What is the Twitterverse feeling right now?

One of the interesting things about Twitter is that an entire ecosystem of tools has emerged that take the data from Twitter and slice or dice it in some way. There’s Tweetscan and Summize and Quotably for search, for example. But some other services aren’t really tools so much as they are toys — but interesting toys. Twitterverse.com is one that shows you a tag cloud of popular keywords, etc. from peoples’ Twitter messages (which I refuse to call “tweets” because it sounds stupid). You can see them for the past hour, the past five hours, or the past 10 hours. Here’s a list of the recent popular keywords from Friday:

most popular:

day
going
one
time
twitter
work
next most popular:

home
lunch
need
new
really
think

Then there’s a tool (or toy) called Twistori.com, which I think is really cool: there’s a list of words on the left-hand side of the page — love, hate, think, believe, feel and wish. When you click one, you get a real-time (or close to it) display of Twitter messages with those keywords in them that scrolls by on the screen. It’s kind of hypnotizing in a way. Here’s some of the ones that scrolled by on Friday afternoon:

love:

working with Canadians
margaritas for lunch
when i know exactly what to do
buttered popcorn jelly beans
Trent Reznor’s lyrics
having lunch with my mom
the rain
my foster parents
Twitter
hate:

nitrogen
talking to my insurance company
airports
when i’m all itchy and stuff
those robotic voices
my work computer
deja vu
the Red Wings
Twitter

feel:

so lost
like i am cramming for a final
like i am being followed
bad but not guilty
extremely safe
old
like i’m on drugs, minus the high
a little lost
sick
exhausted

wish:

i were going to the ballpark
i was still asleep
i was outside
michigan had more job openings
i knew what bit me last night
i was never born
i could go back and punch myself
i was in nashville
people would do their jobs

Interestingly enough (if you’re into this kind of thing), there’s a small note at the bottom of Twistori that says it was inspired by WeFeelFine.org — which is a very similar type of tool or toy, that actually turns out to be an artistic creation designed by the very talented Jonathan Harris. His specialty is information design projects that are also art, and others include tenbyten.org and phylotaxis.com.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *