GameCity 2011 My Thoughts: The Legend of Zelda Take Over Day

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GameCity 2011 took place in Nottingham between the 26th and 29th of September, and is a festival looking at many different aspects of computer gaming old and new. Whilst there were many activities that took place during the festival, I wanted to only comment about my personal experiences, both good and bad, of the events that I attended.

You can see all articles on Game City by clicking here

To mark the 25th Anniversary of the Legend of Zelda series of games the activities on the final day of Game City 2011  were  dedicated to the iconic Adventures of Link.

If there was ever any doubt about the impact that the series has made upon players over the years, then these were put to one side by the devotion and numbers of fans that turned up for the event. From way before the the doors opened to the public and for the majority of the day the queue for entry went from the front door right around the side and behind the festival base. A lot of fans dressed up for the occasion and came dressed as Link, and this wasn’t limited to children as many adults got into the spirit, and had obviously spent a lot of time getting their costumes together. This shouldn’t come as a surprise really as the Zelda games are 25 years old and will have been a big part of many peoples lives since they first started playing games.

Upon entering the festival HQ is was clear to see that the only focus of the day was going to be Zelda. When entering the venue every visitor was given a special Zelda themed ocarina and every Nintendo Zelda game ever produced was available (unlucky if you wanted to play the CDi ‘classic’ Link: The Faces of Evil) in one form or another around the edges of the room.

Zelda based activities took centre stage, for example, a sword fighting demo was given with visitors taking part in choreographed fight scenes, and there was a fancy dress competition for those wanting to take part, although it was the activity behind the main screen that generated the most interest. Several demonstration Wii’s had been set up running a sneak peak of the forthcoming Zelda game Skyward Sword.  The Gameplay looked intriguing, fun, adventurous and in the familiar style to it’s Wii predecessor, but to me it was noticeable how dated the Wii’s graphics had become, I know that the Zelda (and Wii games in general) are about the substance rather then the style but I couldn’t help but wonder what the Zelda game would have looked like on the PS3. That aside it was impressive how players were able to just pick up the wiimotes and play the game comfortably and, as shown in the video below, instantly start to enjoy the adventure, This must have been a real treat for Zelda fans.

The Legend of Zelda Take Over Day was extremly well organised and given the shear numbers of people trying to get into the event the organisers should be proud that it seemed to go very well.

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GameCity 2011 My Thoughts: The Wild Rumpus

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GameCity 2011 took place in Nottingham between the 26th and 29th of September, and is a festival looking at many different aspects of computer gaming old and new. Whilst there were many activities that took place during the festival, I wanted to only comment about my personal experiences, both good and bad, of the events that I attended.

You can see all articles on Game City by clicking here

Following on from our disappointing start at the Retro Gaming night we moved onto the Wild Rupus Event held upstairs at the Chameleon.

The first thing that we noticed was that the event was very well attended and that the small venue was packed, no cat swinging here!!!

Again we were a little disappointed by the lack of content as only 3 games were on show, these were 4 Fourths by Mikengreg Games Co, Jesus Vs Dinosaurs by Grapefrukt & Kloonigames & B.U.T.T.O.N by Copenhagen Game Collective.

4 Fourths was presented in a spectacular manner, projected onto a wall, which suited its bright, vivid vector style graphics and presented a very impressive spectacle.

Unfortunately nobody around us could work out how to play the game, and it wasn’t straight forward but I suspect that after  you get used to the control system, there may be a fun and challenging game hidden away in there.

Jesus Vs Dinosaurs was shown on a standard size screen  and was a cross between a beat ‘em up, and a physics game where objects had to be created to use on your opponent, the game had a Biblical Vs Science theme and used effective Terrance and Phillip style graphics. The game was proving to be very popular and getting near the table to play the game was difficult, truly a sign of a successful game.

