-11T18:03:25-07:00

@Regenbogen: Simple -- I've been writing my thesis:)

Actually, I do read meta often and talk to Anton and Scott quite a bit about moderation issues (and MO in general), but I haven't had time to post my opinions on meta and have to settle for influencing what they say. (Maybe this will change next month after I move away from them.)

Regenbogen comments on "Twitter" (5526)

2010-05-11T13:26:33-07:00

@David Brown. Nice work. Thanks. Now please allow me to take the liberty of satisfying my curiosity: Though MO is supposed to be your(and Anton's) brainchild, why aren't you more visible here? Most of the moderation seems to be done by the other three guys.

@Scott Morrison: I was puzzled .. You were a fan of the MO facebook page, as far as I could remember.

Grétar Amazeen comments on "Twitter" (5525)

2010-05-11T12:50:59-07:00

Thanks Regenbogen.

David Zureick-Brown comments on "Twitter" (5524)

2010-05-11T12:50:39-07:00

@Kevin: Yes, I started the facebook page. Anything that appears on the MO twitter from now on should automatically also appear on the MO facebook news feed.

Scott Morrison comments on "Twitter" (5523)

2010-05-11T12:14:27-07:00

@Regenbogen, nope, I don't know about the facebook page.

Regenbogen comments on "Twitter" (5519)

2010-05-11T08:58:09-07:00

@Gretar: This link should work. Check it out.

@Scott Morrison: I take it that the facebook page has nothing to do with you?

Grétar Amazeen comments on "Twitter" (5510)

2010-05-10T22:44:05-07:00

I can't find the MO facebook page. Has it been taken down?

Kevin Lin comments on "Twitter" (5509)

2010-05-10T20:14:25-07:00

Who started/is in charge of the MO facebook page? Is it David Brown?

Mariano comments on "Twitter" (5476)

2010-05-09T08:25:26-07:00

I have managed, since the begining of internet time, to know when a site is down by trying to go to it and having it time out---I would say that is the interuniversal way of signaling downtime for a site. I imagine the existence of sites where information, say, about when the downtime is estimated to be over, would be quite useful and, in fact, necessary. But MO, surely, does not (yet?) belong to that group :)

Harry Gindi comments on "Twitter" (5469)

2010-05-08T09:48:06-07:00

MO is pretty much never down.

vipul comments on "Twitter" (5468)

2010-05-08T08:56:23-07:00

Twitter can be great for announcing when the site is down, because one cannot use the site at such times.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Twitter" (5447)

2010-05-07T10:43:58-07:00

Agreed. The people that MO wants to reach out to right now are precisely the people who are least likely to care about social media. And everyone else already visits more-or-less daily.

Scott Morrison comments on "Twitter" (5442)

2010-05-07T10:15:12-07:00

Yeah, I'm not at all interested in the work of a facebook page or a twitter account. Of course, anyone who wants to can pass on news from site announcements or meta threads.

I really don't understand the point. The people who care enough about minutiae of mathoverflow are here on meta already. For everyone else (in our target audience) word of mouth, the forthcoming article in the Notices, etc., are much more relevant.

As Stephen Bigelow said to me recently (about google wave, not twitter): "If email was good enough for my grandparents, it's good enough for me."

Regenbogen comments on "Twitter" (5440)

2010-05-07T08:58:41-07:00

Well, the MO facebook page is rather simply a homage by some humble fans.

Mariano comments on "Twitter" (5439)

2010-05-07T08:44:44-07:00

There is a MO facebook page?

This is becoming so social 2.0 that the sterotypical mathematician is going to start walking away back into his/her corner! :)

Regenbogen comments on "Twitter" (5438)

2010-05-07T08:32:45-07:00

I see that mathoverflow already tweeted about Andrea Ferretti's site, which is good for a start. Now the twitter account needs to be announced at the facebook page, and if possible at the FAQ. The facebook page also could be mentioned in the FAQ somewhere at the bottom.

Regenbogen comments on "Twitter" (5435)

2010-05-07T06:19:14-07:00

Admittedly, it isn't easy to see at the moment what is good with twitter. And it isn't anyway possible to convert someone into twitter when that person is not willing. Like some old people never use mobilephones, like Donald Knuth doesn't use email anymore, lots of people won't use twitter. But I can assure that a twitter presence is going to be much more useful for MO than the facebook presence, for instance.

Andrew Stacey comments on "Twitter" (5425)

2010-05-06T23:18:23-07:00

@Yemon: As an ex-pat Brit, that made me laugh!

Harry Gindi comments on "Twitter" (5420)

2010-05-06T18:27:56-07:00

In all seriousness, though, there is not enough news on MO for Twitter to be useful at all.

