In the world of Twittering, I have come across different types of Twitterers:

1) The overzealous twitterer - this twitterer lets you know exactly what he’s doing at any particular moment - no matter how mundane his life may be. Messages such as: “Eating a great sandwich” or “driving in my car” are characteristic of this type of user.

2) The networking twitterer - this twitterer only posts messages which show everyone else how well connected he is. Messages such as: “Just attended the latest Joost party” or “just came back from a meeting with Mike Arrington” are characteristic of this type of user. He’ll then send you to his Flickr account where you can view all the latest pics he just shot with his super cool friends.

3) The self promoting twitterer - this type of twitterer only twitters about the latest post on his blog or the latest post that somebody else wrote about him. Messages containing a link back to his blog or to blogs that talk about his blog are typical for this kind of user.

4) The weatherman twitterer - this twitterer always has to let you know what the weather is like in his area. Messages such as: “Such a hot and humid day out here” or “think it might rain soon”, characterize this type.

5) The TwittyTunes twitterer - Ever since he found out about TwittyTunes, this twitterer needs to let you know what music he’s listening to at every single minute of the day. You’ll be able to recognize this type very easily. His messages usually start with “I’m listenin’ to….”

And then there are the rest of us twitterers, who I guess are a mix of all these types put together. So for everybody out there, just wanted to let you all know (and of course I will link to this post on Twitter as well): On this very hot and humid day in Tel Aviv, just came back from a meeting with Kfir Pravda, eating a great chicken sandwich, listenin’ to Amy Winehouse, and I may go pee soon.

Technorati tags: twitter, joost, michael arrington, flickr, blog, twittytunes, kfir pravda, amy winehouse

TechCrunch posted today that a new study by Motorola has found that 45% of Europeans now watch television online. Motorola’s Karl Elliot told the BBC: “Viewers across Europe are no longer satisfied with fitting into schedules dictated by broadcasters and are turning to the choice and flexibility offered by TV over the internet….We are witnessing a nation of citizen schedulers who are in control of their entertainment, allowing them to watch what they want, how and when they want it.”

Some who commented on this TechCrunch article argued that they do not believe this could be such a high percentage. In any case, whether it’s 45% or even a bit less, the message is still clear - people are saying: I want my internet tv! If you’ve been following my blog for a while, this must not come as a surprise to you.

Jeff Pulver has recently written a very interesting article entitled: “Internet TV may pose threat to Cable Companies by Decade’s End”. In it, he writes:

“In the near future, I expect cable companies may start to suffer a similar parallel fate as the wireline phone companies. This eventually will mean billions of dollars of revenue loss without any notion of being able to replace the lost revenue. And I expect we will start to see this trend happen first in the 16-24 year old demographic.

How does this happen? It happens because there is a portion of the existing 16-24 generation which does not watch traditional broadcast TV and they are not watching Cable TV. What they are watching is TV content on the internet. And when these kids leave home and go off to college, they are not signing up for cable TV service in their dorm rooms. Instead they are continuing to watch their favorite TV shows thanks to BitTorrent or are going online to the network websites to catch up with a missed show or in some cases they are also going to iTunes and purchasing the shows to watch on their video iPods and computers.”

Kfir Pravda also warns the cable companies:

“It seems to me that these industries are kind of dinosaurs, looking at the meteor coming and thinking that everything will be ok. Just like some of the big production companies, missing the fact that people create good content for a fraction of the money they are spending.”

Lastly, Jim Johnson points out that:

“Michael Eisner has a teen drama airing on MySpace. The BBC recently launched iPlayer. NBC, NewsCorp, and Comcast have signed an agreement to provide shows online. The BBC is the latest European network to provide online programming.”

Need more proof?

Technorati tags: techcrunch, tv, motorola, bbc, internet, internet tv, jeff pulver, cable, bittorrent, itunes, ipod, kfir pravda, jim johnson, michael eisner, myspace, iplayer, nbc, newscorp, comcast

In the last 24 hours, Digg users showed Kevin Rose and the rest of those guys over at Digg exactly who’s boss.