For me, as an example of a true adult style party game, B.U.T.T.O.N. (standing for: Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now) takes some beating. The game is very simple, 4 controllers are placed on a table and simple instructions are displayed on screen. The instructions range from walk 5 paces backwards, to dance for 30 seconds to the last person to hold their fire button down for 15 seconds is out. Interaction with the game is kept to an absolute minimum but as the games title emplies this is not true with interaction with other players, as they can employ any means necessary to knock out their opponents. As the video I filmed below shows this simple game generates plenty of fun, just watch your Tv’s though as the screen used at the Rumpus nearly ended up on the floor several times.

The concept of The Wild Rumpus is good, it let visitors let their hair down with a beer or 2 and enjoy some different and unusual styles of games, but  the concept needs to be scaled up to a larger venue with more space and more games. From small acorns… and all that.

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GameCity 2011 My Thoughts: Retro Gaming at the HomeMade Cafe

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GameCity 2011 took place in Nottingham between the 26th and 29th of September, and is a festival looking at many different aspects of computer gaming old and new. Whilst there were many activities that took place during the festival, I wanted to only comment about my personal experiences, both good and bad, of the events that I attended.

You can see all articles on Game City by clicking here

My first experience of Game City came from the Retro Gaming Event which was held at the HomeMade Cafe.

This event was one of the key reasons I decided to attend GameCity, as I’m a keen Retro Gamer and was keen to see some of the games and systems from my days as a heavy gamer. It’s fair to say that my expectations were set far too high and were not met.

Arriving at the HomeMade Cafe we discovered that this was a very nice but  small, narrow venue, and that it wasn’t going to host the Retro gaming hotbed that we were expecting. There was a £3 entry fee which felt a little excessive considering that there were only 4 consoles available to play with, and only 2 screens to play them on. On 1 table there was an N64 running the classic shooter Goldeneye, although as there was only 1 controller it wasn’t possible to play the much lauded multi-player mode. On the other table there was a SNES, Megadrive and Atari 2600 sharing a single screen. There were a group of gamers playing the SNES trying to get as far as possible, which is an honorable and worthwhile challenge fitting of the event, but it meant that half the available consoles weren’t available to play on.

Whilst not an ideal venue for a gaming night the HomeMade Cafe was fantastic, the food available was first rate, and anyone visiting Nottingham should definitely check it out.

Well fed but feeling slightly disappointed we moved onto the next event “The Wild Rumpus”

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How to Change your Twitter Profile Picture

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One of my Twitter Followers has asked for help with changing their Profile Picture on Twitter so I thought I would produce a quick guide and post it on here.

How to change your Twitter Profile Picture:

1) Log into your Twitter Account at http://www.twitter.com and click on your account name in the top right hand corner of the screen to display the pull down account menu.

Click on Settings to load the Settings screen

2) After the Settings Screen Click on the Profile link to display your profile settings.

3) When your profile loads the top option is the Change Profile Picture facility.

Click on Browse and select the picture that you want to use from your computer, and click on OK.

4) Click on Save at the bottom of the screen and Twitter will upload  your image and set it as your Profile Picture.

Please be aware that you might not see the change in picture immediately as it can take a while for the changes to replicate.

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Placing a value on your readers

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The word ‘value’ means different things to different people and you could argue that every one of your readers is priceless, but for the purposes of this article ‘value’ will refer to a monetary amount.

For a blogger placing a value on their readers is difficult but for the purposes of setting targets and goals it can be a very useful exercise. It might not be an exact science and will involve the use of averages but if you can assign an average value to each visitor to your site then you can work out how many views you need to reach your goal.

As an example I’m going to use 2 months worth of stats from my iPhone-experience.com website.

Across August and September iPhone-Experience.com received 9129 unique visitors and through Adsense ads generated 2065 pence (£20.65)

On average each visitor for that 2 month period was worth 0.23p. If I was to set a goal to generate a £60 adsense payment every month then I need to target £2.00 per day. To do this then on average I would need to attract 870 readers to the site everyday.

Now there’s a target.

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Problems moving the Bridlington Ghost Train

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Whilst out on a  brief evening stroll in Bridlington, we came across staff of the Bayside Leisure Park in Bridlington trying to remove the Ghost Train from site.

The ride had been folded away for transit and attached to the back of a lorry, unfortunately the exercise was more problematic then anticipated, due to the angle of bend and steepness of the only access point.

