“Lloyd!”

Apparently people are afraid of Ari Gold. Or didn’t want a hug from the fictional Entourage character.  That must explain why the Twitterati were a bit afraid of tweeting for him in this week’s #wwtt contest. Or perhaps they just didn’t want to be too vulgar on Twitter. On Facebook, there was a bit more participation.

However, like Marilyn Monroe, the fictional Ari Gold apparently DOES tweet on a very rare occasion at @TheAriGold.

New Blonde 2.0 team member and twitterer @ahoova said “Ari: Keep your eyes on Andrew Kline’s tweet stream. Lloyd: Keep my eyes on him how Ari: Pretend he’s Zac Efron’s Ballsack. #wwtt”

Ahoova got another entry in with “i <3 Ari Gold- biggest a-hole on the planet. Ari “Don’t tweet any questions Lloyd, not until you stop dressing like Paula Poundstone” #wwtt“

In last minute entries (like Ari himself), both @MatchesMalone and @alanweinkrantz think that he would tweet “Lloyd!” This seems to be a common response.

@MatchesMalone also thinks that perhaps they will now incorporate Twitter into the next Entourage. We shall see, we shall see. “I think it would be more important to see who he allows to follow him…,” he said.

Of course, perhaps the reason that more people didn’t tweet publically was echoed by Ezra Butler. @ezrabutler DMed me that “i try to not to tweet too many curse words together at once. ”

On Facebook, Shimmy Mehda said that Ari Gold would tweet “Lloyd!” Shakil Khan said that he would tweet, “Bring The Sunblock, We Are Going to HELL”

Jeff Katz said that Ari Gold would tweet “something bad about Lloyd.” Rafi Elbo has the right idea. He wrote that “He would twitt this: ” LTFA – this is the story of my life: Living Together – Fucking Around”"

Clearly, you were not up to the challenge this week. Or maybe you were just too scared that Ari would come after you. Show me that you can do better. Post in the comments and on Twitter #wwtt what you should have posted this week!

Who do you think I should pick next week? Let me know in the comments. Who knows, maybe I’ll pick your choice!

Nevertheless,  a question: “Do you want a hug, bitch?”

Twitter obviously didn’t exist when Marilyn Monroe was around but it appears that Marilyn is still tweeting. Perhaps like Elvis, she is still alive. Whether it’s from Marilyn Monroe’s most famous impersonator @suziekennedy who tweeted ““there’s a girl in london pretending to be me” or @MarilynMonroe herself, it appears that The Blonde One still lives.

Of course, Marilyn may be the original Blonde 1.0 but she wasn’t always blonde as @MeganWilloughby points out in her tweet “Just finished filming Monkey Business. I wonder what people will think when they see me as a platinum blonde?”

Some results were pretty ordinary. @LiviuLica had this to say “I guess it would be – “It sure was windy today”"

Other tweets really showed some Marilyn Monroe knowledge like this one from “@katchja: I wanna twit with you, just you and nobody else but you…” Another interesting one was from @sageeb “What do I take to bed? Why, Twitter, of course. ~ @MrsMiller“

Some contestants referred to Twitter itself.

Start up @6rounds referred to author and confidant in writing “Henry miller writes my tweets.” Osherlana doesn’t think diamonds are a girls best friend but rather something else when tweeting “Tweeters are a girl’s best friend.”  Marilyn impersonator @suziekennedy gets in an unofficial entry with a missing hashtag and asks  “are diamonds really a girls best friend ? ” Personally, I think a girl can have both her diamonds and twitter. Another unofficial entry: “@dotmad “how about “Happy Birthday, Mr. President”?”

@ahoova expresses her views on men and Twitter when she tweets “Twitter is fickle and I know it. It has its compensations, but it also has its drawbacks and I’ve experienced them both.” With the same man-Twitter theme @Vearor tweets “‘Now what man will go best with this outfit?’”

What do you think of the tweets? Could you have done it better? If so, leave your comments and post on Twitter with the hashtag #wwtt. And, remember, this contest will be a weekly occasion, so what famous – real or fictional – character should tweet next week?

[Photo from Flickr user wessobi]

With more and more celebrities, like @aplusk, @Janefonda, @therealshaq, @Oprah, and @KevinSpacey on Twitter you can gain intimate details about their private lives and  interact with them. It’s probably the closest you’ll ever get to most of the world’s top stars… at least without resorting to stalking!

Twitter is a relatively new tool that is changing the face of communication. The world would look very different if Twitter had existed back in the stone age. Could you imagine the Bible being tweeted? How would that look? A lot shorter, for sure! What would fictional characters  and classic celebrities tweet if they had Twitter in their day? If Darth Vader had Twitter, do you think he would have said “@luke I am your father”? Would Marilyn Monroe have wished “@jfk happy birthday” on TweetDeck? Would she announce her engagement to Joe DiMaggio to her tweeps first just as @IvankaTrump announced her recent engagement on Twitter?

Blonde 2.0 is excited to launch a new weekly contest “What would they tweet?” Every Monday, we are going to pick a character – real or fictional – from historical times to today and ask you to come up with the most interesting and creative tweets. They will be posted on this blog each Thursday. Blonde 2.0 will then handpick the best tweets and highlight them here.

