Archive for April, 2009

So Much For Consistency

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

I tried, I really did. I just didn’t quite make it doing a post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I was flying home last Thur, and fully intended on writing something on the plane, but completely forgot. I couldn’t do it Friday itself because I was at the coast all day. I knew that I’d be flying back to Dallas on Sunday so I planned on doing Monday’s post then. No dice, though, as I came down with a cold, and was so exhausted I just slept most of the flight. Monday was out since I was super busy at work, and came home and went straight to bed. Now here we are at Wednesday, and all I can come up with is to tell you why I’ve not been posting. It’s sad, really.

I’m starting to shake my cold a bit, so that is a definite improvement. I’m thinking that if I can get myself to remember to write something tomorrow night, I can have it go up on Friday, and at least salvage most of the week. Skipping two posts isn’t too bad, but it would have been better had I not done it two in a row.

I’ll try to explain what’s been keeping me so busy next time. For now, I need to get some grub and get to bed. Still feeling the effects of the cold…

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Poke, Nudge, Hump

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Social networking sites are full of different features. Some of these are useful, others are completely irrelevant. Two of the most popular social media sites have little things that sound similar, and playful. If you are a Facebook user, you are likely familiar with the “poke.” On Twitter you have the ability to “nudge” people. Both of these are things that don’t serve much purpose, but can be fun to play with. 

The poke on Facebook means different things to different people, and there have been a number of sites that try to answer the question, “What does it mean to poke someone on Facebook?” On the Facebook site itself, it answers the question as so. 

The poke feature can be used for a variety of things on Facebook. For instance, you can poke your friends to say hello. If you poke a user who normally does not have access to your profile, they will be able to temporarily see your Basic Info, Work Info, and Education Info. When you poke someone, they will receive a poke alert on their home page.

This is actually a newer answer, as when Facebook started, they said that a poke basically meant nothing. From what I remember, to early Facebook users a poke was basically a flirtation, or a way to get someone’s attention. Now it seems like there is a whole myriad of different meanings for a poke that people have come up with. In my mind, it has always remained as more of a flirty thing (probably why I never poke guys). 

On Twitter, you can nudge someone. This is described as being a friendly way to remind someone to update their profile. If they have a phone registered, and notifications turned on, they’ll receive a text message telling them that you want them to update their status. 

Perhaps it is just my mind, but all this poking and nudging got me thinking…

Why don’t we just go ahead and cut to the chase, and just have the ability to hump someone. I figure that if I ever have my own social network, that’s going to be the little thing that you can do. This can lead to all sorts of fun things. Do you only hump someone you’re attracted to? If you just hump everyone, will you get a bad rep? Will having the hump be so easily done mean that it means less? Will you only do it on Wednesdays? Will people get into humping wars? What about when someone releases an app that allows you to super hump? Really, the possibilities are endless. And given the typical mindset of a social network’s userbase, I really think that the hump thing could really take off. So the next time that you’re about to poke or nudge someone, just think about how nice it’d be to be able to go all the way.

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Welcome Back, Life

Monday, April 20th, 2009

One of the big things that I left when I moved from Dallas was my social network. There are a lot of people and places that I used to hang out with and at in Dallas, and I just haven’t replaced that up in Oregon yet. That being the case, I’ve really just spent a lot of time doing other stuff, and socializing or going out haven’t been on the agenda. Then, I got a call that beckoned me back to Dallas for a few weeks. I’ve been down here since last Monday, and quickly started filling up my schedule. I’ve managed to have something or another going on every day since I’ve been back. To be honest, I’ve really missed going out with friends, and hanging out with people. I’ve enjoyed the downtime, and relaxing that I’ve been doing in Oregon, but it’s been really great to get back into having a social life. At the same time, jamming as much in as possible has been a little bit crazy. It’s been years since I’ve gone out this much, and in truth it’s not even like I’ve been going that crazy here. I’ve not even been out past one down here. So far it hasn’t taken its toll on me, but I am wondering if by the end of the week it will. Sunday I just lounged around and read a book, and it was nice to have some down time to recharge. This week is filled with something going on everyday too so by the end of it I might really be missing the lack of doing anything. While there are a number of things that I miss about Dallas, my friends here are on top of the list. It’s been really great to get to see them all again, and I’ve had a ton of fun with them. At the same time, I’m really in love with Oregon. The geography has been calling my back all my life, and now that I’m finally up there it’s been great. I’m having fun while back in Dallas, and it’s definitely making me miss it, but so far, I’m still happy with my move.

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Out of Touch

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Before I moved to Oregon, I was constantly reading and keeping up with the news. I always stayed abreast of the latest events, and knew what was going on everywhere from locally to internationally. Ever since I moved, though, I really haven’t been keeping up the same way. The bad part is that I have a lot more time now to invest in that sort of thing, but it’s just not happening. As a result, for the last three months, I’ve been pretty out of it. I really think that I need to change that. I miss knowing what’s going on, and feel like I’m part of the ignorant masses when I don’t keep up. My biggest problem has been my lack of routine. Back when I was working a full time job, and basically did the same thing every day, I had reading the news as part of my daily regimen. As it stands right now, I don’t really have much of a routine at all. What I do every day changes. I had a week where I was in somewhat of a routine, but other changes put a stop to that. With any luck, though, I’ll be able to get myself back into the swing of things. One of the things I’m actually trying as part of this attempt at order is to post more. I’m doing pretty well this week, hopefully I can continue it into next week too. I am going to aim for a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule, and see how that goes. I might switch it to a Tuesday/Thursday if I’m not hitting three a week. I realize that trying to put out posts just for the sake of posts may not do me a lot of good in terms of making every post of great quality (this post being an example of one that’s sub-par), but the idea is that if I make myself write more, I’ll be more likely to write when I do actually have a good idea. As it is now, many of my good ideas never make it past the idea phase, as I’m not in the habit of writing. 

