Sam Farmer

Growing up I never imagined I would play bass guitar for the Dave Matthews Band. And indeed it never happened.

But I have become passionate about making software.

Should Ben Forta Twitter? What the Stats Say Plus my Quick Review of Twitter

February 20, 2009

[UPDATE] Ben Forta now has a Twitter account [/UPDATE]

The other day Ben Forta posted an entry about Twitter and mentioned that he was not a user as he "didn't get the whole Twitter thing".  Fair enough.

I found this interesting because Twitter is essentially "micro-blogging" and Ben's blog is a mixture of short "micro-blogging" posts generally annoucing news and longer posts that often go in to great detail.  So I decided to find out how many of Ben's entries would qualify for the 140 character twitter maximum.  This proved to be rather easy:

<cffeed action="read" query="getBen" source="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/BenForta">  <cfset twitterOk = 0>   <cfloop query="getBen">  <cfset body = ReReplaceNoCase( getBen.content, "<(.|\n)*?>", "", "all" )>  <cfif len(body) lte 140>   <cfset twitterOk++>  </cfif> </cfloop>  <cfoutput><h2>#twitterOk# of #getBen.recordCount#</h2></cfoutput>

3 of Ben's last 15 entries, stripped of html, would have been ok for Twitter.  Maybe its time for Twitter, Ben?

My Thoughts on Twitter

I joined Twitter last summer and have found it to be at times fun, a useful way to find interesteing articles and a good way to do some online networking.  I generally follow other technology people and overall have a positive experience of it.  Check out my Twitter profile.


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