The only way to remove the ghost train was to reverse the lorry up a steep and bendy path, unfortunately as the picture below shows their wasn’t enough clearance on the back of the trailer to avoid it grounding and jamming against the road.

Without any other exit points along the Bridlington front the lorry was now stuck and a solution was urgently required, to provide extra clearance the staff placed planks underneath the rear of the lorry to provide additional height, and wet the path with hose pipes to reduce the friction on the surface. The following video shows the hose pipe in action.

The operation now involved tiny movements to get the trailer around the bend, at the front of the cabin there were only a few inches of clearance space from the sea wall, and with the end of the trailer scraping along the road, every movement was vital, and not without danger. In the following video the Lorry almost hits both a member of the Bayside staff and a wall.

The whole operation took about 4 hours from the start of the problems until the end, and all involved deserve a great deal of praise for resolving the situation as it could have been alot worse, but it wasn’t without damage, a wall on the ramp way was damaged during the process.


Bayside Leisure Park was recently in the news when their was a serious accident on it’s Jungle River Log Flume

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How Effective are Facebook Adverts

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In this previous post I looked at the the effectiveness of Microsoft Ad campaigns using a free voucher I received, and I thought that I would compare a number of pay per click advert systems (where you only pay when an advert gets clicked) to see how they compare, and I’ve been testing Facebook PPC Adverts to see how they perform.
I created a campaign based around the same test website (a small and basic health insurance advice site) using the same wording as I used in the Microsoft Advert. So how did the Facebook campaign compare?


Facebook shows relevant ads by knowing the demographic details and interests of it’s members, whereas the Microsoft system picks relevant ads based on search criteria, and from my testing the Microsoft system works much better then the Facebook system.


My Facebook ad generated 33,028 impressions but only received 8 clicks with an average cost of £0.68 per click, whereas the Microsoft ad generated 33,500 impressions and received 111 clicks with a much lower average cost per click of only £0.09.

There may be an occasion where Facebook serves a specific purpose, eg where you need to target a specific demographic, but as a pure advertising platform Facebook looks to be expensive and not as effective as other ad platforms.

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How Effective are Microsoft Adverts

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I recently received an email from Microsoft Ad Centre inviting me to trial their service with a $50 free voucher. I had difficulty using the voucher as I’m based in the UK, but Microsoft Customer Services were excellent is finding me a voucher code for the equivalent amount for UK based Website owners.

So with my account credited I thought I would try their service to see how well it worked for bringing traffic to a website devloped specifically for the test.

Using a campaign  of 4 hours as a testbed and with a maximum limit of £0.30 (although my average CPC ended up at £0.09) 34.5K advert impressions generated 111 clicks.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft Ads compare to other Ad sources, I might use some other free vouchers to see if a comparison of services is possible. I’ll report back on my findings here.

 

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The use of Technology with Dementia sufferers

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The Evidence for proven benefits through Telehealth for Dementia sufferers isn’t as clear as it is for other conditions, instead It’s more important to have person centred and adaptable services available.
Generally the Carers of Dementia sufferers tend to emphasise the requirment for patient safety, whereas suffers typically want to focus on their daily structure and living experience, and have a “I’m not dying of dementia I’m living with it” mentality. Therefore where possible a Self-management programme should be developed with the purpose of helping sufferers to help themselves.

Studies have shown that Dementia Sufferers want to stay physicaly fit, develop new skills, and Keep in contact with outside world, helping to maintain a sense of self and assist them to self manage their condition for as long as possible.
Current studies are focusing on the use of common everyday technology rather than specialised adhock equipment to help Dementia Sufferers.
Cost effective and readily available technology like Video Phones
Electronic Reminder Services, Social Networking sites,Webcams and mobile phones with GPS tracking systems can be used to make life a little easier for sufferers.
These kinds of off the shelf technology can used for :

  • Prompting e.g. prompt to wash hands
  • The Safe use of domestic equipment e.g. cooking prompting Following recipes
  • Orientation through the house at night
  • street navigation
  • Reminiscence & Recall e.g. digital story telling
  • Socialising
  • Comfort eg robot pets and Digital scrapbooking/blogs

The abilities of the person suffering Dementia should be focused on for as long as possible, and this is facilitated by supporting and readily available technology.

