For quite some time, however, I have been wondering if I should switch to English as the language of my tweets. The reason is obvious: there are (at best) a few hundred thousand people in The Netherlands using Twitter, while the number people on Twitter whose primary language is English, or who are able to understand English as a second language, are more like to reach into the few hundred millions. In theory, the audience for my tweets would multiply significanty. Either people who could follow me directly, or people who found my tweets by searching the Twitter timeline for specific subjects.

However, I always had a feeling that most of the topics that I tweet about are very locally focused. Would these topics lend themselves for an international audience?

To get a better insight into this, I decided to have a look at what exactly it is that I tweet about. For this, I analysed all the messages that I sent in the past 30 days. And this lead me to unexpected insights.

Let me give you a quick summary of what I found: Frequent topics of my tweets.

Personal affairs and observations
Let’s be honest: we all love to share some seemingly unimportant things that happen in our daily lives. I know I do. This might range from telling about a place I visited or the plans I have for the evening, to sharing something I noticed while walking down the street or something I overheard someone say.

Some of these might be funny, interesting or remarkable to a larger number of people,, but most messages in this category are especially appreciated by close personal friends (of which I know a few dozen are using Twitter). Since most people I know are Dutch themselves, I don’t feel the urge to translate these, rather personal, messages into English to reach a broader audience.

Developments in the media
One of my greatest interests is keeping an eye on developments in the media. Especially concerning the Dutch public TV broadcasting organizations and Dutch newspapers. I am a voluntary member of the association board at one of the nation’s largest TV companies, VARA. There is a lot going on in this space, as assigning air-time to each of the broadcasting organizations is a frequent topic of debate in the Dutch parliament and in the segments of society that these companies represent. Likewise, the Dutch newspaper industry is under heavy fire (as the industry as a whole probably is everywhere in the world), with a lot of mergers and aquisitions. I and many others have some steep opinions on these events, and thoughts on how it should be.

Although I do know my share of the international media conglomerates and their business relations and partnerships (especially in the US), my primary interest lies with the Dutch media. Although the country is quite small, this topic is still broad enough in itself.

Discussions about TV shows
One of Twitter’s differentiating factors compared to other online media, is its real-time nature. It’s very easy to read something someone has posted just seconds ago, and likewise people are being able to read my tweets almost instantly. This makes the service ideal to discuss events as-they-are-happening, such as TV shows. By including the appropriate hashtag for a particular show in your messages, discussions about one are easy to follow.

Although we are able to watch a couple of foreign (mainly European) TV channels (my cable box has around 100 in total), some 98% of the time I, and most people I know, watch Dutch TV channels. In my case, this selection is even more specifically narrowed down to the three quality-focused public broadcasting stations, even though there are a couple of handfull Dutch commercial TV channels as well.

Of course I do watch foreign programming from time to time, although in most cases this means watching series (my latest favorite was Mad Men from AMC) or news items using some on-demand technology, or via a DVD or Blu-ray Disc. Little need to tweet about them, especially not in the real-time manner as described above. I don’t feel like changing my TV watching habits just to write about television channels that more people can watch.

Technology
I have a great passion for technology. I am especially interested in creative and usefull usage of technology, rather than in the mere technical advancements. As a result, I am very focused on user interface design and usability in general. This ranges from the on-screen displays presented by a piece of consumer electronics (like a set-top box or media player) to the design decisions behind a particular web site.

Technology is an international topic, and as such most of these tweets would lend themselves for an international audience. Although even then, the implementations of my local cable provider or the latest web layout of one of our local newspapers would probably be of limited use as topics of international discussion.

Apple
Needless to say, I am a big fan of Apple products. As a result, I very frequently tweet about the Mac and its latest software and hardware, about the iPhone and its latest apps, and about the company itself. I pride myself on not only having a decent knowledge of the products, but also on having quite an insightfull look in developments surrounding Apple from a commercial, marketing and competitive standpoint.

Apple’s operations are worldwide. In fact, there are even some products and services unavailable in The Netherlands. No movie sales and rentals on iTunes, no Get A Mac commercials on TV (or any Apple commercials for that matter), and no Apple Stores can be found in our streets. Still, I keep a close eye on such things as well. Come to think of it: Apple might be the primary topic more credible for discussing in English than anything else on my list.

