In honor of Mother’s Day, Late Night host Jimmy Fallon asked his viewers to use the hashtag #ThatsMyMom on Twitter to tweet something funny or weird about their moms. Watch in this hilarious clip as he reads his the top #ThatsMyMom tweets on air.

Staten Island-based Josephine Lamberti (aka Josie Dimples or “J-Dimps”) is having a lot of fun making videos with the help of her grandson Donny Brandefine. He’s been teaching his sassy 80-year-old grandmother internet skills and has been filming her for a couple of years running. The New York Times City Room recently featured her and is reporting that she is an “Internet sensation” and has caught the attention of several celebrities through her Twitter account. Dimples says on Twitter, “I want 80K followers (or 1 million) before I die”. She has just over 76,000 followers as of this writing.

Corey Kilgannon of The New York Times City Room wrote this about Ms. Lamberti:

Because of his grandmother’s smile, he gave her the nickname Josie Dimples — J-Dimps, for short — and began making videos of her as a wisecracking grandma with a secret penchant for “Jersey Shore”-style, fist-pumping dance moves.

“I figured, let’s put Dimps to work here,” Mr. Brandefine said. “It’s obvious she’s not your average 80-year-old.”

…Other celebrity Twitter users who have retweeted or corresponded with Mrs. Lamberti include Rosario Dawson, George Lopez, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Khloe Kardashian. Mrs. Lamberti exchanges messages on Twitter with some of the players on the New York Knicks. Nate Robinson of the Golden State Warriors sent her free tickets when the team was playing the New Jersey Nets at the Meadowlands and met her after the game.

A parody Twitter account has been set up called @PicturelessPinterest that humorously shows descriptive words of Pinterest pins instead of images.

The best of Pinterest without having to look at the pictures.

via Betabeat

While hitting a Twitter outage today, I noticed that our old friend the Fail Whale is back on a new, redesigned page.

Sad and Useless has humorously pointed out that some people on Twitter don’t know how to spell the word “cologne” and inadvertently use the word “colon”.

via Boing Boing

Specialty history publishing company, The History Press, live-tweeted the Titanic tragedy in real time as if on board the ship itself to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of its sinking. They have also created an iPad app titled Titanic: Her Journey which “collates the knowledge of the world’s foremost Titanic experts in the most interactive way to date.”

via Clint Marsh

This clever Twitter-based animation for smart Argentina unfolds over the course of 455 Twitter messages by @smartArg. Each tweet is an ASCII art animation frame—the viewer can watch the animation by scrolling down through the messages (or watching this video version). The commercial is by ad agency BBDO Argentina.

via PandoDaily

As the 100 year anniversary of the Titanic disaster approaches, Twitter is abuzz with people who are just discovering Titanic was a real ship and not just a James Cameron movie.

via Gothamist & Keith Andrews

The Tweet Mug by Thumbs Up World not only shows a version of “Larry” the Twitter bird but comes with a hashtag-inspired handle.

via Chip Chick and Technabob

Squirrel Monkey made an animation that imagines what Twitter might have looked like if it was created in the 1980s.

via Viral Viral Videos

Shitter is a service by Collector’s Edition that creates four rolls of toilet paper out of a chosen Twitter feed. It works like this: you authorize the app to work with your Twitter account, choose your feeds, pay for the service, and you are then mailed four toilet paper rolls of a Twitter feed. Shitter has the tagline, “Social media has never been so disposable.” According to Business Insider, it was created by Australian entrepreneurs David Gillespie, Matthew Delprado and Johny Mair.

via Happy Place

photos by Gabriela Herman

In honor of Twitter’s sixth anniversary, the Jimmy Kimmel Live show had several celebrities read mean-spirited tweets about themselves.

Lead singer Tim Burgess of the British rock band The Charlatans recently tweeted that he wanted to have his own cereal. Cereal giant Kellogg’s UK saw his post on Twitter and created a one-off rocky road type cereal called Totes Amazeballs just for him.

From a Kellogg’s UK press release dated February 23, 2012:

Tim Burgess is a huge fan of Kellogg’s. So when he contacted us and told us his idea for a rocky road cereal, we just knew we had to make it for him. We created a one-off box especially for Tim using Kellogg’s Coco Pops Rocks, marshmallow, shortbread pieces and raisins.

We named it Totes Amazeballs as Tim said it will be ‘totally amazing’ if Kellogg’s could make something for him.

This isn’t the first time Kellogg’s has created a one-off cereal. We produced Calvin Flakes for hit UK DJ Calvin Harris.

The Daily Mail reports that the custom cereal trend started in 2010 and that several cereals have been created for various personalities.

