Twitter: The Best Of The Week (June 7-14, 2009)

This is a weekly series that looks at the best Twitter-related stories, news and articles within the Twittersphere over the last seven days. You can read previous entries in our archives.

The Twitpocalypse

Amounted to absolutely nothing, as I predicted. Whether that’s through the efforts of hardcore software engineers or because it was never going to amount to anything is a decision I’ll leave up to you. Read more about what might have been, here.

Twitter Launches Verified Accounts

About time too. Verified accounts are a necessary step to stamp out the increasing threat of anonymous users on the internet. This was never more obvious than this week after the mob response to Mike Arrington’s spat with Leo Laporte.

Twitter’s Growth Plateaus

At least, for now – I wrote about what this might mean here. You can read alternative views on Mashable.

Twitter Train

Twitter Train, and various other internet marketer/system scams like this, are slowly beginning to poison the Twitter network. Why isn’t Twitter shutting them down?

Twitter User Says His Vacation Tweets Led To Burglary

Whether there’s a connection or not, you can guarantee Twitter will be involved in some kind of legal scandal involving a situation like this within the next few months.

For TechCrunch, Twitter = Traffic (A Statistical Breakdown)

I had a couple of pieces about traffic on Twittercism this week – my Twitter social experiment, and the observation that Mashable has finally overtaken TechCrunch in monthly web traffic.

No mention of that on their of their websites, however, although TC has a piece about how Twitter is now responsible for almost 10 per cent of all their visitors.

The Best Of @Sheamus

I share a lot of great content on Twitter and recent I began to store the cream of that crop in my favourite’s folder. You can access it via this link. I’m a prolific tweeter, and this might be useful if you can’t keep up!

This Week On Twittercism.com

• Give Twitter Credit – Mashable Passes TechCrunch In Unique Monthly Visits; Dell Makes $3m (Friday)
• Come On @Twitter – Can’t You Just Block ALL The “Horny Hottie” And Britney Video @Spam Bots? (Friday)
• “I Wanted To Send You A Direct Message, But You’re Not Following Me…” (Friday)
• Hey, Twitter – I’m A Real Person. Are You Going To Verify My Account, Too? (Friday)
• Twitter Social Experiment: What Do Your Followers Want From YOU? (Wednesday)
• Twitter, Friendfeed Growth Stalls For May; LinkedIn drops, Facebook Climbs 8.5% (Tuesday)
• Anonymity On The Internet Needs To End (Monday)
• Twitter: We Need An Edit Window For Tweets, And We Need It Now (Monday)
• Your Reputation On Twitter Matters – Why Is There No @Abuse Team For Defamation? (Sunday)
• Twitter Removes Help Ticket Requests – How Do We Ask For Help Now? (UPDATED) (Saturday)

Enjoy.

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