You can read more about it on the Twitter blog.

So when will Twitter be announcing a future business model and/or advertising platform?  For now, according to Mashable, “Williams says Twitter is still mainly focused on creating the best experience for users and businesses.”

Within minutes, Christi Day, the PR Person who manages Southwest’s Twitter and Facebook pages was bombarded with hate posts and tweets.  Many of which consisted of things like, “F— You, Southwest!”  So what did she do?  She immediately realized the magnitude of the situation and began investigating.  She tweeted back at him and called him apologizing and began collecting details.  Kevin, in the meantime, continued to bash Southwest.  On Sunday, Christi posted a blog post on the Southwest blog telling their side of the story and once again apologizing to Kevin.  There were several details in that post that Kevin just happened to forget in his original telling of the story.  Such as, the fact that he regularly purchases two seats, had purchased two seats for this flight, but then decided to fly an earlier flight.  Therefore, there ended up only being one seat available for him on the earlier flight, and he wouldn’t fit in it (or so says Southwest).

Why am I blogging about this?

Here’s the thing.  He complained on Twitter over the handling of the situation.  Perhaps the pilot was rude to him – we really don’t know.  Here’s what we do know.  What’s the purpose of complaining? To be heard, and to be given a reasonable resolution to your problem.  The company immediately apologized via Twitter, Facebook, and phone and then later wrote a blog post about it.  They gave him a credit for his troubles and a public apology via several mediums.  What more does Kevin want?  The company has done all it can do.  They’ve done exactly what they would do for any customer with the same gripe.  What do I think he wants?  He wants the press for his new film.

Today, he continues to whine on Twitter about the situation.  The AP has written a story about it.  It’s the talk of the media.  That’s what he wanted, and that’s what he got.

Now, Kevin, will you please stop whining like a baby and accept the apology and credit like a normal, mature adult?  Your continued refusal of all apology is only making you look bad at this point.

(And by the way, Kevin Smith blocked me on Twitter after seeing my Tweets about the situation.  I guess I’m special now, being blocked by a celebrity.)

Twitter to me now is a social network of not only just friendly people to communicate with, but also useful, professional contacts.  It’s a lot of fun telling people what I’m doing and hearing their thoughts and input into my life.  Being a tech person, many of my tweets are me complaining about some piece of technology not working, or me expressing my views/opinions on something technology related.  It’s great hearing back from people with similar frustrations and thoughts.

As far as the professional contacts go, Twitter could not be more resourceful.  When we first got Verizon FiOS installed in our home, we had a lot of issues.  The speeds were nowhere near what they should have been.  After only a few hours of me tweeting out about my issues, @CZ on Twitter saw my tweets, and immediately was there to help.  He didn’t help me directly, but he escalated my issue so high up that we were getting dispatches made to our house for after-hours service calls.  It was ridiculous.  Within a few weeks and a few calls to a network engineer for Verizon, our issues were sorted out.  We also got a ridiculous amount credit applied to our account.  We didn’t pay for FiOS for months after we got it.  The issues would have never been sorted out in such an efficient manner had I tried explaining to a level 1 technician that yes, I’ve rebooted my router, etc.

More recently, a wonderful girl named Gina from PNC started following me on Twitter.  She’s funny and her tweets about PNC were very helpful and informative to me.  She took my feedback about VirtualWallet and relayed it to the developers who were only a short distance away from her in the building.  It turns out, Gina also knows someone from WPXI and she was able to get us a tour of their brand new studio.  This is something I had wanted to do for years, even before they got the new studio.  I was never able to get them to grant my request, however.

The most recent example of how Twitter helped me was with the application process for an American Express card.  Now that I’m 18, I want to start building some credit.  Well, of course, all major credit card companies, including American Express, denied my request for a card because I have no credit to be scored.  Well, isn’t that paradoxical?  The same reason I want a card is also the reason I’m being rejected for one.  Regardless, a super nice lady named Beth from @AskAmex, American Express’ corporate Twitter account, sent me a direct message and told me to call her.  Sure enough, we worked something out, and I’ll be getting an American Express card with my name on it in the mail this week coming up.  (It’s important to note that for now it’ll be backed by an existing card member’s account, but the general American Express number told me this wasn’t possible to do.)

Just a few final examples: I started communicating with @WebNoter from WebNotes and I now make Screencasts for their company, and, if all goes well, hopefully I’ll be helping @Zeo with something this summer coming up.

So, as you can see, Twitter really does have a lot of uses once you get your feet wet with it.  Some of my favorite people to follow on Twitter are @mattpippen, @Digeratii, @chrislovett, @iGerard, @kcclyburn, @captainjy, @Winnopeg, @hdberk, @dlberk, @maxkon, @technoheads, @marino_j, @UsefulTheory, @christophertran, @dysen, and @FantoMelt.  Follow them, and use Twitter to its fullest potential!

UPDATE: 9/19/09
Because of Twitter and @surpass, I have gotten three months of hosting for free by simply participating in, and winning, two Twitter promotions Surpass has had in the past few weeks.  In less than a month, I’ve scored three months of free hosting.  Thanks, Twitter!

The first thing one notices when using Tweetie is its absolutely gorgeous user interface.  I’m not sure if the company is using some sort of core image/core animation integration or if they simply wrote the UI animations themselves, but either way, they’re beautiful.  The theme of the app fits in perfectly with Mac OS X Leopard and it makes heavy use of OS X’s keyboard shortcuts, which is a must for any heavy Mac user.  Here is a look at a profile page within Tweetie (my own of course). [I would insert it into this post, but I'm having issues with image insertions.]

So from this picture alone, it’s very easy to tell that atebits put quite a bit of work into making a nice looking app.  Here is a look at the main timeline. [Again, image insertion issues.]

Besides simply looking nice, the functionality of the app is incredible.  It makes full use of the Twitter API by allowing users to basically perform every Twitter function such as DMs, @replies, following/unfollowing, and search, all within the app.  In addition, it provides a lot of added functionality that the Twitter website itself does not.  This includes the ability to have URLs automatically shortened, image uploading simply by dragging an image into the compose window, and inline viewing of photos posted by other users.  Personally, my favorite feature is the ability to preview shortened links before they’re load.  Yes, that truly means no more rick rolling me!

When comparing this app to other Mac Twitter apps such as Twitterrific, it’s easy to see why this app shines.  Twitterrific was written back when users were using and interacting with Twitter differently than they are now.  Don’t get me wrong, I used Twitterrific for a long, long time and loved it; It simply didn’t evolve with the service its meant to interact with.  Twitter was and is changing, the way users are using twitter is changing, so Twitter apps need to make sure they’re changing and providing added and increased functionality for their users.  Tweetie is absolutely doing that by packing every possible (well, almost every possible – more on this in a second) feature into a very lightweight, clean, and professionally designed application.

Overall, I’d rate this app 10/10.  It’s almost damn near perfect.  My only three complaints/suggestions are these:

• There is no ability to hide the dock icon.  Whenever hiding a dock icon is OS X, the application loses its menubar, so I can see why the company isn’t doing this at the moment.  It should, however, be an option in the future.
• There is no option to delete a tweet.  This seems like it was most likely a simple oversight on atebit’s part.  I’m sure it’ll be coming soon.
• For retweets, there should be an option in the preferences to use the “RT @username” style rather than the “(via @username)” style.

Other than that, this app is excellent.  I think that anyone who uses Twitter on a regular basis and is a Mac user should pick up this app.  It’s offered in two versions: a free, ad supported version, or the paid version (again, 15 dollars for now, 20 dollars after May 4th).