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If you would look at the history of Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants you would notice that at the beginning most of them were just nice personal incentives trying to make the world a better place. Then they boomed, got investments, their shares got listed at the stock market, some of the founders could make themselves a nice 25th birthday present – no more work for the rest of their lives  A lot of nice incentives have also disappeared because of having too little members and fans. This usually happens when there are thousands of video sharing or micro-blogging sites. But if you are one of the kind, the chances of succeeding become greater.

Poker is a still an untapped market as the majority of poker players prefer traditional media and communication at the online poker room chat or trying to read opponents tells through the mirror glasses. However, the times change and those who will be able to get the most of the new social media solutions will go to the next level (what web 3.0 will be like no one knows yet).

Geoff Manning and his colleagues will most likely be the first ones to reach the next level because they understand the importance of social media in poker. Who is Geoff Manning? He is just a guy who created (with the help of two friends) the first poker league community for Twitter users – Twitter Poker Tour (TPT). And it is not just another poker league community, which are available on every poker social network, because the main TPT focus is towards the communication between league players on Twitter. The rest comes as usual – tournaments, winners, nicknames, points, the leader board.

Have you noticed a Twitter avatar with a small image of underlined Internet Explorer logo, Twitter bird, or simply a yellow ribbon? If you did, you probably know that these people support some kind of cause using new Twitter application called Twibbon.

For those who still do not understand what it's all about, I will try to explain it in a simple manner. Have you ever supported some politician and wore a badge with their picture? Have you ever had a red ribbon to support people with HIV? The Twitter ribbons are something similar.

TWItter + riBBON = TWIBBON

The most popular cause supported on Twitter was the Iranian president election and it was turning your Twitter avatar green. The same system is used by Twibbon.com where you can select 1 cause you want to support. For example, "I ♥ Twitter", "IE6 must die", "DDOS sucks", "Supernatural", "I love Harry Potter", "#iamthemob" etc.

You have probably noticed that some poker pros' profile pictures turned green. This is not a Twitter bug, nor these people have attended photoshop lessons. The poker pros @Andy_Bloch, @RealAnnieDuke, @howardhlederer have turned their profile pictures green because they support righteous Iran elections. As you may already know the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected for the second time, but his opponents declared election fraud and other abuses which caused big riots in capital Teheran.

Poker 2.0 Blog will not consider anything about politics of this remote Muslim country. Everyone has the right to express their political views in the way they consider appropriate – marching in the streets or making their Twitter profiles green.

There is a special application called Support #IranElection which turns your Twitter profile image green. If you want to express your political views in this way, you are free to do so. However, please read some information about this application from HelpIranElection.com before you do.

I've been thinking: why do poker players use some weird abbreviations and signs to describe the hand they have. Every forum and hand converter use the letter system, so in order to tell that they have a Jack of Spades and a King of Diamonds people write JsKd. Why not J♠K♦? Is it a little complicated? Not at all, if you have these card symbols by the hand. Just copy+paste them and the hands will look much nicer in your blog, Facebook update and even Twitter.

Did I do something wrong that our @pokernews_live Twitter account is followed by some suspicious twitter users with kinky names and porn avatars? Take a look at today's (June 3rd, 2009) followers list! 

Live reporting of the WSOP 2009 is different from the previous ones. Web 2.0 is taking over the traditional video broadcast or chip count updates in the format of forum topics or blog posts. Now the new type of live reporting emerged – Twitter updates.

Twitter is becoming more and more popular among professional poker players. The long list of Twittering pros witness that, as well as a few nice incentives to collect the pros to one place. Recently a new interesting website appeared – www.twtPoker.com 

Just got the idea to collect all the poker pros in Twitter. Twitter does not have the requirement and the manner to collect real information about the person, sometimes it can be hard to distinguish the real poker pro from the fan who loves him/her so much that puts on their picture and tweets "on behalf". Some call such fans "squatters", but I would rather consider them as too zealous fans :) I would need some help from the readers, so if you know some poker pros which are not on the list, please let me know either in comments or privately.