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How to get Traffic from Twitter and why Twitter is like TV Adverts

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In this previous post I discussed how I was finding that the content of the articles I was linking to was more important then how the actual tweet was written.
What I also started to notice was that when I sent a tweet the effect on traffic to my site was generally pretty instant rather then sustained.
This might be because when you catch a follower online your tweet appears at the top of their timeline but if they login sometime after the tweet is sent then can get hidden within dozens of other tweets.

With this in mind Twitter could be compared to TV advertising in that it’s at it’s most effective when people actually see the advert at time of broadcast, if it’s missed then it’s message is lost.

So how then can Twitter be used to it’s most effective to share your links and drive traffic to your site? Following the TV advertising example I tried sending multiple tweets linking to my iPhone site across my Twitter networks.
My Twitter network is shared across 4 Twitter accounts each focused on a technical theme so tweets about the iPhone should be of interest to some of my followers.

Rather the retweeting the same link several times in 1 day, I decided to pick a number of popular articles and schedule a Tweet linking to each at regular intervals throughout the day. Each time the tweet was published it was sent out across all 4 accounts, this allowed frequent visibility of links to my site without boring my followers with repeated identical links.

As seen in the graph below Using this method really boosted the amount of traffic to my site, nearly doubling the amount of site views.

By going deeper into the hourly stats following this method the individual traffic spikes (the blue line) matching the scheduled tweets can clearly be seen.

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Jungle River Log Flume in Bridlington Still Closed to Riders following serious injury

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The Jungle River Log Flume is a Popular Tourist Attraction at the Bayside Leisure Park in Bridlington which is owned by Martin Holland, has been left closed following a serious accident on the 28th of August.

Reports from the location indicated that the ride had apparently suffered from a malfunction and a member of staff had paused the ride to perform maintenance, when the ride started a carriage slide down jammed and threw 2 riders from the ride. A 58 year old women and a 4 year old girl were injured in the accident, and both required hospital treatment.

We were on holiday at the time in Bridlington and during the week before the accident we had noticed that the ride didn’t seem to be running as well as on  our previous visits there, with water not always being present on the slides.

We had actually been on and enjoyed the ride a week before the accident and had filmed the ride round. The video of which can be seen below.

 

 

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Does how a Tweet is written effect the number of clicks

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In this post I explained how I had Tweeted a link to my Twitter Network and wanted to see if there was a difference in the amount of traffic sent to the article, if the post was written in a different manner.

A link to the exact same article was sent out at the exact same same ‘optimum times’, on the 31st of August the Tweet was basic and too the point, on the 1st of September the Tweet was more descriptive and tried to sell the article more.

The results can be seen in the Graph below which shows traffic to the Article. Little if any difference was noticed.

Compare the results to the following graph which shows what happened when a tweet was sent out to all my Twitter networks at the same time and ignoring optimum tweeting times.
The Tweet was describing a way to find out how to find cheap iPhone games, so there was a natural incentive for my followers to click on the link.
Even though optimum posting times were ignored, the article attracted more readers.
Perhaps content is king over style.

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How Tweeting Links can Improve Traffic

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In this article I wrote about an experiment I was running with Twitter about scheduling Tweets to tie in with when the majority of your Followers are online, and here are the results.

Twitter sent 21 visitors to the article, which from a potential pool of about 4.5k followers is a little disappointing as that it equates to not even 1% of my followers clicked through to read the article

However whilst the results weren’t as good as I was hoping the traffic to the article did double, but is there anyway that I can improve the traffic further using Twitter. This is a copy of the Tweet I sent: How to view iPhone Photos on your PC http://t.co/3e7zxLg

In all honesty the Tweet I sent wasn’t particually exciting or catchy, and could have probably have used a couple of Buzz words.

So with a bit of re-wording and polishing the tweet becomes:  The iPhone can take great photo’s & heres a Great Article on several methods for viewing your iPhone Photos on your PC.  http://t.co/3e7zxLg

I’ve scheduled the Tweet to be published to my Twitter Network at the same times as the previous Tweet.