For the first week, let’s start with this classic blonde beauty and the original Blonde 1.0. If Marilyn Monroe had Twitter, what would she tweet?

To participate in the contest, post your entries on Twitter with the hashtag #wwtt.

Go ahead, go wild! Show us what you’ve got!

Once upon a Myspace time, I tried searching for a few band profiles inside the Myspace network. I didn’t get the exact spelling and spacing right, and ended up on a total search maze. What a disaster! From there on out, I would actually leave Myspace, go back to Google and search there for a Myspace profile. Strange and sad thing is, Myspace search is actually “powered by Google.” Perhaps Myspace has made improvements in this area by now, but I wouldn’t know because I will probably never try again. A year or so later when Facebook features started trumping Myspace, so did its profile search. Facebook currently maintains a dominant position when it comes to people search. However, when the search involves anything outside of people, Facebook search is known to be one of the most frustrating experiences ever. Now after the fairly recent arrival of Google profiles, the fight for the most effective profile aggregator begins.

Google has already begun to show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages, so if you couldn’t find a reason to create your own Google profile a month or so ago, perhaps this will spur the urge. After all, most of us want to be found on a Google search, right? Google also claims to offer greater control over exactly what people find when they search for your name. So, I think it’s safe to say that Google is most likely looking to compete with Facebook and Linkedin for searches on names, locations and employment, and if Google will add the tool to link to friends profiles, they will have pretty much created a basic social network. Not bad, but can they really compete with the well established social network kings? Uh hum, Twitter?

Last year around election time, Google teamed up with Twitter to create a live moving mapplet of everyone’s political tweets. Recently, Google added a tip in your Google profile editor, that you should use Twitter to promote your Google profile. Now, there are rumors now that Twitter and Google are in serious talks. What does this mean for Google? If Google can maneuver its way into a Twitter collaboration that could beat Facebook, would that churn out a new winner?

In advance of a panel discussion I’m taking part in today, I decided to survey my twitter and Facebook peeps to see what they had to say about twitter; here are some of the best answers.

If you could change/add one feature on twitter, what would it be?

Jim Woods: Threading conversations rather than having to use hashtags. That would make it easier to archive and feed specific discussions.

Raanan Avidor: better Following and Followers management

Pirocho Piro: Hashtag whatever you like without sacrificing your 140 char limit

Eyal Rofe: RT Button

Virginie De Bel-air: being able to click on a hashtag the same way you can click on a @name

@alphonseha: Have Twitter filter your tweets the way you want it a la FB. Rather than having to use the limited Tweetdeck functions

@YaelBeeri: see conversation threads (including multiple participants)

@cc_chapman: Threaded conversations. Pownce use to do this really well. Followed closely by Groups functionality.

@yuvals: The ability to search only in my friends’ tweets.

What would u say is the biggest misconception about twitter?

Kim Bayne: Myth: You should follow everyone who follows you. Not true. You can’t possible engage in meaningful conversations and relationships that way

Nikos Anagnostou: That one should reply to the question “What are you doing?”

@baratunde:  biggest twitter misconception: that it’s a bunch of people talking about what they had for lunch.

@saritamar: that it’s stupid, but that’s what people told me about Facebook 18 months ago.

@almondjoi: that celebs make best twits. Not true. Best tweets come from regular ppl who engage followers.

@gathrme: biggest misconception is that all Twitter users are narcissists talking about mundane personal stuff. BTW: Taking a shower now.

@eyalrofe: That it is a “conversation” platform. Twitter, in my opinion, is more like a “share the situation” platform.

@HilzFuld: Misconception? That you can use it like Facebook and be passive about it, that is why 80% try it and give up.

If a million people r following u & u are only following 3. Cool or fool?

Oren Magnezy:  Well, Let me quote Paris Hilton: “Look bored but never boring”.

Thomas J Hoehn: The ratio shouldn’t be too skewed one way or the other. Neither one to one, nor one to zero.

Itay Hazan: fool. fame hype. it attracts attention to figures that were made in the old media, and does not empower the people.

@deeped: Fool. Twitter is more to listen than to talk. Even in the digital world you still have to have two ears but only one mouth.

@didic: Cool if you’re engaged with your followers. Tool if you’re only broadcasting

@JoelyRighteous: I’d go with ‘Tool’

What’s the best revenue model for twitter?

Ahuvah: they should have a “pro” account like flickr – where you can tweet a specific amount per day or month but if you want to exceed that # you need to pay for a pro account. i’d pay.

Laurant Weill: Contextual advertising (from the one that doesnt like ad biz model!). They have the critical mass, hyperlinks, tracking and keywords history

Shay Rachmani: Free account is now limited to 70 chars, while 140 chars become paid service

Benjamin Chelli: the search tool could be a paying service => professional will have to pay to browse info

@h3lge: having no model is ’nuff. Bunch other companies build busmodels relying on twitters api. They’ll all pay twitter sooner or later.

@dotmad: Getting purchased by Google/FB.