Politics and current affairs
I tend to have a strong opinion about things that are going on in our country’s political system. For this, I actively follow quite a few news sites and blogs, such as the liberally oriented Joop.nl. As I presume is the case for everyone, some subjects fit more closely to my heart than others. Still, I tend to keep track on most of what’s happening.

To enhance this, I follow a few politicians on Twitter. More and more politicians from all flavours are discovering Twitter as a means of very quickly and directly communicating their views and stances to the public, and it allows the public to get in contact with them as well. Most of them seem to personally respond if possible. Although the Internet in general has brought politics closer to public in recent years, Twitter seems to make the line even thinner.

Even though I try to keep an eye on international affairs in general, I solely focuss on Dutch politics on Twitter. I only follow Dutch politicians, and mainly comment on local issues (but sure, there were some Copenhagen-tweets in the past month as well). I am a a Dutchman who doesn’t carry any illusions about the relevance of Dutch politcs for the rest of the world. Not much need for English comments here either.

Personal interests
And then of course, I tend to shoot an occasional tweet about other personal interests of mine. These include, but aren’t limited to:
– Music. I am quite into gothic, wave and EBM music, and I enjoy visiting a concert and -in the summertime- a festival, which mainly take place in Germany. If a concert was especially good, or something remarkable happened, I enjoy posting a quick note about it.
– Efteling. A Dutch themepark with a very unique, romantic style. For all my life, I enjoyed this park which can truly be considered unique in the world, regarding its focus on details and quality, and the clearly unique theme. Nice to know other adults share my love! Sometimes I tend to remark on some latest developments.
– Retro Technology. I am a true sucker for old things. I own quite a collection of vintage Macs (yes, including the 128K!), and some other consumer electronics from decades past. Nice to hear about new findings or views on technology from old times, and nice to contribute to as well.
– Language. I love language. I love writing. And yes, I am one of those annoying people who is quickly angered by spelling errors and other misuse of language. Although I do read and write in English, it is the Dutch language that I care a lot about. I like to discuss language-stuff with fellow obsessive peers from time to time.
– Nijmegen. My city, where I have been living for almost 4 years. Although this seems like a short time (and it is), the city stole my heart. Founded by the Romans over 2,000 years ago, it is considered the oldest city in The Netherlands. Next to the obvious esthetical pleasures as a result of this, I also very much like the loose, liberal mentality of the people, and the fact that the University and its students play a major role in the city’s image. Twitter allows me to discuss the town’s activity.

So should I start twittering in English?

When I look at above list of topics that I read and write about on Twitter, I must conclude that apart from one or two exceptions, most are very locally focused. Either because the topic is typically Dutch (like domestic politics or developments in the national media), or because I tend to focus on the local aspects of a topic.

Clearly, talking about Apple or technology in general would lend itself for an international audience. As I do think mixing two languages in a single Twitter-account too much would just confuse people (both my Dutch followers who notice the inconsitency, or foreign people having no clue what a follow-up tweet may be all about), I tend to keep English tweets to a minimum.

Often, I have considered creating a seperate account just to write about Apple and technology in English. However, I do think that one of the charms of Twitter is the fact that the messages are truly personal. They are, in my opinion, not posted by some blogger or opinion-maker, but by a real person. No other Internet-technology makes publicizing and interacting this personal. And hence, I mostly appreciate the mixture of topic-specific and personal messages of the people that I follow on Twitter. Creating a seperate account for personal messages and messages about non-international topics, and an account for technology-related stuff would break this sympathetic Twitter-convention.

I have thought of means on combining the two, for example by limiting the technology-tweets to the English account, and then retweet them to my personal Dutch account, so that my Dutch followers would see these English tech-messages as well. However, this leaves the English account free of any personal notes and tweets about other topics, and would lead to the less-than-ideal situation of two mixed up languages on my personal account.

I am still not sure on how to handle this issue. I do see the potential of writing in English, as it would multiply the potential audience. But as of now, I am just too much addicted to the personal touch of Twitter (and the possibility to write about a lot of personal and local topics), to give up twittering in Dutch altogether.

