If you’ve ever watched a baseball game, you’ve probably heard that absurd disclaimer that “express written permission” is needed to give an account of a game. Well, Major League Baseball — the US Federal Communications Commission has happily ignored your rule.

First, the disclaimer. A writer at the Consumerist did a funny look at this last year, when he tried to obtain permission to describe a game to a friend. The warning goes:

Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited.

Any account of the game needs written permission? Seriously, MLB? So all those people who tweet from games, or while watching them (count me among the guilty) are violators?

It’s a stupid disclaimer. And now the FCC is ignoring it. In the wake of the Cablevision-Fox dispute (see this PDF from the FCC for more), the FCC has started live tweeting scores out of the current Phillies-SF Giants game. First came this:

Baseball fans disappointed about missing game three? (2-0 SF, top 5th) Cablevision-Fox dispute info at http://FCC.gov/consumer

and next this:

We’re filling in the baseball void for those without Fox-Cablevision. Matt Cain pitching a beauty. SF up 3-0 http://FCC.gov/consumer

Good for you, FCC. Plus, I feel more secure tweeting baseball in the future. Not that I was that worried.

Even if it’s in somewhat mock seriousness, The Daily Show’s Rally To Restore Sanity has me fired up! But tapping into the official news about the event through social media, well, that’s been a bit disappointing.

The Rally & Twitter

When I hit the rally’s web site the day after it was announced, it pointed me to its Twitter account:

Problem was, it wasn’t the rally’s Twitter account listed. It was one for the Daily Show. How about an account just for the rally?

That came yesterday, @Rally4Sanity. Good! Bad — it’s still not listed on the main rally site. (POSTSCRIPT: This was fixed a day or two after this post went up).

The Rally & Hashtags

Meanwhile, as I tweet about the rally, what hashtag should I use? The rally site hasn’t put an official one out there, so you see people using things like:

#r2r
#rtrs
#rally4sanity
#rallyforsanity

I’ve seen tweets suggesting that the first two are official. They’re not. I can’t track anything down about this. I like either of them, because they’re short. But c’mon Rally To Restore Sanity, pick something and get it out there.

The Rally: Invisible On Facebook

Meanwhile, there’s Facebook. Here, the mess is more down to Facebook than the rally. Looking for official rally information on Facebook? Here’s what you get:

None of those are the official rally page. Drill in, and it gets worse:

There currently about 25 matching pages so far, and none of them are official ones.

What’s wrong? For one, the rally doesn’t have an official Facebook page. But it DOES have an official event page on Facebook, here:

That page might as well be invisible on Facebook. This is despite being far more popular than any of the Facebook pages listed (over 65,000 people currently say they’ll attend, 100,000 people overall if you count those saying they might attend). Still, Facebook still only shows Facebook pages by default.

You have to think “Hmm, did the Rally do an event page?” and then deliberately hunt for it, if you want to find it on Facebook.

Of course, the Facebook event page is linked to from the Rally’s web site — but if you’re on Facebook and looking there, that doesn’t help.

Ideally, I’d like to see the Rally To Restore Sanity create a Facebook page in addition to its event page. Then it would be more visible.

I’d also like the Rally To Restore Sanity to have an event in Southern California, too. I’ve got a Facebook page of my own about that

Hashtags can be handy. Hashtags can be good. But in my first trip to the SXSW conference, ironically, I’m getting a first-hand view of when hashtags can go totally wrong.

Someone decided it would be a great idea for every session to have a hashtag. OK, I get that. It makes it easy to see a conversation around a particular session. But the bad idea was giving no real thought to the length of those tags.

Consider. I’ve been on two sessions this week. One was Getting Your Game Found In Search Engines, with the assigned tag of:

#gamefoundsearchengines

That’s 23 characters — 16% of the total 140 you’re allowed in a tweet. Why so long? Why not #gameengine or #gamesearch or #gmsch

Another session was Beyond Algorithms: Search and the Semantic Web, where the hashtag was:

#beyondalgorithms

That’s 17 characters, 12% of the total 140. Why not #beyondalgo or #balgo?