@tzumi_monster: it should find me a girlfriend and charge a commission when I get married.

What’s the #1 thing you like most about Twitter?

@shiribiri: it’s easy and simple and quick (that can be counted as one thing, can’t it?)

@FireAphis: I like the most about Tweeter that I can write whatever I feel without any obligations on being relevant of comprehensible.

@WorldMate: @blonde20 You mean except you?

@Rafim: the fact that you never know what to expect when you send a twit. who is going to respond. what will he say. that’s great!

@HilzFuld: the surrounding industry and the endless possible ways to tweet

Deep down I guess we all wish the start-ups whose services we like to use would stay as they are forever. Take for example Vimeo, a really great service with an awesome community that never quite made it into the mainstream.

It is basically clear now that Twitter will not be one of those services. If the recent Ashton Kutcher  (@aplusk)/CNN (@cnnbrk) race to 1 million followers taught us anything it’s that Twitter is only going to get bigger.

It was probably inevitable as the actor and comedian Kevin Pollack (@kevinpollak) said; “I love Twitter because it’s not like Facebook where you have to maintain a profile, it’s just there if you have a thought, a question or an idea.” When you couple that simplicity with a service basically built around vanity counting the result is a service perfect for celebrities keeping in touch with their fan base. And celebrities represent nothing if not the mainstream.

Let’s now take a look now at Twitterholic’s 100 most followed Twitter accounts list; most of the accounts on this list are either celebrities or large news organizations (who seem to be increasingly using Twitter as an RSS killer) with few “internet famous” people left in a club they used to dominate. Slowly but surely the ubiquitous tool of the digerati is crossing the chasm.

Then came Oprah. This isn’t the first time Oprah has given a huge burst of exposure to a Web 2.0 start-up she made her first YouTube video in March 2007 nearly two years after YouTube launched. Now after two-and-a-half years of Twitter we now have @oprah.

Two things were really obvious after seeing Twitter on the Oprah show:

• Celebrities who are not comedians or geeks tweeting doesn’t really work. You either get it or you don’t. Seems like Oprah should hire someone to do her tweeting (Oprah, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship)
• My mother will probably start using Twitter soon.

This almost certainly means that Twitter is now officially “mainstream,” and perhaps the old school Twitter geeks will remember the time B.O. (Before Oprah), in the way many remember the more wild Facebook (where they could freely list their hookups) before their parents discovered it. I once saw a shirt that read “I Had an iPod Before You Knew What One Was,” now Twitterers can go to herebeforeoprah a site that tells the world you were “here before Oprah” to get that kind of affirmation. How will Twitter change now that it has gone mainstream? Only time will tell.

[Image credit: Oprah Live]

[Note: this is #2 in a series of posts about Web 2.0 apps that actually get used at Blonde 2.0, see the first post here]

To say that you really ‘get’ Twitter they say you need to do three things; 1) you need to get an @reply from someone you admire 2) you need to post a question and get loads of answers 3) you need to follow someone famous that you’re a fan of. I’m adding a number 4 -you need to access twitter from an external application. 

You won’t be alone, according to Twitter 70% of all tweets come from text messages or applications built on the Twitter API and good lordy there are a lot of applications out there. These apps go beyond just publishing tweets; many applications leverage the main database of Twitter for information about breaking news, stocks, emerging trends and even bacon recipes. 

According to Wikipedia there are over 100 Twitter clones out there and it seems that the Twitter team made a conscious decision to make it ludicrously easy to build a Twitter app. This has been a crucial part of Twitter wining the micro blogging wars (It was nice while it lasted Pownce and Jaiku).

Here are my 5 favorite Twitter apps:

Tweetdeck
17% of all tweets come from TweetDeck -way ahead of the rest so it’s pretty much the dominant Twitter desktop app. At the heart of TweetDeck is its ability to create groups of people together grouping friends or work colleagues separately means you have a window on all aspects of your twitter life. These additional columns automatically update, providing the user with a very effective dashboard of real-time information. Seesmic Desktop will offer similar functionality.

StockTwits
StockTwits.com is a Twitter powered financial bulletin board. The site skims Twitter for messages people tag with stock symbols – $GOOG for Google, for instance – and aggregates them on a Tumblr site with stock charts, tags, and comments. Great for real-time analysis.

Twitterfon
The problem with most of the Twitter iPhone apps is that they fail to capture the spirit of Twitter. Twitter is a service that allows you to send 140 character messages to other people and that simplicity is what the apps should capture, most of them have far too many bells and whistles. Twitterfon is simple and free. The others have a long way to compete.

Twistori
Twistori, according to the site, is the “first step in an ongoing social experiment.” The brainchild of Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs, Twistori pulls tweets from Twitter (via twitter search) containing specific keywords: i love, i hate, i think, i believe, i feel, and i wish. It then publishes the tweets it finds anonymously in a non-stop, auto-updating river of news. The effect is hypnotic. Put on some indie music and relax for a few minutes, totally worth it.

Twitpic
TwitPic is by far the easiest, best way to share pics on twitter

What is your favorite Twitter app?