I guess for now, I focus on this blog as my main outlet for English writing.

The author can be found on Twitter as @JorgK. His tweets are mainly in Dutch

Twitter is great, and like millions of others I’m a big fan of the service. Many people are worth following. In my case this includes of a great number of personal friends, but also a big number of media reporters, tech bloggers, scientists and politicians. With the growing number of people to follow, it gets harder every time to keep track of all those messages. To get a more organized view, it would be a great idea to group these people into various categories, so that related posts are shown together.

For quite some time, many Twitter-clients offered some functionality to create groups of people. However, this resulted in a less then ideal situation. For starters, these groups you created in one particular client are not portable across different clients, let alone be visible on the Twitter website. This meant that in order to sync them up between your mobile and desktop, you had to use the same client on both your iPhone and your Mac, which had to support some form of group syncing, and you had to remember to sync between the clients from time to time. Many people choose to use different clients though (such as in my case Tweetie on the iPhone, and Nambu on the Mac), or just use the well designed Twitter website when sitting at the desk, so this does not provide a valid solution for them. Furthermore, there was no way to see how other people categorised their Twitter-contacts so you could learn from them, nor could others see the efforts that you put into ordering your Twitter-users.

Twitter adds Lists

To provide a solution for this problem, Twitter recently added a new feature called Lists. As the name implies, it allows you to group people into Lists, which can be given a name to reflect the category. As usual when Twitters adds a new feature to the service, they though this one out very cleverly. The Lists are shown on your Twitter-page once you log into site, so you can easlity select them for viewing the respective tweets.

But it doesn’t stop there. Twitter made the Lists functionality a part of their APIs, so that developers of Twitter-clients can easily integrate them into their programs. This means that the same Lists of people are available across all mobile and desktop clients that support them (many already do, and all others are expected to follow quickly), and on the website. True portability of categories!

Lists are public

However, what makes the implementation really great is that you can also choose to make your Lists publicly visible on your profile page. Others could have a peak at the kinds of people you follow, and likewise, you can browse trough the Lists of the people that you find interesting. Chances are higher that you’ll discover some interesting new people when browsing trough their Lists that interest you, rather than wading trough (often) long unorganised listings of the people they follow.

What’s really great though is that you can also subscribe yourself to the Lists of others. These Lists will simply be shown on your Twitter page alongside your own lists, and they appear in your Twitter-clients. The original creator manages the List, and any updates or changes will also immediately be visible to you. This opens up many possibilities of specialized Lists of people or subjects that can be created for many people to enjoy.

Twitter even added a syntax for refering to a List so you can mention them in a tweet, consisting of the user name, followed by a slash and the List name, like @JorgK/mac. Clicking on such a link will forward you to this user’s List page.

The number of people that put you in a List is now shown in the upper right corner of your Twitter page, next to the usual “following” and “followers” count. Clicking this number forwards you to a page showing the users and the names of the categories they assigned you to.

Am I following you?

Twitter choose to allow you to add people you are not “following” to your Lists as well. This means that you can create a group and add users to it, without their tweets clogging up your regular timeline of tweets. This has proven to confuse some Twitter users, as they falsly assume that they have to “follow” someone first, before being able to add them to a List. That’s not the case.

This also means that it is possible to “unfollow” people you have added to a List. Unfollowing them means that your default timeline on your Twitter client or on the Twitter web site does not show their tweets anymore. It’s very likely that many people would prefer this to happen for certain accounts after they have them grouped into an appropriate category. After all, the whole purpose of this List thing is to reduce chaos, right?

Losing track on how many people follow you

On Twitter, the number of people following a user often says something about the relevance of this user, or their popularity. Many people appreciate having a high follower count (even though some would deny so when asked).

As stated above however, it is no longer necessary to “follow” someone in order to read their tweets, once you have grouped them into a List. Once people will start realising this, the number of “followers” will likely decrease. That is: the number showing as the follower count on Twitter. One could argue if this number then still represents the actual number of people subscribing to your posts.

Although it’s easy to argue that adding up the number of followers and the number of Lists that you appear in will result in an accurate number of people reading you, this does not hold true. As explained above, people can subscribe to Lists created by others. So even though you might appear in an x number of Lists, many more people could be using these Lists as their starting point to reading your tweets.

