On this day, two years ago, I generated this chart using tweetVolume. It shows how frequently each of these words occurs in Twitter conversations:
Here’s what that same chart looks like today:
It’s somewhat biased by the current NHL playoffs, but it’s interesting to see how the term ‘php’ still dwarfs the other terms. Not particularly scientific, but does it indicate that Twitter’s audience still skews geeky? Or maybe it just shows that the Twitter power users are a nerdy bunch?
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Interesting, but have you considered that there’s only one way to refer to php and many terms related to the other topics listed.
I tired the same thing using “angelina or brangelina” and “php”…check it out.
Like I said, it’s pretty unscientific. I tried ‘brangelina’, and only found 1100 results, so that wouldn’t make a difference.
The basic point is that if I sampled a million actual, offline conversations, I’d expect to hear ‘iraq’ or ‘angelina’ a lot more often than I heard ‘php’.
this is pretty geeky!
Have you considered that php is usually part of links tweeted?
You make a very good point. Now if I only had a time machine where I could return to 2007 and search for, I don’t know, ‘perl’ instead.
Haha, that’s hilarious. Gee, maybe I should join it after all. At the recent Vancouver Blogger Meetup, a poll of the room showed two people out of maybe 40 weren’t on Twitter — me being one of them. That I was also the youngest in the room by at least 5 years may have had something to do with it.