If I were an alcoholic, I’d join the army just to say I’m avoiding the draught.

Whatever he does, he does it well. Even if you are a faith healing hypochondriac, you’ll have to admit that he’s going to hell in style. The loose format of the show usually includes a philosophical open followed by a series of bits, a self-explanatory “Ask George” section and recorded music from either a live performance or a track from one of his albums (which can be found on iTunes.) The bits range from a sarcastic look at recent religious figures; a summary of the strangest animal you’ve never heard of; a glimpse into the life of “indestructible bastards;” a humorous reading of horoscopes; and so much more. Okay, maybe two things more.

But enough about him, let’s talk about him. Geo’s twitter account, that is, @GeorgeHrab

Any sufficiently advanced graffiti is indistinguishable from magic marker.

His timeline is all broadcast, no conversation. It is my understanding that he spends time pondering online, looking at pictures on Flickr perhaps, until he comes to a clever one-liner less than 140 characters. Once he goes down that rabbit hole, he usually ends up with a small grouping of unrelated one-liners tweeted within a short period of time. One might say that he would benefit from a scheduler to space out his tweets, but that’s just how Geo rolls.

When you wish upon a star, makes no difference.

A minimal amount of reference to his podcast and music means that you don’t have to be a fan of Mr. Hrab’s work to still enjoy his tweets. However, it helps if you have a basic understanding of science and an affinity towards snark. If you need more convincing, George truly embraced the service with the “Twitter Concerto.” There have been a couple of versions of the song, each acting as a “best of” set to music. So I suppose I should just post one and shut up. (FYI: the Concerto itself starts about eleven minutes in)

Podcast #137 featuring the Twitter Concerto

Here’s the arbitrary breakdown.

News: 6

Humor: 9

Interaction: 1

Accessibility: 7

Bacon: 1

Score: 72

Silent Bob is ironically on the otherside of the spectrum. He @ replies a lot. Some say too much. Any web savvy fan of the director knows that Kevin Smith anything but silent. His podcast, called SModcast, is even more dialogue heavy than his films, and word for word, probably funnier. If you’re not prudish in your content selection, I recommend you check it out.

NEW MOON rumored to have beaten DARK KNIGHT one day record of $67mil. Tween girls can get shit DONE, man. Send ‘em to Iraq and Afghanistan.

In fact, if you don’t check out the podcast and are not a fan of his movies, than there is little reason to follow Kevin Smith on Twitter. Most of his tweets are inside baseball as they answer inside baseball inquires. He has been know to have Twitter press confrences for hours at a time with fans acting as the press. Needless to say, his “Interaction” score is maxed out.

Sharing certain topics of interest will also make @ThatKevinSmith a win. Among them are movies (of course), comic books and hockey. A parental advisory for his feed would flag language and sexual content.

The best thing about Kevin Smith is that you can tell he loves the service, and apparently the service loves him. In his most recent SModcast he talked about how the trolls of the web started to bring down the conversation on his previously exclusive fan portal, his message board. With Twitter he gets all the feedback he wants and blocks th riff raff. So if you aren’t riff raff, and like a high tweet count about the life and times of Kevin Smith, Merry Quispmas.

News: 6

Humor: 7

Interaction: 10

Accessibility: 3

Bacon: 5

Score: 58

This is an open thread for just such a purpose. Am I funny? Interesting? Linkable? Lemme know in the comments. I can change. Really.

More accurately, I’m syndicating a score. If I tweeted out Grundy originals they would have less creativity than Marry Had A Little Lamb. What I lack in musical talent, I make up for in movie cue knowledge. In my opinion no film is complete without a score and a great score can make a world of emotional difference.
If this catches on, I can’t commit to tweeting a score to everyone who asks, but I can promise the first reply a track and others to those who had a day of at least some interest. Below I will list my favorites for each week. Nice tweeting you.

Penelope’s Theme from the Brother’s Bloom Soundtrack for a melancholy @JennWebb

Meet Maguire from the Road to Perdition Soundtrack for an angsty @invinciblekate

Thinking Clairely from the TV show LOST for a melancholy yet content @omarsawolf

The Married Life from Pixar’s Up for a happy, stress-free, kinda tired @sjovik

The Breakfest Machine from Pee-wee Herman’s Big Adventure for a harried & productive @chasrmartin

Way of Life from Last Samurai for a tired @sjovik looking for change

Drive Away from A Series of Unfortunate Events for the anxious EMT, @jessiemess

Chevaliers de Sangreal from Da Vinci Code for a foreboding sound that becomes hopeful for @ShizzleMeTimber

Corynorhinus from Batman Begins for a bad day that makes @Imanoth all the more productive

Meet Bolt from the movie Bolt for a early-rising @amuirin

ActuallyNPH brings it. He is Neil Patrick Harris of How I Met Your Mother fame, Doogie Howser fame if you’re old school, and Dr. Horrible fame if you never leave the net. His tweets are so good, they made me laugh at the ol’ 140 character gag. Long time Twitter users have no doubt seen this–someone tweets a message that is cut off just before the good bit due to the 140 character limit. I’ve seen it. I’ve done it. And it’s usually funny the first time, but it’s old hat now.

Alright, alright. I’m done with the ’140 character’ running gag. Sorry, it makes me laugh. But as my wise father Ron always says, “Know w

When NPH first joined Twitter, which was recently, he went with the gag and I thought: that’s cute, another newb celebrity. He then proceeded to keep pushing the gag over and over until I couldn’t help but LOL. And not the metaphorical LOL, I actually laughed at my computer. That’s comedic timing…or comedic something. Again, refreshing.

