live-tweeting american idol... from an iphone

Okay, so a day after discovering Twitter, I thought it would be fun to see how well it works with an iPhone... and for LiveBlogging. So I got Twitter set up on my iPhone browser and starting sending out tweets. Not sure my few followers appreciated it (none follow AI, so far as I kow). But this was a social media experiment, so why not?

Here are the results (misspellings and all). The oldest is at the bottom. Feel free to skip ahead and read the iPhone comments if you loathe Idol:

zerocrossing2 Big elimination shocker tonight but not a bad one. Don't google the results. 08:03 PM April 10, 2008 from web

zerocrossing2 Bono, Hillary, mccain & barack just plugged idol gives back Gobama! 07:49 PM April 10, 2008 from web

zerocrossing2 expected 2 of bottom 3. But expected any combo of 3 girls. We've got 1 guy. 07:42 PM April 10, 2008 from web

zerocrossing2 blasted iPhone. GolD album. 07:38 PM April 10, 2008 from web

zerocrossing2 Jordin sparks - 2 platinum singles & gol album. More results after the break. 07:37 PM April 10, 2008 from web

zerocrossing2 David cook is nervous tonight - with reason. But safe, 07:18 PM April 10, 2008 from web

zerocrossing2 monkees - i'm a believer. iPhone corrects wrong words! 07:17 PM April 10, 2008 from web

zerocrossing2 I'm so out of it. No idea who most of celebs are in monkeys lip synch - bit know every word of song 07:16 PM April 10, 2008 from web

zerocrossing2 can't believe idol just recapped "shout to the lord" from idol gives back" 07:11 PM April 10, 2008 from web

Immediately after posting that string of comments, I got a follower. But not just any follower. This guy appears to be an iPhone developer. And he's following almost 59k Twitter users. (He's being followed by over 10k). His strategy appears to be working. He got over 2k requests for info on his iPhone app. Anyway, I'm guessing that my mere mention of iPhone in the tweets above got him to follow me. He probably has some automated program that follows anybody on Twitter who even mentions an iPhone, even if it's not all that complimentary... and mine wasn't.

Don't get me wrong. I love the gadget. I got in so early that I received the early adopter rebate... and cashed it in for an 80GB black iPod classic! But the iPhone is not super-effective for LiveBlogging, even in 140 character spurts! If you're LiveTweeting, the spell correction software is both your best friend AND your worst enemy. It's nice having your errors corrected, but you're moving too fast to pay attention to whether or not it's making the correct choices. My iPhone incorrectly "corrected" monkees to monkeys and but to bit, which turned my comment into worse gibberish than it already was! Here's what I was trying to say:

zerocrossing2 I'm so out of it. No idea who most of celebs are in monkees lip synch - but know every word of song 07:16 PM April 10, 2008 from web

It's just hard to move fast enough on an iPhone keyboard and have it come out the way you want it to. In fact, if I'd been working with an easier keyboard, I probably would have said "monkees lip synch video" and given the name of the song. Let's see if the revision fits in 140 characters:

I'm so out of it. No idea who most of celebs are in monkees lip synch video - but know every word of "i'm a believer"!

twhirl—my new Twitter BFF—says that I've got 22 characters to spare. If I'd been on a proper keyboard, I probably could have said what I was really thinking AND been able to check my character limit (one disadvantage of the Twitter iPhone interface, actually - no character check that I can recall).

So I'd say that LiveTweeting an event with an iPhone is out... but at least the Twitter iPhone interface is easy to use, aside from the lack of character reverse-counter. Overall, it's easy to send out tweets on random topics, just so long as you don't have to move fast! Next time I cover something live (and scheduled), I'll use my laptop.

BTW, wanna see my tweetcloud? It looks all scrunched up on my laptop screen. Not sure whether that's because of the screen size or because of how IE is reading it (haven't downloaded Mozilla yet to the new laptop).