Regenbogen comments on "Twitter" (5417)

2010-05-06T16:29:32-07:00

Then again, now that Anton posts graphs and scatterplots, it occurs to me that these could be tweeted as well.

Yemon Choi comments on "Twitter" (5411)

2010-05-06T15:51:06-07:00

Since I'm keeping abreast of the elections in the UK via Twitter and links people post there, I'd respectfully suggest that there's more to it than on-toilet broadcasting...

Harry Gindi comments on "Twitter" (5406)

2010-05-06T15:10:10-07:00

I am against Twitter in principle. My grandfather said to me, "Twitter is for people who want other people to know, 'Alright, I'm wiping a second time...'". I will leave it at that.

Regenbogen comments on "Twitter" (5405)

2010-05-06T15:08:05-07:00

Twitter can be read via RSS.

Also meta has rss feeds.

If following too many feeds is a problem, then the best way is to use google reader or something similar, like netvibes. That makes the experience much better.

Peter McNamara comments on "Twitter" (5404)

2010-05-06T15:06:08-07:00

Wouldn't a blog, or anything that we can read via RSS be an easier platform to make announcements on? There are no silly character limits, and I suspect it will be easier for many of us (at least for me) to follow, already being subscribed to various rss feeds of maths blogs.

Regenbogen comments on "Twitter" (5403)

2010-05-06T15:04:00-07:00

Firstly people should become aware that there is such a twitter account. What about putting it in the FAQ, or at least in the facebook page? Also tweeters like fgdorais could contribute to publicity.

Then next, all the mods could have collective access to the twitter account. However that is between you folks.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Twitter" (5402)

2010-05-06T14:56:54-07:00

Okay. If there's some twitterature you'd like the MO user to tweet, send it to twitter@mathoverflow.net and I'll probably post it. If it gets to be annoying for me, we can figure out some better system (of course, if you have a suggestion for a better system, no need to wait for me to get annoyed).

Yemon Choi comments on "Twitter" (5399)

2010-05-06T14:38:01-07:00

I'm not au fait with all this social media malarkey, but I am on Twitter (pseudonymously), and I think the whole "following celebrities" is a bit of an unfortunate aspect. I tend to view it as a hybrid between (pirate) radio, micro-sized blogging, and instant messaging -- though as said above it is not a good medium for discussions.

I think that there are a lot of things MO could potentially do on Twitter, but I am sceptical as to how many of them we should do before the signal-noise ratio gets too low. However, this is only my hasty opinion.

Regenbogen comments on "Twitter" (5396)

2010-05-06T13:55:17-07:00

Hi Anton: Twitter is great for following celebrities, etc.. It's a very good medium for mass communication. Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, the Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd and a good number of others are there, and they all have a big following. There were twitter fights, scandals and more juicy stuff.

For an example of what could have been tweeted by MO, the perfect example is in facebook:

For everyone in Berkeley tomorrow (Tuesday): wear your MO shirts to the Joint Algebraic Geometry Seminar/Dinner! Anton and I have extra shirts (and stickers) in our offices. If enough of wear MO shirts, maybe Johan de Jong (who is speaking) will start using the site.

Anything you might want to announce at facebook, could be done better via twitter. Of course everything would have to be compressed to fit in the character comments.

Other examples: 1. You could announce an MO meeting,. 2. Announce a sale of t-shirts, 3. Mention that MO got mentioned in New York times. 4. Tweet that Tate got the Abel prize. 5. Tweet about the Fields medal winner in the upcoming ICM. The possibilities are endless.

And you can communicate with your fans(if that is the right word). You would feel kind of like a celebrity as an MO mod with control of that twitter account, having many followers.

But of course it can't be taken it too seriously. MO would be the main field of action, not twitter. Also it can't replace meta. Twitter is not for discussions.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Twitter" (5393)

2010-05-06T13:34:50-07:00

I don't really understand twitter, but I did make an MO twitter account. The right place for any announcement seems to be either in a system message (text in an orange bar at the top of every page ... we haven't had one in a while) or here on meta. What is an example of something that should be announced on twitter?

Mariano comments on "Twitter" (5392)

2010-05-06T13:30:03-07:00

Hush hush. We'll end up reading BCnrd in 140-character comments!

Ben Webster comments on "Twitter" (5391)

2010-05-06T13:01:57-07:00

They could be. That is true. I think meta works perfectly well at the moment.

Andrew Stacey comments on "Twitter" (5390)

2010-05-06T12:17:58-07:00

Or not.

Regenbogen comments on "Twitter" (5389)

2010-05-06T11:59:28-07:00

Important news and changes at MO could be announced thru twitter?