There is no way of knowing how many people access a List that includes you, unless you visit your Listed page, and manually add up all of the followers for all of the lists.

Confusing times

Twitter has made the once clear definition of a “follower” more vague by adding the Lists feature. Most will agree that someone who put you in a List is technically following you, even though they might not be following your Twitter-definition-wise.

Two independent numbers are now shown on your Twitter page (“followers” and “listed”), but as explained above, the listed number might not show the total number of people using a List that contains your account.

Also, some people do not clearly understand that they don’t need to “follow” someone before being able to file them in a List.

What about this solution?

Twitter needs to clear up several things. Allow me to propose the following.

• It should unify the two ways that people can now subscribe to someone’s posts. This could be done by creating a List called “default” for every user, which includes the people they are following but have not placed in a specific List.
• It needs to eliminate the confusion surrounding the term “following” that has now risen. Due to the popularity of the term, and the strong association with the Twitter service, I suggest calling the procedure of placing people in a List “following them in a List”.
• As a result, the number of “followers” should reflect this. It should include the people that are following you in their “default” List, the people that put you in a specific List, and the people that subcribe to any of these Lists that include you.
• The “listed” number is still relevant and should still be shown. After all, it shows the number of people that have gone trough the trouble of assigning you to a specific category. This may mean something, as they not just added you to their default lists of people to follow. Next to this number of Lists, a number of the total number of people subscribed to these Lists should be shown in parentheses, like: 56 (134).

Conclusion

Twitter’s continued innovation is very much appreciated. In the last months, they added a structurized and very streamlined way to retweet messages, they added very sophisticated geo-tagging functionality, and made some promising deals with companies like Google and LinkedIn to better integrate Twitter into other services.

Likewise, Lists is a very welcome new functionality that adds a lot of usability improvements to the Twitter experience. However, it does confuse users, as some previously easy to understand concepts such as follower count are now not as easy anymore. Furthermore, it might negatively affect (especially high-profile) users, as the number they have used for years now to reflect their popularity might go down.

Both issues should be relatively easy to resolve. Let’s hope the folks at Twitter will find the time to do so.

The author can be found on Twitter as @JorgK. His Lists can be found at @JorgL/lists.

Update December 16, 2009: Bas Westerbaan (@bwesterb) has posted an article on his blog describing a mechanism on how to count all unique Twitter-followers, including those that have filed you in a List.

However, it seems that YouTube does in fact store the original uploaded video material and not only the low quality Flash video that is presents to its users by default. This became clear when Apple introduced its iPhone in June of 2007, and with the Apple TV firmware update of that same month. Both devices cannot play Flash, however they both allow viewers to watch YouTube content. For this to work, YouTube offers the video in AVC or H.264 format. And since older videos were also made available to users of these Apple products, one can assume that YouTube saved the original videos in order to do the transcoding.

As a nice side effect, videos played back on these devices looked better than the ones on the YouTube.com web site accessed from a computer, as H.264 is a fairly powerfull, efficient and high quality codec.

There seems to be a way however to also access this high quality video, together with stereo sound (if the original video contained it, of course) on the YouTube.com web site. Simply add &fmt=18 to the end of the URL. You will then see the H.264 version at 360×240 resolution, which is the native resolution of the iPhone’s display.

The improvement in picture and audio quality becomes instantly clear when you compare, for example, these two URLs pointing to the same Nightwish video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_1yJSTToFM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_1yJSTToFM&fmt=18

I have noted some things when using this “hidden” option:

• There seems to be a “video quality” preference in the “My Account” settings on YouTube. However, setting this to “always use high bandwith quality” did not result in the same image improvement.
• The H.264 video looks better when switched to full screen (although still fairly pixelated of course, due to its relatively low resolution), but aspect ratio will be lost with some wide screen videos, where they are kept correct using the default quality. This can be seen for instance in the above examples. Try switching the H.264 version to full screen on a wide screen display, and notice that the image will be stretched.
• I tried to embed both examples in this blog post, however the &fmt=18 setting seems to get lost, resulting in the default video. I am not sure whether this is a limitation of WordPress, or a measurement built in by YouTube.