The story started two days ago. Boing Boing writer Cory Doctorow blogged about how he had received a legal threat from the AACS licensing authority regarding publishing an encryption key for HD DVDs on a class blog using Google’s Blogger. He removed the material, and then wrote a follow-up post pointing to Spread this number, which listed the number and explained its significance.

That site became a very popular story on Digg on April 30, but then it was removed by the Digg team. This action made CJ Millisock very angry. He made a copy of the “Spread this number” page and resubmitted it to Digg as “Spread This Number Again”.

That story got what appears to be a record number of 15,492 Diggs. Then again the story was removed by the Digg team. Millisock’s Digg account was also deleted. You can read all about it here: How I got banned from Digg.

When this happened, Digg users went wild. They started resubmitting the story over and over, filling the Digg homepage with all their entries. The Digg team kept deleting stories and accounts.

Digg’s CEO Jay Adelson then posted his response to the riot, saying:

“We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.

Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law. Digg’s Terms of Use, and the terms of use of most popular sites, are required by law to include policies against the infringement of intellectual property. This helps protect Digg from claims of infringement and being shut down due to the posting of infringing material by others.”

This response got Digg users even more fired up and they kept resubmitting the story, until finally (with no choice left) about 12 hours ago, Kevin Rose surrendered and posted the following message on the Digg blog:

“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

Rose and the rest of the Digg team made a huge mistake, in my opinion, when they started censoring their community, deleting stories, and banning users. Around the blogosphere, you can find many comments all saying the same thing: Rose has “sold out” and betrayed the people who made him rich in the first place - his users. Obviously this was a story that the users were interested in, and yet it was censored.

Of course I understand Rose’s fear of getting sued, but the Digg team could have handled the whole situation differently. They could have for example, posted an entry in their blog showing a copy of the legal threat they received, pointing the anger in the right direction. Also, explain to me, other than deleting the messages, why in addition, did they need to ban all those users?

If you’ve read my earlier posts you probably know that I am a big believer in the democracy of web 2.0, and its inevitable that if the Digg team or any other web 2.0 site team for that matter, starts to censor people and take away their freedoms, the community will fight back. Digg was built by its users, and provides a platform for them to decide what news items they are interested in. The minute authority starts to dictate for them which stories are “news worthy” and which stories are not, it no longer provides a worthwhile platform and they will move elsewhere.

Lastly, Mashable points out: “If Digg does get sued (and it’s likely), they can get every member to donate a few dollars to the legal fund. Digg users could also significantly affect the coverage of the story on the Internet and in the press, even swaying popular opinion.” This may have been true before this whole scandal came out. Now, after the way Digg has handled this whole ordeal, I don’t see its users supporting it in the same manner as before.

Technorati tags: digg, kevin rose, boing boing, cory doctorow, blog, AACS, encryption, HD DVD, blogger, spread this number, cj millisock, jay adelson, intellectual property, blogosphere, web 2.0, news, mashable

Last Thursday I attended the Garage Geeks event entitled “A peak into the future of TV”. Amongst the speakers were the amazing Jeff Pulver, who spoke about how easy it is for each of us to create our own internet TV channel these days using the free, technological platforms which are already available to us, and Amit Or, co-founder of InLive, who embedded live graphs into his powerpoint presentation that were the result of us calling InLive’s IVR system in real time.

The event itself took place in a real garage and the atmosphere was just surreal. As Gil Rosen writes in his blog: “It’s a real junky (but funky) garage, in a real industrial zone, with very little space, plastic chairs, no real food, coffee or toilets but it GOD DAMN WORKED! Something about the surreal surroundings made it feel like we are are actually talking about a real revolution (which it is)”.

Gil is right. There is a real revolution emerging right before our eyes which will change the way we have viewed and defined TV till now. I believe that within a few years time, we will see the internet establish itself as the leader of all media and that more and more services and technologies will be offered to those watching and those who want to be watched. All I can say is: Watch out broadcast TV - times are a-changin’ and you’re going down.

Check out Jeff’s presentation below (The film needed to be split into two parts due to YouTube’s limits):

Technorati tags: tv, garage geeks, jeff pulver, internet, technology, amit or, inlive, gil rosen, revolution, broadcasting, youtube