Back with another Bird House Rules (and well under that ten minute window), I’m here to talk a bit about the evolution of Follow Friday. what started out as tweets like this…

Follow @digitalsista, a Social Media mistress and resource located here in Washington D.C. #followfriday

…many Twitter feeds are getting hit at the end of the week by tweets that look like this…

@digitalsista @chrisbrogan @geechee_girl @ITStudios @chrisabraham @sigmastudios @dananner @fishdogs @LindaVandeVrede @riznphx #ff

Take a deep breath, relax, and follow me to your Zen of the Follow Friday.

Guest introduction by Michael Spence

Featured television clips:

• Firefly
  
• Black Adder
  

Featured Links:

• Episode #7 of Bird House Rules
  
• CREATE South 2010

REMEMBER: Saturday April 17th, 2010, starting at 9 AM, will be the day of CREATE South 2010, held at the Horry Georgetown Technical College, Grand Strand Campus in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. CREATE is a meeting for those interested in blogging, podcasting, video, social networking or any other form of creativity and self-expression. Serving the residents of the Grand Strand and beyond, it is a venue to bring together like minded people to network, to teach and to learn. Follow @createsouth on Twitter for more!

Album Artwork by Paul Fischer of Dancing Cat Studios

Feel free to syndicate this audio, and provide feedback or topics you’d like to hear discussed on Bird House Rules at 703.791.1701, tmorris (at) imaginethatstudios (dot) com, Twitter, or here at the Bird House Rules Blog!

This morning, a lot of things were explained.

Maybe these hackers were partially responsible for yesterday’s intermittent service. Maybe the odd behavior from Twitter was merely a precursor for what PCWorld reported early this morning. Maybe I was the only one thinking about the DoS Attack from this summer, but Twitter was once again under fire. A group referring to themselves as The Iranian Cyber Army redirected for a brief time all Twitter traffic to a landing page of their design. Sumner Lemon of IDG News Service reports:

Visitors instead saw a black screen with an image of a green flag and Arabic writing. The defaced site also included a message that said, “This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army,” and an e-mail address.

Twitter blamed the outage on changes made to the company’s DNS (Domain Name System) records, which match the company’s domain name with the IP addresses of its servers.

Meanwhile, the news from Twitter Status was that as of 11:28pm, last night:

Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.

So far, nothing new has really surfaced apart from critics who are saying this is just another show of how vulnerable Social Media sites are. I, for one, applaud Twitter’s resilience. They only lost service for an hour (which was probably when I was engrossed in my weekly dose of Mythbusters…) and managed to bounce back. Yesterday had been a somewhat uneven day for Twitter, but they have seen worse. Much worse. I think yesterday’s performance is proof extremely positive that Twitter has learned their lessons from previous growing pains.

So as the dust settles from yesterday, just remember…

…and tweet happy!

(click image to view Full Size)

…and yet, no real reason given as to what happened with the Retweets this morning.

Anyone else thinking this?

It’s all about communication, Twitter. We just want to know what’s happening…

Changing its interface as one would change underwear, Twitter apparently pulled a back-handed “Give the People What They Want” by removing the new Retweet feature. This feature has been in Beta since the Fall of this year and Twitterakians were kept in the loop as early as idea conception. Sure, there was a slight learning curve and not everyone took to it, but third-party clients adopted it into their user interfaces and many like TweetDeck and Twittelator Pro added the functionality with their own flair. I even covered it in the last Bird House with a video addendum.

But this morning I got a tweet from John Merlin (@zard) from the UK:

Ahahaha! Wondering if @ITStudios will be recording a new vidcast for the lack of retweet

I asked what he meant by that, and he directed me back to my own homepage. (Click for a full view.) Notice anything missing?

And that is how I found out about Twitter removing the new Retweet option.

What angers me is not that Twitter removed the function. As I eluded to earlier, it was received with mixed reviews; but I’m wondering if enough of these so-called “Social Media Gurus, Mavens, and Experts” (which will be covered in a future podcast) rose a big enough stink to pressure Twitter in removing the option. Whatever the reason, that is Twitter’s decision in the end, and any changes they make I will roll with because I’m not paying for Twitter’s service. I appreciate what they do and that I’m getting it for free.

What I don’t appreciate is Twitter making these changes seemingly on a whim without notifying their network. I went to  Twitter Blog, Twitter Status, and Twitter’s Twitter feed. As of 11am EST there is no mention that the new Retweet feature will be removed from Twitter.com’s user interface.

So, if Twitter isn’t talking, what exactly is happening?

This lack of notification is not only inconsiderate to users that liked the new Retweet option, but it is downright rude to developers that have incorporated the new RT options in their programs. Attempt to retweet messages automatically in the new TweetDeck and you receive an error message. The incredibly handy RT icon featured in Twittelator Pro is now disabled. These options that developers spent time (regardless if it took a few minutes or a few hours) integrating into their apps are now rendered useless; and now they must return to their digital drawing boards to remove these options in order to keep their apps streamlined while maintaining stability and reliability.

