It's now around 2 weeks after this incident. Old news is still news, aye. A tragic end to one illustrious tack career. A record-breaker, a famous runner with riches to boot. That was Samuel Wanjiru Kamau. If we were to adopt a moral standpoint and analyse his life, well, he could as well have to make bones for all his deeds. But there is one thing we can't deny: he was extraordinary. At 24, he was way ahead of his age-mates. The assault charges that were brought on him early this year gave the BBC something to report about. That was proof enough that he wasn't just another runner from Kenya. And after his death, #SamuelWanjiru became the trending topic on Twitter. R.I.P.

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Starting from the 3.0.0 release, Wordpress MU and the single-blog variants have now been merged. Remember the post on how to create a BuddyPress site? I did the installation on a single-user blog then. One reason why I did not try it on the MU variant required some modifications to the server's configuration. It was something on the lines of editing the .htaccess file (can anyone remind me?). I hope this technical requirement is now done with. With its famous five-minute install process, you can create your own microblog quite easily. Try it (and may be inform about it, ;-)).
Check out the Wordpress MU site. Things have changed now.

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Who cares about retweetability? I do. What about you? Can retweetability be a measure of one's influence on any microblogging site?  Anyway. What's retweeting in the first place? Retweeting is just a way of repeating another microblogger's post on Twitter. With a simple "RT @username message" syntax or a simple click on the RT "button" you can repeat anyone's post; and that message will appear on your personal timeline. Twitip does give a a formula (?) for retweeting in a way.
So what makes a post retweetable? Here are some 3 observations that I have made:

1. Post quality. How informative is the post? Does it help in starting or even building an online conversation in that microblogging site? I can only link to the article on the the effect of informative posts here.
2. Reputation. A good name is better than riches really. If it's not Solomon who said that then you have every right to correct me. Popular persons, bloggers, celebrities have great influence on their followers. And many of their tweets end up being retweeted by their followers.
3. @Replies. I've noticed that mentions of another person in a post can cause them to retweet such a post. Is it the "mention" psychology at work here??? May be.

P.S: And what's this info about the Retweetability Index. :-|

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Kenya Tweets released a report on the activity of Kenyans on Twitter around Oct-Nov 2010. It provided some very wonderful insights. For example, one of them was that Kenyans follow more than they are followed. Anyway, that is an analysis we will carry out another day. This article is closely linked to the aspect of following/subscribing. Have you noticed that whoever you follow on any microblogging site will end up following you in return? But there are some who even after follow them will never reciprocate or will take time doing so. It can be a little annoying to learn that the person continuously updates their profile without showing any interest in your "follow". Here is why some may never subscribe to your updates:

1. You are a business. (Can this be a reason?) Your profile image is your business logo. Microblogging is bent towards inter-personal relationships. Some microbloggers may not follow businesses since they are scared that you might flood their streams with company updates, promotional messages and the like.
2. You do not have profile image. The default avatars used on certain microblogging sites are not attractive in any way. So why do you still have one while your account is now 3 months old on the site? Upload your photo today. It sure does help in increasing your followers since they get to see the person behind that account.
3. The ring in your name. Can you follow a person whose username is "ma1k55"? Trust OSS developers to conjure up such usernames for their microblogging profiles?
4. Your interests do not match with theirs. Show me your updates and I will tell you what interests you. If your updates point to a person interested in say American soccer, do you expect a person working in an NGO in a 3rd World country to follow you back? :-(
5. You both update your profiles at different times. This one isn't really a strong reason as to why microblogger B may not follow you. However, it does have an influence for those who are following many people. If they cannot see an @reply in their stream from you then they might take time subscribing to you.
6. Your updates look spammy. No need of an explanation on this one.
7. Going, going, gone! You stopped posting some 2 months ago. So, what is the worth of subscribing to an inactive account?
8. They are grappling with a heavy stream. Sorry, they can't add another person into their network.

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