cc licensed flickr photo shared by storem
Some of my favorite software moments are accidentally discovering something new in a tool I’ve been using for some time. This happened recently my my current iPhone Twitter client, Tweetie 2. I’m not writing about this app, but I’d heard people rave about it, shrugged them off, then eventually later found out they were right. It is smartly designed.
I’d noticed when looking at someone’s profile that there is a number below their icon… (and actually I was not ego-ing my own profile, its just an example) (seriously) (I swear).
So what is #740,343? Perhaps its obvious, but I wanted to know. Maybe it is some sort of ranking, like I am the 740,343rd ranked tweeter. Yeah, I could only dream to rank that high.
My hunch was/is that it is more or less my database ID in twitter, a user number, and therefore, the lower the number, the earlier you joined. (later– this makes sense when looking at my RSS URL http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/740343.rss)
I looked at a few accounts I know are recent (this year), and sure enough they are in the #16,000,000’s. And then I looked at Cole Camplese‘s profile, cause I more or less followed him in January 2007 when he started blogging about twitter:
Sure enough, he is #690,253 a little before me (scooped again by the Senator from Pennsylvania!).
I cannot even think of the value of knowing this is, besides scratching the curiosity itch.
But next, I was curious about the little card icon– like here in Scott Leslie‘s profile:
Nice, look at the big number– #3,567,831 – courtesy of the great Jaiku walkout, eh? 😉
But here was a nice feature, clicking the card icon added info from this twitter profile to my address book:
It added his twitter icon, twitter URL, and below the fold, his mini bio in a notes field.
This again, is hardly world changing, or even significant, but it struck me as a nicely, understated feature in Tweetie 2 (and its primary features are plenty enough as is).
So what have you found my clicking mystery buttons? Probably more than me….
cc licensed flickr photo shared by Impact Tarmac
Interesting… I’m 26603? That hardly seems right, even as awesome as I am!
Incidentally, my son got his account early last Fall and he is #84,995,025 !
You got a low number, my pioneering friend! And one day, your son, may be seen as an early tweet bird to #6,798,757,081
So what’s my number? (just curious, & don’t have an iPhone)
I’m #764,365. Does that mean I was a fairly ‘early adopter’?
Thanks for the tip r.e. the vCard thing – that rocks! 😀
You know to swipe-to-reveal on a tweet in your timeline, right, Alan?
@Stephen — You don’t need an iphone to get your number; it’s embedded into the RSS feed of your twitter stream, http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/7470932.rss
making you 7,470,932 placing you into the 7 digit flickr group (double checked in Tweetie, yep, #7,470,932)
@Russ Discovered the side wise swipe to read a tweet form the timeline, probably by accident. Also, when you are reading an individual tweet, you can swipe up or down to go to the next/previous one on the stream (of course there are buttons too)
Tweetie2 really does have a great interface … have you done the tweets window pulldown to get instant refresh?
Another fav right now is IM+ paid version. All IM’s, Skype, FB and Twitter all in one with a great range of settings … although the UI is nowhere near as smart as Tweetie2.
hah, surprise surprise … network effect … my number is 747,493
Don’t press the red button
http://drp.ly/hOP9Q
Ha Allanah! I got sucked in deeply, 1 screen past round 2. That’s a riot.
OK. you have convinced me to get tweetie! Having twitter information in my address book is worth a lot! Especially if they update Shelf (http://jerakeen.org/code/shelf/). Shelf was the first of a group of apps that display info from the net about the contact you are focused on at the moment (Xobni does this too).
10856 🙂