The most comprehensive list I’ve found so far on Twitter accounts for our Federal Level government officials…from the President down to each member of the House of Representatives.  Here are a few examples…

National Science Foundation: NSF
Environmental Protection Agency: EPA
Department of State: America.gov
Department of Health & Human Services: Food & Drug Administration: FDA Recalls
Department of Agriculture: Food Safety Information Center
U.S. Geological Survey: Earthquake & Tsunami Warning

For the whole list, visit:  http://twitter.pbworks.com/USGovernment

I was recently introduced to an outfit called Klout, a San Francisco-based startup that measures social influence on Twitter.   How do they measure social influence?  I have no idea.  I just I know I want it, and lots of it.

Apparently someone else agrees, because investors pumped $1.5 million into Klout in April of this year.   Launched in 2008, Klout evaluates your tweets and those of your connections using some magical algorithms and pixie dust.

Upon this, they’ve built an API which is now used by several other third-party Twitter tool makers including CoTweet, HootSuite, and  Tweetup.  What do they use it for?  I’m sure I don’t want to know.

When I first was shown Klout, a co-worker was showing it to me and he typed in his Twitter handle… he came out with a Klout score of 31.  Then he typed in another co-worker’s handle…he was a 20.  Then he typed in mine…6.

6????

MF’N 6????

You bet I was pissed.  Who were these Klout Krouts anyway with their stupid made up Social Influence Meter???  Don’t they know who I am???

Of course, I let this stew for a couple days and then returned to the scene of the insult:  Klout.com.  When I checked my score, it was a more respectable 19.  Not sure what happened in the interim, but I did notice that the site had cached an older version of my Twitter Bio so perhaps they had older data.  The newer number was accompanied with my newer Twitter Bio.  Whatever the cause, I was certainly happy to have more Klout.

Anyway, while I was writing this I looked at the Klout website and noticed they have some featured users displayed on their home page…two of which I happen to follow on Twitter.  One is Lee Stranahan, (@Stranahan), a filmmaker, blogger and contributor to the Huffington Post who I met through Jeff Pulver’s 140 Character’s Conference.  Stranahan has a Klout Score of 49.

What’s funny is that on another tab on the same Klout homepage was the Klout Score of the lovely and talented singer/songwriter/vaudevillian Amanda Palmer, (@AmandaPalmer), who Stranahan interviewed very recently (last night I think??) and who also happens to have a much more appropriate Klout Score:

I wonder if writing a blog post about Klout will increase my Klout?

Below are 20 messages.  Some are ACTUAL responses from BP Executives and some are from the FAKE BP Global PR Twitter account.  Can you tell which is which>

1. “We regretfully admit that something has happened off the Gulf Coast. More to come.”

When 21-year-old Bath University student “KJ” fell into the river Avon and drowned in 2009, his Facebook page remained. As news of the death spread, rest-in-peace messages started to appear on his wall.

One of KJ’s closest friends had heard of Facebook’s “Memorialisation” feature, which allows existing friends continued access but blocks new ones and removes information such as contact details.

He wrote to Facebook with proof of death and asked for this to be done.

Friends now continue to write on the wall, even a year after the death.

Facebook’s European Director of Public Policy, Richard Allan describes this as “a new form of mourning”.

BBC News – Virtual life after death.

Tropo just announced a new release today, with some significant new additions for web developers.  If you’re looking to launch any kind of an interactive application that reaches beyond a website, you should check it out.  Tropo now has:

• Twitter Support: You can now assign a Twitter name to your application and customers can interact with the app by simply sending a Twitter message to that name. Check out this post: How to Add Twitter Support to a Tropo App
• International Support: New international phone numbers, speech recognition and text-to-speech.
• SMS Support: One set of code to support voice, SMS and Tweets.
• IM and Chat: The same code will also support most Instant Messaging Clients such as AOL, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft.

Best of all, it’s complete FREE to develop and test your apps.  When you’re ready to launch into production, it’s just a click away.

Tropo Adds Twitter and goes International « The Tropo Blog.

Since Google launched Google Buzz, I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around their strategy.    One of the first public (Buzzes? Buzzez? Buzz’s?)  I received was from Jeff Pulver, who posted a rather “wait and see” opinion on Buzz…

“Feeling a little buzz around me. It will be interesting to see how this platform evolves. Seems like another piece in the items which will help define the future of how we communicate using non-telephony platforms.” – Jeff Pulver via Buzz.

This prompted a flurry of other comments, including:

Joel Mark Witt - I’m loving Buzz. It is bringing the conversation to me… in my Gmail inbox … where I live most of the time.

geo GELLER - i am not sure this is not another distraction and too landlocked in email – its not twitter – its your email list which is nice but but but and further more hmmm

I commented on the similarity to FriendFeed and how I felt like my Gmail inbox was starting to become almost as forgotten as MySpace (or Orkut!)

