Here at Ars, we all use Twitter and not just because it's a kind of virtual pub, but because as a communication tool it sits in between immediate and long-term: it's far more in-the-moment than e-mail or blogs, yet it's more enduring than instant messaging or IRC. You can talk now with whomever is listening, and your tweets provide a breadcrumb trail of your life that anyone can catch up with at any time.
So Twitter is a lot of things, and often, it's just plain weird. That's because with gadzillions of utterances from its users and a robust API, developers were bound to build on the service and create new ways to use it. Some of these Twitter add-ons are fabulous and useful; many are not. Here are our six favorite Twitter oddities: strange ways that people have chosen to interact with Twitter.
Transform Twitter into Poetry
For those with a romantic heart, Twistori transforms the public Twitter timeline into a real-time poem. Select from "I love", "I hate", "I think", I believe", "I feel", and "I wish" to create a constantly updated (and beautifully styled) free-verse creation. Twistori converts random tweets into a pulsing themed presentation. Like most poetry, the results are not nearly as deep or poignant as they could be, but like all art, the test is in the observer not the creator.
Rock out to other people's bad day
If Twistori sets out to elevate tweets to the Art House, CurseBird aims squarely at the Burlesque show. CurseBird tracks a real-time feed of tweets as people swear on Twitter. Yes, it's exactly what that promises: you can view people cursing at each other, at the world, or at themselves with automatic updates. It's pretty hilarious and tends to cherry pick strongly emotional tweets--particularly those of people dealing with the daily challenges of waiting at Airports and dealing with the DMV. Visiting CurseBird can be greatly satisfying, assuring you that other people are having worse days than you.
Listening to laundry
Imagine if you will, a twitter account tied to a washing machine. It posts only when it has finished its load. Now imagine that there are over five hundred people willing to subscribe to this twitter feed. It's not your imagination, it's PiMPY3WASH. With what is probably the most insanely boring feed ever produced, someone has actually done this. Here's the video proof. (The sound was apparently removed for copyright violations but you can pretty well follow along without.)
I wish I could qwitter you
More and more, people tend to measure their Twitter prowess by obsessively counting their followers. Now, you can take that obsession to an entire new level. With Qwitter, you receive e-mails whenever someone stops following you on Twitter. You can then @reply them (once they stop following you can no longer DM them) and harass or woo them into returning to the fold. Why not set a new legal precedent and become the first person cited in a Twitter-related restraining order?
Pretend you're tweeting when you're really not
Sometimes real life sometimes intrudes onto Twitter time. Services like FutureTweets and TweetLater let you schedule tweets for later. These free services let you write your tweets and add a posting date and time. It's handy for pretending to be at work or just making people think that you tweet around the clock, psyching them out with your twit-fu. But who are we to judge.
Bring Twitter into IRC
For those of us who never really left the 1980's, the Twitter IRC Daemon transforms Twitter into an IRC channel. With it, you can connect to the daemon with any IRC client, join #twitter and update your status by, well, just typing and pressing return. Your friends' statuses will update on-channel and your @replies will appear as personal messages. It's the future meeting the present meeting the past meeting geeks.
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