Cody Taylor

From iPod and BlackBerry to Twitter and Wikipedia, we take a look at the processes and people who came up with the names for these famous tech products.

Stat tracking firm Nielsen reports today that a full 60% of users who sign up fail to return the following month. And in the 12 months “pre-Oprah”, retention rates were even lower: only 30% returned the next month. That’s good news, to some degree: retention rates have increased over time.

It is no secret that Facebook has Twitter envy. The number one social networking site is not content to win over rival MySpace. It is not satisfied being far ahead of Google on the social web. Facebook now has Twitter firmly in its crosshairs.

judgecorp writes “Twitter is being criticized for spreading panic about swine flu. This is not just knee-jerk Luddism 2.0: it’s argued that Twitter’s structure encourages ill-informed repetition, with little room for context, while older Web media use their power for good — for instance Google’s Flu Trends page (which we discussed last winter), and the introduction of a Google swine flu map.” On a related note, reader NewtonsLaw suggests that it might be a good idea, epidemiologically speaking, to catch the flu now vs. later.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seeing the explosion in growth of Twitter right now, it’s pretty clear that the hot trend on the web is to have a service which acts as a central hub for information, and allows third-party sites and services to built on top of it. Tomorrow, it looks like Facebook may be knocking down its dam to let its streams of data flow more freely.

How often have you heard the argument that not following back everyone who follows you is ’snobby’ and ‘arrogant’? – It’s not, and you shouldn’t listen to anyone who tells you so. You have a right to choose who you follow and don’t follow. Although, Following everyone back has other benefits…

Who knew that swine flu could also infect Twitter? Yet this is what appears to have happened in the last 24 hours, with thousands of Twitter users talking about this nascent and potentially lethal threat. There are quite a few reasons to be concerned about Twitter’s role in facilitating an unnecessary global panic about swine flu.

Earlier today we reported on YouTube’s plans to roll out a new real-time product that adds a new social layer to YouTube, allowing friends to share the videos they’re watching with each other in real time, without having to turn to outside chat programs or Twitter.

The one thing that Iraq really, really needs, according to the US State Department… is Twitter. Finally, thanks to what I’m already calling “Operation Fail Whale”, ordinary Iraqis will get access to the clean video streams, flamewars and Lolcats that we in the west take for granted. Here are predictions of what the future might hold for Iraq 2.0