Now consider the hashtags suggested for today’s keynote by Twitter cofounder Evan Williams:

#SXSW #evwilliams #mondaykeynote

That’s 32 characters, 23% of the space available. Thank goodness Ev is just @ev on Twitter. Because if you want to tweet anything he says — and use all those hashtags to be part of the stream — and use his Twitter name — you’re not going to have much room left!

I have  a lot of sympathy for the organizers, in that there’s 100 zillion sessions going on, so making hashtags for all of them is tough. But if you’re going to do it, put hashtags out there, then do it right.

Ideas? My top-of-the-head tips:

Keep them short. That’s obvious

They don’t have to make sense. That algorithm session? The hashtag could have easily been something like #algosxsw or #sxsw23. I like the last one especially. You’re just looking for a way to consolidate all tweets from a particular session around a particular tag. Give them unique numbers!

They’re reusable. Hashtags don’t have to be unique for each event. If SXSW uses #sxsw23 this year, it can use it for a completely different session next year. Why? Because most hasttag searches, I’d wager, happen at the time a particular event is happening. No one’s going to see “old” information from #sxsw23 (if that’s what was used) when the latest one goes on.

That’s one reason why for my own Search Marketing Expo confernces, the hashtag we use is always #smx. Not #smxadvanced or #smx2010 or #smxwest. Just #smx. Usually, our shows are well spaced from each other. But we’ve even had shows in Sydney and Canada happen right at the same time, both using the same hashtag, without that much confusion. Being in different timezones, there wasn’t much overlap.

We don’t assign hashtags to particular sessions. That’s just felt like overkill to me. But we’ll have five sessions going on at the same time, so that might actually be good. If we do that in the future, I’ll go for following some of my own advice!

In some of my posts, I have mentioned
The fact I like using Twhirl
This little post is more to the point
Scroll down and lend me your eyes

I like Twhirl. It makes me a jolly good fellow
I like Twhirl. It’s small and light and makes me feel mellow
(Makes him feel mellow)

Seesmic Desktop’s too big,
Tweetdeck had too many panes
(but Tweetie rocks for the iPhone)
This little refrain should help me explain
As a matter of fact I like Twhirl

With apologies to Tom T. Hall and his I Like Beer song. And a bit more not in verse…

Loic, I know Seesmic is supposed to be your next big thing when it comes with Twitter apps. I know it has even more features out today such as list support. Got it. Heck, when I was at the August Capital party after the TechCrunch Real Time Stream CrunchUp event, you had a table out showing me Seesmic and half convinced me to move over to it from Twhirl.

I complained I didn’t like all the panes, that I like how I can tuck Twhirl into a side of my laptop and keep up without giving over all my screen real estate. That I could easily toggle to see replies, direct messages and so on. You responded that Seesmic could do all the exact same things and toggle between accounts. OK — I took a few Seesmic stickers (have one on my front door right now even) then went off to try it.

Couldn’t install. It wouldn’t install. Some bug with the Mac. So I never got to using it. About two weeks ago, I finally got it going. Guess what? Not that impressed, so far. For one, there was no way to import all my account settings from Twhirl. You want me to migrate? Don’t make me reenter four different Twitter accounts I monitor, along with a FriendFeed account plus API keys for these for Bit.ly.

Second, Seesmic still takes up more room than Twhirl, as far as I can see. But to help, in a future post, I’ll really lay out side-by-side why Twhirl still does it for me and what I’d like changed to make me a Seemic user.

In the meantime, when I am using Twhirl and posting to Twitter from Twhirl, don’t report in my status line that I’m using Seesmic like this:

That’s not on. And don’t tell people this is because they’re using a “Seesmic” product, as has been done.

Really, it looks like you’re doing it because plenty of people still use Twhirl, but if you report Twhirl separately, then you risk dividing your usage for those top application lists that people obsess over.

