Why I changed my twitter picture

In this blog I will explain why I changed my twitter picture.

After a presentation I gave at the University of Utrecht someone in the audience came up to me and asked the following question: "Can I follow you on twitter?"

This flattering request made one thing clear. My twitter pictures has no relation with me. How could anybody know my account from the following picture?

In order to be more accessible, I changed my picture. For now I have changed it to the picture I use for my blog. Maybe in the future I will pick a fancier picture.

The Power of the Internet

In this blog I reflect on a recent experience, which showed my the power of the internet.

Followers of my blog may have noticed that I wrote an article about the number 3435. In that article I generalized one of the properties 3435 has i.e.

\[
3^3 + 4^4 + 3^3 + 5^5 = 3435
\]

I defined Munchausen numbers in base b and proved that there are only finitely many Munchausen numbers in any base. Although I appreciated the result I never expected that the article would be read. This is where the power of the internet enters the stage.

Soon after I posted my article on the internet, a Andrew Baxter mailed my with some comments and suggestions. After including Andrew's suggestions and posting a new version of the article, I was content. Someone else had read my article, and it wasn't my mom.

After that I got an other mail, this time by Tracy Harms. He told my that my article inspired a discussion on Twitter. The discussion was about understanding the source of a program in the programming language J.
So a lot more people had read my article, even twittered about it.

I just finished googling "Munchausen Numbers" and there are numerous links all about an article I wrote. Without the internet nobody (besides my mom) would have read my article, let alone reacted on it. This experience showed my the power of the internet. And I am in awe.

Reasons to Twitter

In this blog I list my reason for starting to twitter.

I have started twittering. Not that anybody noticed, but that is besides the point. Twitter started in 2006 so it took me a long time before I joined the bandwagon. So why join now?

There are various reasons to twitter. Twitter gives protesters in Iran a voice to vent their frustration about the recent elections. They also provide an information stream for journalists which are refused to enter the country. Twitter therefore empowers people who otherwise would not be heard.

I think that the web is still gaining an influential role in the social lives of a lot of people. One of the means to communicate in this on-line network is twitter. Although the value of this communication can be questioned, it is never the less a means to express your self in this network. As such, it can act as a social glue which brings people closer together.

Furthermore reading my tweets is voluntarily. I force nobody to follow my twitter account. (Nor for that matter my blog.) So by reading my tweets your are fulfilling a need. I think this need is the main reason for me to start twittering. People want to read about the trivialities of other peoples life's.