How many of your Twitter followers understand Klingon? You can soon find out, by using this helpful Twitter app which translates tweets into that language spoken by the fictional warrior race in Star Trek. It's called http://tweetinklingon.com/

Great.

Or "Dun" as a Klingon would say.

You can only write 100 characters English, leaving the Klingon-generator a bit of space for all the "ghl" bits which seem to comprise half of the language.

As well as being quite an addictive/annoying web app, it's all a cunning promotion for a new Star Trek online multiplayer game that's coming out in January. Will "jIH laH" become a trending topic?

[via Mashable]

Related: Tell Twitter what you weigh

A single Facebook app - Farmville - has more users than all of Twitter. Facebook released some new visitor statistics and yes, as you many expect: they dominate the world, and they weren't above sliding a quick jibe at their social networking rivals.
"69 million active users are using FarmVille alone, that's more users than Twitter." Facebook's head of Planning told TechRadar.

That's a lot of virtual strawberries.

The overall Facebook stats are pretty mind-boggling: worldwide Facebook is clocking up 200 billion page views a month, with 350 million users globally logging into the site. On Facebook chat - 1.6 billion messages are sent every single day and 1.4 million photos are uploaded a second.

In the UK Facebook has approximately 23 million unique users a month in the UK, with each of those people logging on spending around 25 minutes on the website a day.
OMG.

Considering that the activity on Twitter is probably of more social significance than the activity on Farmville, there's no need to get carried away. I don't think revolutionaries in Iran or plane-crash witnesses or even Daily Mail-watchers are going to turn to Farmville to express themselves.

Anyway, we thought we'd suss out your opinions on this online popularity contest, with a poll:

Related: Why Farmville has became the most popular game in the world

Andrew Keen, Author of The Cult of the Amateur talked about Twitter and Power. He took a few pot shots at previous speaker Stephen Fry - obviously a hard act to follow.

9.50 You just saw a manifestation of Twitter and power. Power is being redistributed now. We're discovering new structures of power.

I was watching you all listening to , you were all rapt. Stephen said Twitter allows you to speak as a human being.

[OOO, laying into Stephen Fry's Twitter wobble.]

Authenticity - is the human quality that Stephen talks about. The idea of being able to talk to your human. That is the new currency of power, the more authentic one appears - as an individual or a corporation, the more power you have.

9.54 We have created tech of intimacy that does aways with the structure of power. Stephen the authentic superstar who knows how to engage is powerful. There's been a shift from the organisation to the individual - charismatic personal power

Some of you are you saying that this is a good thing: we've got nice people like Stephen Fry.

What happens if Fry turns out to be nasty?

9.56 The problem with this new world where authenticity is the currency, it lends itself to charlatans. It's going to lead to catastrophe.

When we've done away with the middle-men and the fact-checkers, i fear that the 21st cent may be vertinigious. A time of digtial vertigo.

Do not be deluded that we're going into a utopia, a flat world where there is no power.
=====
My verdict: Very apocalypse now this chap.

Twitter hero Stephen Fry gave a rousing speech about how Twitter is a human space for humans.

9.35 Twitter is: by humans, about human stuff. connected by a gossamer network.

9.40 Revolution of the internet is similar to the invention of the printing press.

9.42 On Journalists. "there was no class of person more contemptuous of Twitter than the newspaper commentator." They wrote that they didn't care what we all ate for breakfast.
And why should they care? well don't fucking write about it if you don't care you idiot.

9.45 A number of things in twitter really strike to the heart of what the deadwood press is about.

1st - the celebrity business... previously a pact with devil: between PR and the journalists. can speak to millions just by typing into
into your twitter feed.

2nd - useful a twitter feed is for lazy journalism, just write what a celeb is wearing.

Newspapers actually call it a "feed" not a "stream".

9.46 Twitter Tipping Points this year:
- Guardian gag, not being allowed to report the name of an MP who had tabled a question. Online there were all the resources needed to find the info that had been restricted in the printed press.
Considered a triumph for Twitter and free speech.

- The Jan Moir article. A "malevolently phrased" article. Again, her name was trending... and Fry retweeted what was already there. However, it became a fight again, with Stephen Fry gets the credit/blame for big stories like this.

Only someone who didn't understand Twitter would write that.

9.50 It's such a pity that people don't understand Twitter - no great conceptual leaps required - you simply need to participate in it. And be are aware of the pulse of an average Tweet day.
It's a mistake that people make an enemy of it, it's just made up of lots of different people.

9.52In that way it's like a city. I always said that about the internet.
The great cities of the world have built up organically in diffferent ways. It has its museums and galleries and churches and businesses and shops, slums and red-light district.

9.53 You don't allow IBM or Microsoft to come in and redesign the city. Like you wouldn't allow the gas or water companies to redesign a real city.