New spins on old jokes not your thing? Then maybe you’re a fan of celebs posting glimpes into their life. NPH also injects some personality into this old standard with the “pointing picture.” The range of celebrities he poses with along with the point itself makes him the only person I follow that I am sure to check every yfrog pic.

I wonder how subjective I’m being with this review. I know I really enjoy his work, so perhaps I’m projecting too much fandom into his Twitter stream. If that’s the case, sorry, but the main complaint I have is that he doesn’t tweet enough. In fact his Twitter use has tapered off the past week. So, if you like his tweets at all, follow ActuallyNPH so he keeps it up. It would be legend, wait for it…dary!

News: 5

Humor: 9

Interaction: 5

Accessibility: 8

Bacon: 2

Score: 74

This leaves us with users with inflated follower counts and false reputation. If you look at Twitter today, the highest follower counts belong firstly to those on the suggested user list (which it seems no one knows how to get onto save Ev and Biz) and secondly to celebrities and spammers. I’m not one to say that celebrities don’t deserve to be highly ranked. Most famous people are more talented and interesting than Joe Nobody, even if they haven’t yet gotten a hang of the service. It is the fact that spammers can gain such numbers and the suggested user list comes pre-loaded on new users (unless they opt-out) that makes follower count a very flawed reputation system.

Luckily, there are two other clear methods to give props, cudos, and otherwise reputation boosts to your friends: by retweeting and favoriting their tweets.

Generally, if I see a tweet that entertains, I favorite it. If I see a tweet that adds value to my audience, I retweet. If both, than both. There are third-party services that track favs and RTs; Favstar.fm and Retweetist.com respectively. If Twitter or another third-party site (maybe it would be a fourth-party site at this point) were to use the favorite and retweet data along with the follower data in some kind of ratio that I’m not smart enough to formulate…we would finally have a reputation system that would do.

I fear “that would do” is the best we can hope for. Tomorrow, the spammers will have gamed our system and there will be whole a new way to use Twitter. Until then, follow, fav and retweet you another day.

I first became acquainted to @Ihnatko on the popular podcast MacBreak Weekly hosted by Leo Laporte. IMHO, it is the only show on the TWiT Network in which Mr. Laporte isn’t the main draw, I give that distinction to Andy (and on the rare occasion, the previously reviewed Merlin Mann.)

There’s nothing artificial about the audio version of A.I., but his insights tend to become long-winded on the podcast. When you apply Ev’s first rule of Twitter Dynamics (the 140 char limit) to @Ihnatko, his comedic coals are condensed to gems.

The key to happiness: live each day as if it were the last day of your most hated enemy’s life. Because some day it’ll be true!

So what does he tweet about? There is a strong focus on tech (as he is a tech writer, after all) mostly Apple products like the iPhone, he has also taken a shine for the Kindle. Andy usually links to his product reviews, which is the kind of self promotion I usually look down upon, but his stuff is well-written and he opens a conversation with his followers about his work, so he gets a pass. Outside of tech, he writes about pop culture such as comics and movies. I don’t base my viewing habits around his tweets, but his posts to often remind me of entertainment I’ve been meaning to check out. It helps if you share his taste.

First huge complaint about Wave: “live typing” means everyone can see how many tries you needed before spelling “Etiquette” right.

If I were you (that means you’d be me) I’d take a listen to MacBreak Weekly to test the waters and, if you like what you hear, follow @Ihnatko.

News: 7

Humor: 6

Interaction: 8

Accessibility: 6

Bacon: 2

Score: 72

I feel like I’m watching an infomercial for suicide.

I’ve been following any twitter comedians that come my way and most are a disappointment. They use the service as a promotional venue like all the other spammers/marketers out there. At least Mr. Gaffigan tries. His tweets aren’t nearly as funny as his stand-up, which got me thinking. The big timers aren’t always as funny off the cuff as your funniest real life friend. Comedians test their material then apply their knowledge of comedic timing for the final presentation. What better way to test the waters than Twitter?

I just saw on CNN that the Taco Bell dog died along with my belief in real journalism

So we’ve decided that @jimgaffigan is funny, or at least I have, but Twitter is a two way street, right? Not always. The problem with celebrities is that they are hard to get in touch with. JG only really @s other celebrities and even that is rare. If you want interaction, you’ll have to stalk him the old fashioned way.

News: 3

Humor: 7

Interaction: 1

Accessibility: 6

Bacon: 2

Score: 46

There’s no money for raises, but let’s do the annual reviews anyway. That’ll be good for morale. People love being judged.

If the film Office Space wasn’t out yet, I could only assume this Twitter account was taking a stab at viral marketing. Hell, even his avatar is the post-it note man from the DVD cover. So either he hasn’t been clued into the movie’s release, or he’s taking a stab at our collective funny bones. In a good way.

Some days it seems this whole office is in Airplane Mode.

Meeting Boy’s content centers around, you guessed it, meetings. And lots of them. You can expect a few tweets a day of humorous complaints and opinions about his real or imaginary bosses and co-workers. Smart money’s on “real” as his insights could only come from one in the business (of suffering.)

Sick today. Bad case of apathy, probably contagious. Should probably stay home.

The best thing is that you don’t have to be reminded of your job while checking Twitter off the clock. Meeting Boy does most of his tweeting when he and the rest of us are pulling the 9-to-5. To sum up, follow MeetingBoy and know that you are no alone in hating your job. There is a least one guy out there suffering too…and he’s funnier than you.

News: 3

Humor: 10

Interaction: 5

Accessibility: 7

Bacon: 1

Score: 72