Ochocinco invites local followers to dinner

New England Patriot Chad Ochocinco is known for reaching out to his Twitter followers: in January he brought a loyal follower from Florida to Foxborough, Massachusetts for a playoff game between the Patriots and the Denver Broncos, paying for travel and hotel stay. He may have gone even further on March 12:

Dinner in NY tonight 1st 200 people at Sylvia’s Restaurant by 7 pm in Harlem. Leave ya money/credit cards at home.

— Chad Ochocinco (@ochocinco) March 12, 2012

That’s right, he treated 200 people to dinner. TMZ reports that the feast of BBQ ribs, fried chicken, mac & cheese, and red velvet cupcakes put Ochocinco back $7,914, but that doesn’t even include tip. Later that night, he tweeted that he had 200 new friends, and that he even gave them all his phone number. On a social network where celebrities and athletes frequently brag about themselves and get into fights with other Twitter users, it’s great to see that Ochocinco is using it to truly connect with the people that support him.

Federal Reserve launches Twitter account

The Federal Reserve’s interest in social media is not new. But it only recently launched a Twitter account, @federalreserve, as a way to reach out to the general public. After almost a week, the account has tweeted 14 times and over 16,000 followers.

The account will primarily be used to communicate news about the Federal Reserve. The account will post the Fed’s weekly balance statements as well as its monthly report on credit and liquidity programs. In addition, followers of the account will see press releases, testimonials, speeches, and Congressional reports.

The Federal Reserve also hopes to use the account to educate, through tweeting educational material and videos. For example, the second tweet the account posted was a link to a video of Chairman Ben Bernake explaining the structure of the Federal Reserve.

Chirp Clock uses tweets to tell time

Have you ever thought about how many tweets talk about what time it was when the tweet was sent? Chirp Clock has, and discovered it’s frequently enough to build a clock that runs on tweets.

It uses the Twitter API to search for tweets containing whatever time the user’s computer is set at. It will display one tweet at a time, and will show a new tweet every 2 seconds. It also works on mobile devices and displays the handle and avatar of the author of the displayed tweet.

While it may not be the best tool when you need to know what time it is ASAP, it shows how much vast the span of Twitter really is. The creator told Mashable that since launching the site, “there hasn’t been a minute for which the site could not find a tweet.”

It’s also interesting to look at the context of tweets. For example, when I check the site around 11:30 a.m., a good portion of the tweets displayed had something to do with lunch or being hungry. This could become another way to track people’s moods through Twitter.