Twitter's hashtag phenomenon has given us many dimensions with which we can analyze and understand thought in the mob and rabble of real time zeitgeist. At any given time, Twitter has what everyone is willing to share with the world (in 140 characters or less). Hashtags allow us to Tweet a message and attach it to a public stream related to the message. They vary in use. Sometimes they are a noun like #vegas and sometimes a meme like #omgfacts.

When I posted the original article "Critical Fault: Twitter's Sentiment Paradox" I sent it to a colleague I respect, who in turn forwarded it to one of his colleagues he respects, who wrote: "My quick opinion is that I don't buy it, I'm afraid. Sorry, Sid." he followed, speaking of the Twitter sentiment analysis companies as "people I don't think deserve to be called Charlatans." And He's right. I called the entire field charlatans. He sent me a couple links to companies that it would be mean spirited to throw in with the bad guys. So I have some apologizing and retracting to do.

This is absolutely the wrong move. Facebook had a vision of it's own before the really dumb money took the helm.

Facebook ahs been tainted by Microsoft business logic. Logic which says "Compete with your ecosystem".

It's sad to see Facebook taking swings at Twitter. I know it's not Zuckerberg. It's the money. Dark money that spells the end of peace in California. The Beast of Redmond has it's beachhead finally.

Get ready, I talk for 45 minutes straight. This is riveting if you are following Twitter, not so much if you're not. I rarely present so I think it's a hoot. Questions in the comments are very welcome.

140 characters is a great packet standard for optimized communication. With more and more services being layered in on the api, a day will come when more data than we ever thought imaginable could be contained in a Twitter message. Commercial industry never had a reason to optimize in this way, Now that market share is created and competed upon based on how much utility can be provided to the consumer, we have crowd-sourced efficiency on a very interesting scale.

The servers should be back up soon, but the copywriters don't come online until Monday. Personally, I like terms like "scrobbles" and "caches" and all that. I'll update this post with the word from Last.fm once everything is sorted.

More Info Here: Last.fm (lastfm) on Twitter