Part of the conversation included a discussion of how people are linked up in Buzz.  Google apparently has been autoconnecting Buzz profiles to other Buzz users based on who’s already in your Google Contacts list and this is causing a bit of a stir in the privacy world…

WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw

Anyway…I agree with Jeff and certainly think  the Buzz has some growing to do.   It’s already much more user-friendly and easier to grasp than Google Wave (I wonder how many Waves there are about Buzz?).  Picasa provides photo sharing…Google chat is already integrated.  And if you integrate Google voice, then you have AudioBoo functionality as well.   Connect your Twitter and Facebook feeds, and suddenly Google is your social networking glue.  They should’ve called it Gluegle.

Buzz might just be Google’s secret back door into social networking.

Oh, and if you’re trying to figure out how to get started with Google Buzz….go here:  http://www.google.com/buzz

So I’m into day 4 of my Twitter exile. Sometime late Sunday I was actually on the Twitter website, logged into my @johnnydiggz account and the website logged me out mid-session.

When I went to log in again it said “Wrong Username/email and password combination”

This struck me as odd because I hadn’t changed my password and my browser was set to auto-log me in. I retyped my username and password several times to no avail. So I tried the next step: Twitter’s password recovery tool.

I went to that page, filled out the form and got this message:

Ok, we’ve sent the instructions to your email. Go check it!
You can keep this page open while you check your email. If you don’t receive the instructions within a minute or two try Re-sending the instructions

The problem is I never received this email. So I waited a day and tried it again…no dice. I tried logging into ANOTHER Twitter account…worked just fine.

Then I noticed this post on PCWorld Twitter Password Resets Linked to Torrent Sites. Was my account somehow part of this reset? The timing seemed about right, but I don’t belong to any Torrent Sites. This made little sense, but it was all I had.

THEN I went to Twitter’s support page and saw this: Reason #4132 for Changing Your Password. Okay…so something’s going down with Passwords. I get it. Whatever. Can I have my Twitter account back now? Where’s my password reset email???

Now it’s DAY 4. I’ve tried resetting my password, I’ve tried contacting Twitter Support (there’s an oxymoron for ya!) to no avail. I did find this post Unable to receive password reset emails that seems to describe maybe what’s happening.

Finally…after many attempts, I finally got some support from Twitter, in the form of an email (see…I told you my email was working!). Here is what they had to say…after 3 days…

Hi JohnnyDiggz,

Thanks for contacting us about your login issue. We have received your message and will respond as soon as possible.

Thanks!
Twitter Support

—–

I really wish I could Tweet my frustration. Perhaps someone would listen. If you’re out there in Twitter Land, please RT this.

*** Update DAY 6 ***

I’m still locked out. No additional responses from Twitter Support. I enlisted the help my friend @JeffPulver to see if he can help and I’ve noticed a bunch of people have been retweeting this post and even started a hashtag #lockedout. Thanks for your help…especially @PurpleCar @pfmonaco @Jfavreau @JadoreAlmore @pfmonaco

@PurpleCar Know anyone who has been and is currently locked out of Twitter? Let’s start a hashtag, maybe Twitter will notice. http://is.gd/7NEeX #lockedout @johnnydiggz

*** Update DAY 7 ***

I’m back in! I just tried the password reset tool for the umpteenth time and this time I received an email! I’m back in Twitter. Still no word from Twitter Support.

There’s an increasing breakdown of the traditional social boundaries between workplace and homelife, and personal and public information.

Let’s say a Facebook user in England sues another user in Australia for defamatory comments posted on the site. Who has jurisdiction over the case, which country’s laws should be applied:  England’s, Australia’s or those of the United States, where Facebook is based?

Can the law keep up with technology? – CNN.com.

Microsoft has reached collaboration agreements with Twitter and Facebook to get their members’ public status updates and messages indexed and presented in useful ways on the Bing search engine.

The partnership with Twitter has it working with Microsoft to optimize how Bing crawls and indexes “tweets.” Microsoft in turn will apply search algorithms to the Twitter messages, so that Bing users will not only be able to see a real-time feed of “tweets” but also rank them by how relevant they are to their query..

via Microsoft Strikes Search Deals With Twitter, Facebook – Business Center – PC World.

The Twitterverse is still recovering from the sudden departure of Courtney Love and her daughter.   Courtney Love has closed down her Twitter account just days after her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, went after Ali Lohan — Lindsay’s sister — on the micro-blogging service. Mother and daughter are both tweet-obsolete for the moment.

Love is dealing with a defamation claim after tweeting disgust at a fashion designer, and Demi Moore and Perez Hilton were also exploring legal action after their war of 140 characters or less with each other last month.

The law on what you can and can’t say on Twitter hasn’t been refined yet by a court, but assuming it follows the general defamation book, it’ll be hard to win a defamation lawsuit. But that won’t stop many plaintiffs from trying.

Tweet Delete: Celebs Exit Twitter – ABC News.