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The word tweet, in relation to social media, has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), breaking the rule which says a new word must be current for a decade before inclusion.

The addition is marked as a 'quiet announcement' on the dictionary's June 2013 update.

Chief editor and lexicographer John Simposon, 59, said: "The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED."

Other new word entries include flash mob, live blog, mani-pedi, geekery and jolly hickey sticks.

Commenting on the word tweet, Simpson said: "This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for 10 years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on."

The word has been used only since 2007, the dictionary says, one year after the launch of Twitter.

To tweet, says the entry, is to "make a posting on the social networking service Twitter. Also: to use Twitter regularly or habitually."

The Oxford English Dictionary was first used in 1895.

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'Tweet' added to Oxford English Dictionary

Are you fed up with social networking and bored of people checking in every hour of the day with Foursquare at some location you really couldn't care less about? If so you're in luck because there's now a new anti-social network called Hell is Other People.

Most social networks are designed to help you connect with your friends (or online admirers) but Hell is Other People promises to keep you as far away from your pesky online friends (and genuine ones) as possible. To keep you off-grid, the app takes your friends' check-in data from your Foursquare account and then works out optimally-distanced locations to make sure you don't bump into any of them on your way around town.

Designed by developer Scott Garner, who describes it as partially satire, partially a commentary on my disdain for 'social media', it highlights various safe zones on a specially adapted Google Maps screen and gives you critical information on your friends' check-in so you, you know, don't have to actually see them.

Unsurprisingly Garner tells The Independent he has a love/hate relationship with social media that's mostly hate.

Up until recently, this problem was mostly theoretical, but now I'm finding that my aversion to social media is actually affecting my life-not being on Facebook, for example, now means that nobody invites you to anything and nobody remembers your birthday.

Paradoxically though Hell is Other People depends entirely on you and your friends using Foursquare and your mates checking in regularly enough throughout the day, but with more than 30 million people worldwide using the app there's obviously some potential there.

Garner is a masters student at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program and describes himself on his website as basically unemployable in a conventional sense but does seem to realise the biggest floor in his app is its users. In an online video tutorial for the site, he takes an afternoon stroll around New York - the only city it is currently available for - and says: Most frustrating of all is that nobody is checking in today. I hate doing things that depend on other people because they are so unpredictable and unreliable.

Perhaps that's why it's described as more of an art project than a functional app. Would Garner every try and make money from it? As far as going commercial, it never occurs to me to try and make money from my work until it's already in the papers and I think, 'Man. I should have thought of a way to sell this.' Also, I'm much more focused on making beautiful (or at least interesting) things than useful things and maintaining websites is the absolute pits. Users are the worst kind of people.

There's one awkward real-world conversation that Garner hasn't accounted for though. What happens when your best mate asks why he hasn't seen you in your local for months?

* Meanwhile in London... a new billboard campaign has kicked off in Shoreditch with the tagline: You have no friends and no one likes you. Its promoting Rando, a random photo-sharing app which has ditched all social-media norms so theres no sign-in process, no comments, no likes and, most importantly, no friends or followers to worry about. Is this the start of an anti-social networking backlash? Perhaps not. Ironically the billboard campaign has got lots of people talking on Twitter. Sigh.

Original post:
Apps: A poke in the eye for social-network friends

The social networking term 'tweet' will be included in Australia's printed Macquarie Dictionary later this year.

The Oxford English Dictionary has now included the social networking term tweet', two years after it recognised popular texting terms OMG (oh my god) and LOL (laugh out loud).

In a further sign technology is changing the way we speak, tweet' will also debut in Australia's printed Macquarie Dictionary later this year.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) chief editor John Simpson confirmed tweet' had been formally recognised in his hallowed tome's June update - more than seven years after Twitter was invented.

'This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for 10 years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on.'

The OED defined tweet' as simply: 'To make a posting on the social networking service Twitter. Also: to use Twitter regularly or habitually'.

Tweet' will appear in the next print edition of the Macquarie Dictionary in October, Editor Susan Butler told AAP.

Macquarie editors recognised the word in 2009 and included it in online editions from 2010.

Earlier this year, the Macquarie Dictionary included phantom vibration syndrome' in its online edition - describing anxiety and an obsessive conviction that one's mobile phone has vibrated in response to an incoming call.

Other words or phrases which made it into the new OED included: wingsuit' (a full-body garment having wings), sega' (a dance form of the Mascarene Islands) and metabolic syndrome' (a cluster of biochemical and physiological abnormalities).

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'Tweet' to feature in Aussie dictionary

If social networking services like Facebook and Twitter help you find your friends, this site helps you do exactly the opposite.

Aptly named "Hell is Other People," the service uses FourSquare to track a user's friends and help them plot routes to avoid them.

Hell is Other People: Walk One from Scott Garner on Vimeo.

The catch? The service works only for friends using FourSquare.

"Hell Is Other People is an experiment in anti-social media. Using your FourSquare account, this site will track check-ins by your friends and calculate optimal locations for avoiding them," said developer Scott Garner.

Garner said the project is partially a satire and partially a commentary on his "disdain for 'social media.'"

He said he developed the project using the Express web application framework for Node.js and is hosted on the Heroku cloud application platform.

The map uses the Google Maps API with custom styling.

Garner describes himself as a "designer, developer and craftsman who continually strives to unite these skills into a cohesive creative voice."

A separate report on The Verge said the "optimally distanced safe zones" should help a user avoid friends signed into FourSquare.

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Anti-social media app helps you steer clear of 'friends'

NewsGator has upgraded its Social Sites enterprise social networking (ESN) add-on for SharePoint to make the software better able to tailor the content, notifications and capabilities it displays for each user.

The overall goal is to make it easier for Social Sites users to stay engaged with work tasks, information and colleagues.

ESN software, which adapts social media features for workplace use, is seen to fail when employees view it as yet another separate inbox that they need to check. When this happens, the ESN system becomes a deserted island.

Thus, NewsGator and other ESN vendors consider it a priority to make sure their software is threaded into the business applications and processes that employees use daily.

In version 4.0, NewsGator for example has a new feature called Follow a Document, which lets employees receive notifications on their activity streams about changes to documents that they consider important.

Another feature called Top News rearranges items on users activity streams, giving more prominence to items Social Sites deems more relevant and important based on each individuals actions and profile data.

An existing feature called Question Routing has been improved to get questions posted in groups answered more quickly and precisely.

Also new in Social Sites 4.0 is the ability to post requests that require approvals to the activity streams of those involved in deciding on them, and giving them the ability to approve or deny them in the Social Sites interface.

Social Sites, which is designed to be used with SharePoint implementations on customer premises or in dedicated hosting environments, now gets in version 4.0 a link to Office 365s SharePoint Online, hosted by Microsoft on a public cloud.

The feature, called O365 Bridge, lets Social Sites on premises installations tap their organizations Office 365s SharePoint Online as an extranet for external collaboration, giving users the ability to upload files to their SkyDrive Pro accounts and monitor Social Sites activity streams from Office 365.

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NewsGator's SharePoint add-on tries to filter, reduce enterprise social noise