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Politicians have recently begun Twittering. In fact, there's 47 members of Congress who currently have Twitter accounts. And they're Tweeting, in some cases, from behind closed-door sessions with the President. In this case, this guy's not liking what he's hearing. The President himself is our most popular Twitter user, although his tweets have dropped off as of lately, while Senator McCain's have picked up. As have this guy's.
政客们最近也开始使用Twitter了。实际上，47位国会成员拥有Twitter账户。有的时候，他们会在和总统开会发出Twitter。看来，这家伙并不喜欢自己所听到的事情。总统本人就是最受欢迎的Twitter用户，尽管近来他不怎么在上面发言了，不过麦凯恩参议员的Twitter使用频率却开始增加。这个人也是。
Twitter was originally designed as pretty much a broadcast medium. You send one message and it goes out to everybody, and you receive the messages you're interested in. One of the many ways that users shaped the evolution of Twitter was by inventing a way to reply to a specific person or a specific message. So, this syntax, the "@username" that Shaquille O'Neal's using here to reply to one of his fans was completely invented by users, and we didn't build it into the system until it already became popular and then we made it easier. This is one of the many ways that users have shaped the system.
Twitter最初只不过被设计成一个广播媒介。你发送的信息能被其他人收到，同时，你也能收到自己感兴趣的信息。但用户们还自己发明了很多Twitter的新用法，例如，回复消息给特定的人，或者回复某条特定的消息。比方说，大鲨鱼奥尼尔在这使用“@用户名”来回复他的某个粉丝，这种用法就完全是用户们自己发明的。Twitter本来并不支持这种用法，直到大家都开始这么用的时候，我们才增加了这个功能，方便用户。上面说到的只是用户帮助改进Twitter的众多方式之一。
Another is via the API. We built an application programming interface, which basically means that programmers can write software that interacts with Twitter. We currently know about over 2,000 pieces of software that can send Twitter updates, interfaces for Mac, Windows, your iPhone, your BlackBerry ... as well as things like a device that lets an unborn baby Twitter when it kicks or a plant Twitter when it needs water.
还有一种方法是借助于API（应用编程接口）。我们提供了一些API，这样程序员可以编写其他程序来和Twitter交互。目前大约有2000种程序可以发送Twitter信息，他们可以运行在Mac，Windows，iPhone或黑莓上...同时，还有的设备可以在胎儿踢腿时发出Twitter信息，或者当植物需要浇水时发出Twitter信息。
