Twitter Update

Aside from CC, I have a couple of other online ventures. Long time readers will know that my latest venture is a Twitter feed that features absurd, comic headlines, geared for an audience of geeks and software developers.

I usually post one headline per day, and measure success on the number of "re-tweets". That is, the number of people that like the joke enough to echo it to their own circle of friends. Since April, I have averaged 2-3 re-tweets per day, with 6 being a relatively huge day. This has been disappointing as I spend a fair amount of mental energy on the headlines. (Though I'm happy to say I don't spend much time -- I don't write spoof articles; only headlines. It is delightfully light weight and very much a Twitter-style angle.)

Well. The Nobel Peace Prize is manna from heaven for joke writers everywhere, regardless of political affiliation. And so it was on Friday that I offered up a headline about Obama, emboldened with the award, re-opening a controversial debate within the Java community. (It isn't funny if you don't know the niche, but within the niche it works.)

The response has been a new record. The response has been 3 pages of re-tweets and dozens of new followers.

Interestingly, the tech debate is the same one that rocketed my sticker schtick into the blogoverse in 2007. Also, one of the key Twitter people is the same person that gave me some publicity for the stickers. (He was embroiled in the controversy. He had a well-thought out proposal that was shot down somewhat unfairly.) I don't know if he realized I'm behind both ventures. It is relatively easy to figure that out, but one would have to do some clicking around.

It's nice to finally get some action on that front.