The customised cereal trend began with the England team in 2010, who ordered hefty amounts of Kellogg’s to fuel them through the World Cup tournament in South Africa.
They may have been vilified for their performance on the field, but at least they could comfort themselves with a tailor-made brekkie – including Rio Cicles for Rio Ferdinand, Crunchy Nut Crouch for Peter Crouch and Kai Kai Pops for Wayne Rooney – an edible tribute to his son Kai.

via PSFK and Adweek

image via Kellogg’s Press Office UK

Ian Padgham and Jeremy Briggs made this horribly awesome Twitter recruiting video featuring Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. But wait, there’s more, Twitter is actually hiring. Here are the current positions that are open.

via Chloe Sladden

@StealthMountain ; Get The Fuck Out My Mentions Damnit

— Kam P. Ford (@Oo_Kam_oO) January 4, 2012

@StealthMountain IM HIGH FUCK YOU.

— SHE MUST BE GAY!? (@Squeeeeeeeeze) December 25, 2011

@StealthMountain shutup for a pull out da heat on you, might just chip yo booty

— Kevin Boehner (@kevinboehner) December 31, 2011

“@StealthMountain: @JuddApatow I think you mean “sneak peek”” I am on back medication. It looked right to me.

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) January 4, 2012

Stealth Mountain is a Twitter bot that helpfully informs other Twitterers when they mistakenly write “sneak peak,” rather than the correct term, “sneak peek.” The enraged responses from the Twitterverse are delicious.

via Waxy

Comedy writer Jon Hendren of Something Awful retweeted post-Christmas messages on Twitter from random disgruntled people complaining about the lack of iPhones, iPods, cars and other expensive items under their tree. Song-a-day singer and songwriter Jonathan Mann went one step further and wrote WTF?! I Wanted An iPhone!!!, a humorous song that uses the original tweets as lyrics.

what the fuck, i wanted an iPhone
what the fuck, i wanted a car
fuck you mom, fuck you dad
the economy sucks but i should get what i want

via TechCrunch

Toronto filmmaker Graydon Sheppard stars (in drag, no less) with actress Juliette Lewis in Shit Girls Say, a comedic web series based on a Twitter feed of the same name. Sheppard and his partner Kyle Humphrey have been writing the one-liner tweets that poke fun at the ‘shit girls say’ starting back in April 2011.

Freelance writer Giles Turnbull had an idea to respond to his Twitter feed by snail mail using postcards. For each tweet he received from the lot of pre-chosen volunteers, he responded with a mailed postcard and urged them to do the same. The project, Twitter-by-post, “wasn’t an attempt to reject the internet—it was a way of celebrating it”.

Giles described the entire project on The Morning News with plenty of images:

The mechanics of it took a while to work out. Most difficult was replicating my personal Twitter timeline—how could I post the same thing to everyone? Well, by writing it out lots of times.

For those “public” tweets, I wrote the same thing out 15 times, on 15 cards, and sent them to 15 different people. This took every moment as long as you might think; possibly a little longer.

Other tweets were easier to do. The analogue of sending an @reply or a DM is simply sending one card to one person. Much simpler. Soon after starting the project, I settled on these as the best way of communicating.

Timehop is a web service that sends a daily email of the user’s activity on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Instagram, from exactly one year ago. Timehop combines the features of three previously separate services: 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo, And7YearsAgram, and pastposts.

The Gentlemen’s Rant: Twitter

Twitter is starting to roll out a simpler new design that will be consistent between the web and mobile versions.

We’ve simplified the design to make it easier than ever to follow what you care about, connect with others and discover something new. You’ll see this new design both on Twitter.com and mobile phones, so that you’ll have a familiar experience any time, anywhere.

Twitter has posted visualization showing how tweets mentioning 11:11 on 11-11-11 spread around the world.

This clip is a visualization of all the Tweets mentioning 11:11 on 11.11.11. Each “1” is a location that moves with the conversation on Twitter. Their scale varies depending on the volume of Tweets posted from the location they represent. You can see the main wave move from right to left, and then a second one that occurred at 11 p.m. around the world.

Mile 17.3: Readers, if one of you has a banana, pls meet me on NW corner of 125th and 1st ave. I am at 80th now.

Mile 23.8: Hallucinating.

I made it!

Mile 26.1: Finished.

The New York Times cartoonist Christoph Niemann not only ran the 2011 New York City Marathon but live-tweeted his on-the-fly drawings of the entire experience. Towards the end of the race, he had to create a new Twitter account because he was apparently over-posting on his original account. His accounts @abstractsunday and @abstractsunday1 house all of his race illustrations.

On November 6 I will attempt to live-draw the New York City Marathon. How will I finish the race? Curled up on the sidewalk in Park Slope? In an oxygen tent on First Avenue? Or actually in Central Park? Before sunset?

via Super Punch

photos and image via Christoph Niemann

Louis C.K. was a guest on Conan last week where talked about why he hates Twitter.

Twitter has launched the new website Twitter Stories, highlighting interesting stories behind tweets. You can submit a story by mentioning @twitterstories or by using the hashtag #twitterstories on Twitter.

Read about a single Tweet that helped save a bookstore from going out of business; an athlete who took a hundred of his followers out to a crab dinner; and, Japanese fishermen who use Twitter to sell their catch before returning to shore. Each story reminds us of the humanity behind Tweets that make the world smaller.