I get that. I feel for you about it. But it’s still not right. I’m using Twhirl — so say that. And also don’t make me feel that Twhirl’s going to die at any moment, as you do on the Seesmic home page:

Twhirl’s your “previous desktop client?” That makes me think it’s going away. Hey, your decision to make. I’m sure that would force some people into finally using Seesmic, weird name and all. I might be one of them, if you can keep it as light as Twhirl.

Then again, I might go elsewhere.

As the Orange County Angels of Los Angeles in Anaheim continue into the playoffs, I’ve found myself not only watching baseball on TV for the first time but also tweeting updates. Meanwhile, as some football teams I don’t know about play against each other in games I don’t care about, I find myself yawning when others tweet those. And so, I introduce the two laws of sporting events and Twitter:

1) Sporting events you’re not at or don’t care about are incredibly boring to hear tweeted

2) Sporting events you’re at or care about are incredibly interesting & MUST be tweeted to the world

There are corollaries:

1A) Those who bore you with their sporting news risk being unfollowed at any moment

2A) Those who find your sporting event tweets boring are sticks-in-the-mud who shouldn’t be following you in the first place

Actually, I kind of like hearing the updates from those at sporting events I don’t care about. It’s an interesting window into what those I follow are interested in. As for me, well, if the Angels keep winning, I’ll probably be tweeting. But I’ll try to keep it selective!

Yes, the Google Wave invites are going out. All logged in? Now it’s time to start tweeting from Google Wave. Here’s how.

The only Twitter client I know of is called Tweety the Twitbot. Today, I’ve also seen it called Twave, though the application itself still doesn’t seem to use that name.

I used Tweety in the Google Wave sandbox preview and completely forgot how I added it back then. So I did some searching and came across a tweet from @oplura explaining that getting Tweety going is as easy as adding a contact. So let’s do it, with pictures.

Go to your contacts window and click the + sign at the bottom to add a new contact:

Enter this address:

tweety-wave@appspot.com

Now make a new wave. Click the + symbol to add a new participant to it. Add Tweety:

Next you’ll get an authenticating message:

A new window will open to connect Wave to your Twitter account:

After you sign in successfully, you’ll get a message confirming this, and then the window will close.

Back in your wave, push the “Done” button if you’re still seeing the authentication message. Then you’ll see this:

Enter your tweet into the top box (first arrow in the screenshot) and push update to send. Keep in mind that it won’t count down the 140 characters. If you go long, it won’t warn you.

Below the tweet box, you’ll see tweets from others (second, lower arrow in the screenshot). You might try reloading the page, if it looks like the names of those tweeting aren’t showing up correctly.

After that, well, I find that the box doesn’t seem to update. Maybe that will improve as Wave stabilizes during the current round of invites or as the app improves or who knows?

I was amazed to see in my Twitter stream that the California Supreme Court had overturned Proposition 8 and quickly retweeted the news. Only it wasn’t so. The story everyone’s been pointing at is from almost a year ago. So what caused that to rise to attention in Twitter?

NOTE (Aug. 4, 2010): Since this story was written, Proposition 8 has again been overturned, this time by a US District Court. More news on that here.

The date on the story is pretty small:

It’s easy to think someone who came across the story might have thought it was fresh. But why would they come across it in the first place?

To understand more, I went in search of the first tweet. I hit Twitter Search and looked for any posts today with all the words “prop 8″ in them and which also contained a link (you can do this via the Advanced Search page).

I then started paging back through the results (actually, I looked in the URL field and changed the “page=” number to something high, rather than clicking my way back). Eventually, I found what seems to be the first mention of the ban being overturned:

California State Supreme Court rules Prop 8 unconstitutional but constitutional amendment may be next: http://tinyurl.com/6xevh4 @oneiowa

I couldn’t find any other mention of the ban being overturned before this (SEE POSTSCRIPT BELOW, GAWKER FOUND AN OLDER TWEET). After that, it starts to spread out:

In the screenshot of search results, you can see where I’m pointing from the original tweet to where it gets retweeted and above that, where the the link in the original tweet gets retweeted (being put into Bit.ly rather than TinyURL).