And if this editorial/rant sounds as if I’m taking this slight from Twitter personally. I am. A bit. You see, the folks at Sams Teach Yourself Twitter in Ten Minutes offered me the opportunity to write for the next printing a brand new chapter featuring many of Twitter’s recent changes. Guess what was one update covered in that new chapter…

Thanks, Twitter. Thanks a lot for the heads up.

I liken this Twitter trip-up (Go ahead, you can call it a “twip-up” if you want to!) to a news story I saw this morning on how United States military surveillance drones — you know, those multimillion dollar robots our tax dollars pay for — were being hacked by Iraqi insurgents with off-the-shelf video software priced at $26. Considering the amount of technology, design, and intelligence that goes into one of these Predator drones, that is just plain embarrassing. So is Twitter — a landmark in modern communication — failing to notify users and independent developers “Yeah, we’re changing our mind on that whole Retweet tool…” While Twitter does have the prerogative to make such a dramatic change, they should at the very least extend a courtesy to the people utilizing their network that such a change will occur. There is no excuse for this kind of disregard. They have two blogs, a new “Notifications” feature on users’ homepages, and of course they have a Twitter account. Would a quick message to the 2,763,628 people following have been so hard? First “password” and now this?

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Just when you thought I was done with TweetDeck v0.32.1…

TEE MORRIS’ TWEETDECK EPISODE
THE VIDEO PODCAST!

The audio is still the same, but now I have MOVING PICTURES to go with it! this is NOT going to be a regular feature at the Bird House, but when the mood strikes me, when the time allows, and when it is something that REALLY NEEDS the visuals, I will offer this kind of video addendum. I hope you all enjoy it!

Imagine That! Studios now presents to you the highlights of TweetDeck v0.32.1…in colour!

Featured movie and TV clips:

• Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
  
• Iron Man
  
• Monty Python’s “Spanish Inquisition” sketch
  
• Firefly

Featured Resources on Twitter:

• “What’s New on v0.32″ from TweetDeck’s Support Forum
• Camtasia for the Mac
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• YouTube.com

Album Artwork by Paul Fischer of Dancing Cat Studios

Feel free to syndicate this audio, and provide feedback or topics you’d like to hear discussed on Bird House Rules at 703.791.1701, tmorris (at) imaginethatstudios (dot) com, Twitter, or here at the Bird House Rules Blog!

Finally….after several attempts…after daring the Fates…after waiting for just the right time…and weathering an unseasonal snowfall in Washington, D.C.

TEE MORRIS’ TWEETDECK EPISODE!

This has been a long time coming, and I have decided to pull out all the stops and not only post a longer-than-usual BHR, but in the feed tomorrow and posting on YouTube as well will be an accompanying video companion to this podcast, filmed and edited on both Camtasia and the Final Cut Suite, bit-cheeezzz!

A labor of love and a lot to take in, here comes the highlights of TweetDeck v0.32.1!

Guest introduction by Coach Ian Scott

Featured movie and TV clips:

• Six Million Dollar Man
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
  
• Iron Man
  
• Monty Python’s “Spanish Inquisition” sketch
  
• Firefly

Featured Resources on Twitter:

• “What’s New on v0.32″ from TweetDeck’s Support Forum
• Camtasia for the Mac
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• YouTube.com

Album Artwork by Paul Fischer of Dancing Cat Studios

Feel free to syndicate this audio, and provide feedback or topics you’d like to hear discussed on Bird House Rules at 703.791.1701, tmorris (at) imaginethatstudios (dot) com, Twitter, or here at the Bird House Rules Blog!

A question I get a lot on Twitter is what the “RT” preceding a tweet is all about? That’s the “Retweet” and this episode spends some quality time talking about a popular method of making 140-character posts a viral sensation. I retweet. Many Twitterakians retweet. It’s a part of Twitter. This means that, of course, some users really abuse the retweet.

So for this particular Bird House Rules, take your shoes off at the door, assume the Lotus position, and breathe in deep. We are here to explore the Zen of Retweet.

Guest introduction by Viv

Featured movie and TV clips:

• Star Wars
  
• Aliens
• Farscape
• Stripes

Featured Resources on Twitter:

• “Why the Retweet Will Kill Twitter” from Jenner Web Design Blog

Album Artwork by Paul Fischer of Dancing Cat Studios

Feel free to syndicate this audio, and provide feedback or topics you’d like to hear discussed on Bird House Rules at 703.791.1701, tmorris (at) imaginethatstudios (dot) com, Twitter, or here at the Bird House Rules Blog!