Happy Birthday, Twitter

Image by Danilo Ramos, via Flickr

I’ve already written about Twitter’s fifth anniversary and what it means in the big picture scheme of things. Today I’ll share a few fun and interesting things about Twitter. Lady Gaga is the Queen of Twitter with nearly 9 million followers. President Obama is 4th on the list with 7 million followers. I follow neither. Probably the most popular person on Twitter that I follow is Roger Ebert, who recently shared at the TED conference how Twitter and the Internet helped him reinvent his voice after cancer surgeries took away his ability to talk. Oh, wait. I just remembered. I follow Charlie Sheen. He has more than 3 million followers. I find his antics fascinating. I don’t think he’s having a break down or is mentally ill. He’s just amoral, or immoral, and lovin’ it. Enough of famous people. Here are some important tweets from people who are not famous, but what they are doing on Twitter is vitally important:

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Canvas: 4chan for the rest of us

Have you ever visited 4chan? Specifically, have you dared to look at the /b/ message board? It’s the birthplace of the first lolcat and other great and fun Internet memes. It’s also completely NSFW, and definitely a site some people with certain sensibilities should never visit. For one thing, you will have to wade through a lot of porn and shock imagery. And you have to be cautious not to cross the regular denizens of /b/. Just check out what happened to this poor girl and her angry father (here’s the remixed video). 4chan is also the hangout for the hacker collective Anonymous. But the site is no joke: It gets 12 million visitors a month. So how do you enjoy the fun stuff while skipping the insanity? Enter Canvas, the creation of Christopher Poole, aka “Moot,” the founder of 4chan.

Twitter has changed the world

Sometime after 1 a.m. Friday, I happened to be checking Twitter when I saw flash reports about an earthquake in Japan, and then tweets about a tsunami warning, and then I saw this shocking image, which I retweeted. Twitter has changed the way I learn about what is happening in the world. More importantly, Twitter has changed the world. Tonight, many people are waiting for what may be the big Bank of America email leak, which is being announced via Twitter by @OperationLeakS. More history on the way? We shall know shortly.