Here’s where it gets interesting. If you try to go to the link in the original tweet (here), you’ll see it’s not the LA Times story that everyone’s talking about but instead a story on ABC News. Or a former story, because it’s been removed now.

If I had to guess, my assumption is that somehow, that ABC News story turned up in a search listing in the way that Google News listed an old story about the United Airlines bankruptcy as new, last year (see Google News & Indexing Old Stories As New for more about that, including the finger pointing).

How’s the LA Times get involved? About 20 minutes after the ABC News link was tweeted, you get a fresh push that Prop. 8 was overturned, pointing at the LA Times story (via this Bit.ly link).

It could be that the person who did this went to the ABC Story and found it was down, so went looking for another story about it. I don’t know. I’ve tried to reach the original tweeter but haven’t heard back and may try to reach the other one later. But you can see the further spread here:

Eventually, I saw the “news” from someone I follow, tweeted it, then saw another tweet that it wasn’t so. I deleted my tweet to help prevent things spreading, then also tweeted a correction. Soon after that, however, the LA Times itself tweeted the news:

Within minutes, that tweet had been deleted (along with the tweet it mentions coming from another LA Times account). It was also later corrected.

What have we learned from all this? Read dates more closely! And hopefully, make dates more prominent on stories.

For more, see related stories on Techmeme.

Postscript: Gawker found a tweet that’s older that the one I thought was the original (I didn’t see this, as I looked for “Proposition 8″ or “Prop 8″ rather than something like “gay marriage.”). I’ve checked, and it is before the one I thought originated it. It points at that same now removed ABC News story. Still checking into that, but I can confirm the page was dated from 2008, according to its Google listing. Gawker also reached the original tweeter, and a mistaken news search isn’t the culprit:

Contacted by Gawker, Modzelewski says—ironically—that she first heard the fake news through a pre-Twitter mode of communication: “From a friend” who in turn had read about it on someone’s Facebook page.

Postscript 2: The LA Times has a short item up now saying it meant to tweet the opposite, that the story was old, but sent it out as new.

Twitter, which recently made it so that you would automatically see anyone who @replied to you regardless of where they put your name in a message, changed things dramatically in the opposite direction. Now you probably won’t see some messages from people you follow if they are @replies to people you do not follow. That’s got many folks upset.

It’s confusing to explain. In fact, I’ve revised this post because I misunderstood the change myself, at first. In summary:

• If anyone replies to you, you’ll still see that
• If someone you follow replies to someone else, you’ll see that tweet if you also follow the person they’re replying to
• If someone you follow replies to someone you don’t know, you’ll probably NOT see that tweet

I understand part of the concern, that Twitter doesn’t want people feeling like they’re only seeing a part of a conversation in their stream. But the bigger concern is that it’s up to me to decide what I want to see, not Twitter.

If I follow someone, and they reply to someone I don’t know, that’s still interesting to me and others. So let us decide. Don’t filter on my behalf.

If Twitter really thinks this is a big problem for many of its users, these “partial conversations,” then OK. I can roll with the filtering being switched on by default. But compromise. Give back the control options we used to have, so we can see all tweets from those we follow, if we choose.

After all, we followed them for a reason.

I’ve been bemused watching Facebook over the past few months try to get some of the Twitter mojo by focusing more on “status updates.” I tend to be with John Battelle that “Twitter is a pencil.” IE — Twitter works because it does one thing well. Facebook is complicated — it’s Photoshop, as John put it. But perhaps Facebook could succeed in the “status update wars” if it lets go, offers “Facebook Lite,” a status-only version of the service.

I put “status updates” in quotes, because no one really seems to know what to call what we do on Twitter. I guess “status update” came from the old school messages people would put into their internet messaging clients (I’m away; I wish I weren’t at work; I wish I were you, etc). With the explosion of Twitter, I’ve heard various people talk about the “status update” space and who will or can challenge Twitter there.

