Thursday, Aug 07th 2008 3 Comments

Chinese Twitter World’s A-#080808…

OK, maybe not a full-blown meme yet, but look at this:

Notice something that you’ve seen about four times in these seven tweets? The string #080808.Thanks to the efforts of @flypig (of Chinese Twittersphere fame), the #080808 tag campaign is well underway. Everyone’s going crazy with sticking in the #080808 icon or sticking a photo of them going “#080808“!Check out some of the cooler ones we’ve seen from…

@thecarol (the original)
@evilape (neat)
@christinelu (saw hers after @thecarol)
@isaac (self-harmonization?)

Yours truly actually came out with a very David Feng, and at that, a very Beijing Subway version:

Subway Line #080808? Please get ready for your arrival!Here’s how to take part in the whole thing:1. Nab an icon. Some are at http://tag080808.com/
2. Add “#080808″ to all your tweets
3. That’s it!

This is the third time that the Chinese-language Twittersphere has gone in a “Twitter movement”. It started earlier this year when people started rooting for the Chinese Taipei team, then spread throughout all of China when the earthquake hit on May 12, and finally, everyone is getting ready for Olympics mood.

#080808 away!

UPDATE from Elliott:  Contributor Meg Stivison added her own thoughts on us meme-sheep (a pretty cool meme-related-meta-meme) and her own version of #080808 straight from the town of Hohhot (in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, 内蒙古, Nèi Měnggǔ):

meme sheep meg

Photo courtesy Meg Stivison, Simpson’s Paradox

Sunday, Mar 23rd 2008 1 Comment

Tweet up! Meet up! The First-Ever Beijing Twitter Meetup

UPDATE: David also had excellent coverage about this momentous Beijing Twitter Meetup on TechBlog86. Go there for even more pictures! -Elliott

So how do you name this thing — Tweetup, Twittermeet, Twitter Meetup, TweetMeet or whatever you think is best? We had a difficult start: there were people roaming about with different names for same event. Once the naming was unified (or appeared to be unified), however, the Twitter meetup went ahead just after 7:30 PM.

I co-hosted the event with Siok Siok Tan, and everyone came had a blast. Before long, we had about 6 or 7 computers on the desk. There were 8 of us (there was an iPod touch, by the way, for those who came unprepared), so there was enough tweeting going around.

For those of you who came to a meeting of the Beijing Macintosh User Group, a Tweetup is a very different thing altogether. Instead of being bored to death by yours truly (mic in hand no less at big parties), everyone gets to type away like mad at the keyboard. Through this mysterious-yet-much-admired thing called the Internet (running with Twitter), the 8 Twitter-ers, assembled in Twitter congress, linked up to Twitter “bigs” around the nation such as Isaac Mao, web-styled The Chairman Mao of the 21st Century, as well as Carol Lin over there in Taiwan. And, of course, our very own Elliott tuned in as well, as did fellow BeiMac guy niu-bi from New York.Tweets and Twitter lists of all fellow Twitter-ers exploded like mad: yours truly grew by about 15 fellow Twitter-ers, and tweeted about 100 tweets or so (although the stats report otherwise). Before everyone was lost in tweeting, though, the two hosts ordered food and drinks so that we all could survive to another day with food. Hey, we need to keep on twittering!

The Tweetup wrapped up at around 10:00 PM with a dead David Feng MacBook (battery-wise) and a David Feng iPod touch tottering on its last legs. The next Tweetup will most likely either feature an expanded scope (embracing fellow Fanfou people — as in people who tweet using mainland services), be a KTweetV (a KTV fest), or both.

Stay tuned!

By the way, thanks for coming! We had a great night!