I’ll report back here on the results

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How to See when your Twitter Followers are Online

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Twitter is a great tool for sharing a message with many followers at the same time, however how do you know when the best time to Tweet is.

Given that most Twitter Users have busy timelines where older tweets can be missed, to reach a maximum number of followers it’s best to post when most users are currently online and looking at Twitter, so that they see your Tweet Arrive – but how can you tell when the optimum time is to reach your Followers.

Tweriod is a free service which will analyse your Twitter Followers Twitter usage over the previous  month and generate a report of the optimum time frames when most are online. It’s free reports cover Sundays, Mondays, Weekend Averages, and Weekday averages. I tend to use just the average results.

Using one of my accounts from this twitter experiment it’s clear to see that the optimum time frame is around 4pm. You could then either manually Tweet or schedule a Tweet for that time frame knowing that as many of your Followers as possible will see the message

Tweriod is easy to use, all you do is log in to the site using your Twitter account details and they do the rest, you can get an updated report for free once every month, and whilst there are some premium facilities that you can pay for the free service will be fine for most Tweeters.

To put the results generated by Tweriod to the test:

  • I’ve used Google Analytics to pick a popular article from my site.
  • Write a Tweet about the Article.
  • Schedule a Tweet to each of the 4 accounts and also my iphonehints twitter account for their optimum time.

I’ll post the results here.

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Tombstoning in Bridlington

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Tombstoning is the act of jumping into the sea  from a high platform with your arms and legs straight so that you resemble a tombstone, and it’s an activity which remains popular with the teenagers in Bridlington.

It’s a very dangerous activity as it’s impossible to tell how deep the water is where you are jumping and also you can’t see whats under the water.

Recently high profile news articles have highlighted the angers associated with Tombstoning. In August 2009 a  14 year old boy suffered severe neck and head injuries after falling into the sea in an area of Bridlington infamous for Tomstoning, and in May 2011 the lifeboat had to be dispatched to save two lads when they disappeared  out of view after Tombstoning  from the Bridlington pier.

In May of this year, to introduce a deterrent and to give the police more power to stop Tombstoning in Bridlington a new local bylaw was introduced which means that fines of £500 can be issued to anyone caught Tombstoning.

Despite all this some youths still choose to partake in Tombstoning as the following video filmed today shows. This activity is dangerous and the parents of the individuals involved need to stop them.

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When Tech Fights Back

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Connected Technology is fantastic, it can link data sources all over the world, and when cyber criminals strike it can turn the tables.

Greg Martin a Web Security Pro, and self proclaimed hacker, had his Apple MacBook Pro Stolen during the recent riots in London. Unfortunately for the thief Greg had installed the Prey Security Software on the laptop.


When the Prey service is notified over the Internet that its host device had been stolen it provides reports on how the device is being used and provide screen capture images.
Using Prey, Greg Martin was able to see how his stolen MacBook was being used and also capture the thief’s location, email and social media login credentials. Photos of the thief were also captured using the laptops webcam.
This technology is finding it’s way into the mainstream. It’s already possible to locate and wipe stolen iPhones and it won’t be long before stolen computer equipment will be worthless.

An 18 year old named Soheil Khalilfar has been charged with the theft of Greg Martin’s MacBook.

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Is £10.99 too expensive for a Mobile Game?

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This is an editorial article by John, the founder and a contributor to http://iphone-experience.com. You can follow me on twitter @john_in_scunny. I wanted to write an article about a recent release

Yesterday (05/08/11) after a few delays Final Fantasy Tactics was released for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Many (including myself) had been waiting for the release but not many were expecting the price tag of £10.99 ($15.99).

The game has previously been a hit on the Playstation, GBA & PSP and is without doubt is a great game, although the iOS version is little more then a port of the previous versions, the quality of the game play is not in question.

Traditionally iOS games have a low price tag, the majority cost less then £1, some are free, and even the top titles rarely cost more then £5, so to see a game costing £11, which isn’t dissimilar to the cost of a budget console game, has come as a shock. But surly the developers are able to charge a higher rate for premium games, especially when the compare in quality to games released on traditional consoles, aren’t they.