Status updates. Bleech. I much prefer “micro-blogging” as a name for what Twitter is. That how I use it — here’s a thing I want to post to the world, just like I might do with a regular blog post, but I can do it fast and easy using Twitter.

Back in March, Facebook decided it should be more Twitter-like by changing its status box to ask “What’s on your mind?” Bleech again. I can’t remember what it said before that, only that the required “is” had been dropped sometime after late 2007. But the goal is clear. Rather than this being a box designed to quickly say where you are or perhaps how you’re feeling, it’s encouraging you to say anything — you know, whatever’s on your mind. Just like Twitter.

Yesterday, there was much excitement that your status updates — along with other Facebook actions — now can flow outside of Facebook. Got a client that takes in Twitter activity? Now you can get your “stream” anywhere, as Facebook proclaimed.

Well, anywhere you want to run a software app, that is. If you don’t log-in, you don’t get your stream. And if you want to share that stream with others outside Facebook, unlike with Twitter, no dice, no luck.

For example, want to see my Twitter stream? It’s here, for anyone to access. No logging-in is necessary. And if I want to use that data in some way, such as in a widget on my blog? I can get the public RSS feed for it.

Over at Facebook, there is no RSS feed of your stream. Not that I can find, and I did plenty of looking yesterday. At best, there’s a Facebook badge you can get. That only shows your last status update, and it’s an image of it, at that.

If Facebook really wants to compete with Twitter — and Twitter could use some competition — I think it needs to open up much more and simplify, as well. Let people start a Facebook account solely to post status updates to anyone who is interested, via a fully public page and RSS feed. Let people follow anyone else just as Twitter allows. Down the line, let people transform those followers into “friends” and make use of Facebook’s deeper social networking tools IF THEY WANT. Plenty won’t want, but they can still be valuable as pure status update users.

One of Facebook’s biggest challenges in allowing “off-platform” sharing seems to be its supposed great “granular” privacy settings. People can control who sees what in a variety of ways at Facebook, and those settings have to be maintained if information flows out of the Facebook walled garden. But that’s also its weakness. It’s overwhelming just how much you can do within Facebook, much less trying to keep track of where all that information flows.

Twitter is the essence of simplicity. It’s either all public or not. And you only post one thing, a status message. If Facebook really wants to compete, a Facebook light version — come up with a clever name for it — seems like it would stand a greater chance of success. And maybe it could help Facebook move away from its walled garden origins more fully. AOL’s walled garden came down in the end; there was no reason to think AOL 2.0 was going to be more successful.

Postscript: Just came across Keep It Simple Stupid from MG Siegler over at TechCrunch that also came out today. Hadn’t seen it before writing this; guess we’re all thinking the same thing. Why’s Facebook got to be so complex? Especially look at his picture illustrating how complicated those various settings are.

Postscript (Sept. 11, 2009): Look at that! A new Facebook Lite has been launched. It’s still not as “light” as Twitter, but so far, I like how much more simple it is. More on Techmeme.

Ingrid Michaelson is one of my favorite artists, always an amusing Twitterer and now the first major musician I know of to write a song about Twitter.

Apparently she’s doing some studio work and twittered that she’d done a song:

im made a song about twitter for you all. going crazy in the studio.

And now she’s posted it here! It’s not long, but it’s fun.

The lyrics are below. Not sure if I’ll get in trouble for transcribing them. I’ll pull them down, if I hear anything. Hope I got them down OK.

“The Twitter Song”

[Are you recording me?
Oh
I can't hear the snare
Count me in]

Where do I go when I don’t have a friend
Where do I go at another day’s end
Nobody loves me
Somebody loves me on
Twitter

I think I’m a big big loser
Then I go to my computer
Turn it on, and I feel grand
All because of
Twitter

Direct message me
Please please message me
Or at least reply to my
Twitter

Tweet tweet tweet tweet
Tweet tweet tweet tweet
Tweet tweet tweet tweet
Tweet
Twitter

Postscript: Just realized, how appropriate timing. It’s Twitter’s third birthday.