Sometimes you think with the crime, the noise you don't want to live there any more.
but thank god - what energy, what excitement we get from Twitter.

9.57 But remember these things are human shaped - not business shaped, not corporate-shaped.

Don't deny the internet the joy of you humanity and your laughter.
====
No Stephen we won't...

We're very sorry to report that Barack Obama has never used Twitter. No, I didn't expect that he personally composed *all* of the Barack Obama account Twitter updates, but some - surely!

In my heart of hearts I always suspected that some of those campaign tweets were from the Blackberry of the great man himself.

And when he followed me back all those months ago it was always possible that it had been Barack himself who had happened to log in that evening and check the new followers section.

But no, Barack has not been on Twitter. His Twitter account is all the work of minions. At a Q&A session with Chinese students in Shanghai, a student asked him : "Do you know about the great firewall and should we be able to use Twitter?" His reply: "I have never used Twitter but I'm an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access." (via Breaking News Online)

He does have a large country to run, so I suppose he's busy, but this must be a disappointment to at least some of his 2.6 million followers...

So if you're reading this Mr President uh, um... Twitter is good, you should try it. Can I have an autograph?

ReadWriteWeb took the opportunity to make a wider point about change and global politics:
"Got that? The President went to China, was asked about Twitter and it was streamed live on his Facebook page. How the world has changed."

I still want Barack Obama's autograph. That's all.

Plenty more about Twitter from us tomorrow when we're covering the 140 character conference #140conf.

Related: Why Pointless Babble is the Point of Twitter

As individuals start the dividing their Twitter Following sections into lists, companies specialising in social media are going even deeper and one - SimplyZesty have decided to split up Twitter users by country starting with England and Ireland. Currently limited by the amount of users you can have in one list (500 at the minute) this isn't going to be terribly useful until Twitter changes the rules.

Will they?

Twitter lists - has the word "lists" ever been said so often in so few hours? It seems hardly likely. A quick Shiny guide to everything you need to know about Twittter Lists.

Twitter lists eh? Setting those up is going to take hours isn't it? Should I be that bothered?

Yes you should be bothered. This is Twitter's biggest update since the damn site launched and it should make the whole experience a lot better. A whole lot better.

How much better?

Twitter has teamed up with the makers of budget messaging handsets Peek to launch a handheld Twitter device, in a move designed to get more people on Twitter.

To most Twitterers their handheld Twitter device is their phone: their iPhone, Blackberry, N97 or any smartphone that has a Twitter app. So... in launching the $99 TwitterPeek, Twitter are clearly not targeting smartphone-owners. This probably shows Twitter trying to broaden their appeal beyond their current core audience of smartphone-owning Twitterati by finding new audiences. Like teenagers.

Big companies like to have social media policies - and they should. However sometimes engaging with social media can come back and bite you on the ass.

New site hsbcreviews.com shows that: 1) engaging with the disgruntled masses, means you sometimes get more flak than mutually beneficial interaction and 2) that HSBC is not wildly popular on Twitter.

New site MyTweet16 is the Twitter equivalent of a baby album photo.

It's not rocket science - all it does is show you your first 16 tweets. It is pretty cute though - see your first faltering steps in microblogging, remind yourself what the weather was like in April 08.

These are first 16 tweets of great Twitter Lord Stephen Fry.
This, in fact, is the first one:

"Hello Twitterers. I'm About to fly to Africa for a new project and will be tweeting whilst I'm filming. 6:32 AM Oct 9th 2008"

I'm impressed - he jumped straight in there.

And back in the day, this is what the Susi and Katie were saying on the Shiny Shiny Twitter on 15th Jan 2007.

Some people think that tweeting about your lunch is tedious - but one visionary saw the potential in food microblogging and set up a new website Tweet What You Eat. So much more than a collection of random trivia - it's a dieting tool, a calorie counter and - pay attention tweople - it worked for Stephen Fry. Who are we to question it.

You can enter your food diary posts direct to the site or you can message TWYE (Tweet What You Eat) direct from main Twitter. Put food items in separated by commas with the calorie count in colons at the end.

Example: "d @twye apple, coffee: 65" great.

It has built up a database with how many calories are in each piece of food working on crowdsourced data, Crowd Cal as it calls itself. It's not 100% accurate but it works quite well, apparently: public shaming and technology combining to be really effective.

On the site you can also add your weight and then chart your weight against your food micro-blog. Great. Last week we covered a weighing machine that texted your weight direct to your phone. Imagine if weighing machine and fridge (why not?) had direct access to your Twitter account. The ultimate terrifying weightwatching device.

Followers of the hilarious stream of tweets known as the Shiny Shiny twitter may know that occasionally we do tweet about sandwiches - not in a very organised way, we admit. But it is like we predicted this or something.

As Techdigest mention, this would be best with an iPhone and Android app.