There definitely seems to be 2 separate camps here.

On one hand, the developers, Square Enix, should be able to turn round and say that the development of mobile games doesn’t cost them any less, especially for a big block buster of a game, and as the mobile market grows they are in danger of loosing revenue due to the shrinking market for games on physical media.

Everything in life has a value and in the case the developer has chosen to value the game at £11, which is still significantly cheaper then most console games. I’m sure they would argue that raising prices allows for greater investment in future projects, so everyone benefits right?

..but on the other hand…….

The game is a revamp of a 10 year old game, without significant additions, certainly the graphics haven’t been upgraded and retina display support isn’t included.

The distribution chain for electronic media is significant less then that of physical media so games can sell for less and still make money.
Compared to other AAA titles on the iPhone Final Fantasy Tactics stands out as being very expensive, for example the big name FIFA by EA was less then £5 when launched and is currently less then £0.69.

For me Final Fantasy Tactics is a great game but it is priced to high for it’s Market place. Its price doesn’t fit with the Market price of it’s piers, and this presents a risk to the App Store. By artificially increasing the price of an app there is a real chance that other apps will increase their price, especially if Final Fantasy Tactics sells well. This will reduce the amount of sales in the Market and everyone will lose out.

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Quick Twitter Followers Update (29/07/11) (end of first month)

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In this post I discussed how I was testing TweetAttacks on Twitter Accounts that I created to see how quickly you could build up a large relatively targeted Twitter Audience.

Each time I make a post on iphone-experience.com I re-tweet on these other accounts to increase the number of people who are aware of my articles.

I have 4 accounts currently being increased by TweetAttacks, and I currently have a combined following of  1426 twitter users, and increase of 403 over last weeks total.  During this week I was without a computer for a couple of days and manually followed other users using this process.

 

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If your Twitter Followers were a Country, which Country would they be

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Twitter is a fantastic tool for very quickly reaching out to many people and sharing a brief message, but when looking at how many Twitter followers someone has can you really put that number in to context. To most people it will just be a figure, but to try and visualise numbers of users you could compare the populations of countries.

For example every time Stephen Fry writes a Tweet it appears on the the time line of ~ 2.8 million Twitter users, which equates to the population of Mongolia. Imagine any other situation where an entire population of a country can hear something you say, and what’s more a country who has chosen to listen to you by following your Tweets.

Here are some further examples of comparing Twitter followers to the populations of countries:

Interesting 2 pop stars (one of which is a young lad) has significantly more followers then the official Twitter account of the President of the United States and most powerful man in the world.

With popularity and an audience comes responsibility, as a small example Stephen Fry has accidentally taken a few websites down simply by providing a link to their site and the amount of traffic has taken down the server. Imagine if Lady Gaga linked to a site, the amount of traffic could be about 4 times larger.

We have recently seen how when Twitter collectively gets behind a cause the effect can be incredible, just ask the former staff at the News of the World news paper, and with millions of followers you could start to direct Twitter causes. This could (and I ‘m sure does) causes some cause of concern.

Even my little iPhonehints twitter feed reaches the same number of people as in a country called Niue, (which is a small island country of New Zealand citizens).

Hello Niue I feel I have a connection with you now.

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Quick Twitter Followers Update (22/07/11) (over 1000 followers in 3 weeks)

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In this post I discussed how I was testing TweetAttacks on Twitter Accounts that I created to see how quickly you could build up a large relatively targeted Twitter Audience.

Each time I make a post on iphone-experience.com I re-tweet on these other accounts to increase the number of people who are aware of my articles.

I have 4 accounts currently being increased by TweetAttacks, and I currently have a combined following of  1023 twitter users, and increase of 308 over last weeks total.

On average I’m picking up an additional 48 followers per day, which means that if I did this process everyday for a year I could increase my followers by 17500.

Over the next week I’m going to increase the numbers of people I follow using TweetAttacks to see if I can accelerate the process with out upsetting twitter and getting banned

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