So, to sum it up, I need something that resembles a routine because without one I’m not making myself keep current and I feel like an idiot. As with before, wish me luck.

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It’s All My Fault

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

It’s no secret that I suck at posting on here. In the past, I’ve managed to always have some reason as to why I wasn’t posting. It usually inolved being busy with something which led me to being lazy in my free time, and hence the no posting. Well, since my move to Oregon, I’ve had considerably more free time, but significantly fewer posts. If anything, I was doing better when I didn’t have so much free time. What does all this tell us? Well, it means that I’ve got no excuses for not posting, and I have to own up to just being -that- lazy. I’ve had a few thoughts for posts, but haven’t followed through. I’ve had plenty of time to come up with topics, but have done bupkis. We’re going to see if I can do anything to change that. I told a friend (actually, multiple friends) that I’d try to have at least a couple posts a month for a while, so let’s see if I can stick to that. Wish me luck.

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Movin’ on Up

Monday, April 13th, 2009

After spending the last ten years or so in Texas, I finally left. In January my family and I moved back to Oregon after having been away for a long, long time. So far things have been pretty good. One of the biggest reasosn we wanted to come back was to be close to the coast. It’s just a little over an hour from our house to the ocean. We’ve been out there a few times already. It’ll be even nicer once it actually warms up so we’re not dealing with cloudy, drizzly weather.

Being here is defintely very differnt, though, and in many ways. The biggest change is probably the size. The Dallas/Ft. Worth area has something like 3.5 million people. The entire state of Oregon has about 7 million. Where we are is maybe 300k or so. Obviously, this means that there just isn’t as much to do or going on here. On the plus side, I don’t actually do much so it’s not a huge problem. I kid, I kid, but it’s really not too bad. The biggest thing for me is the lack of massive commercialsm. In Dallas we had at least three of anything within a few minutes of your house. Here, though, there’s just one or two of something in the whole town.

I’ve not been able to sample a lot of the local stuff yet, but am slowly working on it. Of the few places thy I’ve been so far, it has certainly been interesting. While a lot of these types of places were in Dallas too, they weren’t really places I went. So far I’ve not found anything that is a lit like my old haunts, but I still have a lot of looking to do.

The other big thing here is the difference in the street culture. Dallas’s mayor all but had homeless people killed, whereas here there are at least three in every corner. I’ve not been hit up for money everywhere I go since New Mexico, so that’s some fun re-adjusting too. On the plus side, they have mostly all been polite, which is more than I can say for the New Haven homeless.

While there are a lot of aspects about Dallas that I really miss (despite hating Texas), I’m generally happy about the move. I do really miss my friends, though. I’m excited about what sort of new stuff I’ll get myself into up here. I’ll attempt to post updates, but can’t make any promises.

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How to be a Successful Twitterer

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

I’ve been on Twitter for a while now, and believe that I’ve seen enough to know how to become very successful and popular on there. Now, I know that there are a lot of Twitter “celebrities” out there that would have you think that they know how to use the service. To them, I say bollocks! I have been encouraged by no less than one person to share my wisdom with the world, and using FCC style statistics that means that at least 1 billion people want to know what I have to say. If the responses are positive, I might even consider expanding this into a full fledge eBook! Afterall, I think that’s currently the “thing” to do.

 

Your Bio

One of the most important things on your Twitter profile page is your bio. This is what everyone will look at to know who you are, what kind of person you are, where you are from, your favorite activities, your hopes, your fears, your childhood friendships, and your cat’s name. Since the bio is so important, many people spend as much as three months carefully crafting theirs. This is not something that you want to take lightly. Personally, I spent the better part of six months before I finally finished my bio. Since I like you guys so much, I’ll share with you what that bio is and how I got the inspiration for it. My bio is, “I needed a bio to get a better TwitterGrader score.” I’ll pause a moment to let you fully take in, and bask in its splendor. I know that you are wondering how I was able to come up with something so meaningful and profound, and here’s where I share with you my secret: I wanted to get a higher score on TwitterGrader. Amazing in its complexity, isn’t it? I encourage you to experiment with some different ideas for bios until you find the perfect one for your personality. Don’t be afraid to completely scrap an entire account and start over under a new identity if your bio fails miserably. Your friends and followers you’ve built up aren’t really that important. Which leads me to my next topic…

 

Friends and Followers

There is almost nothing as important as your friends and followers. Many people say that they really don’t care about how many followers they have, and this is usually completely true. You can tell that a lot of these people don’t care about their follower numbers because they have so many. Not only that, but many of them are also following thousands of people. Anyone that truly cared about their friends and followers numbers would never let this happen. You see, in order to be a truly successful Twitterer, you need to keep your friends and followers to as few as possible. This is very important. You ever wonder why Twitter pops up that Fail Whale so much? It’s because of the careless people out there stressing the system with all of their followers. Every time Britney Spears says that she’s using the bathroom, hundreds of thousands of people are notified. That takes a lot of work. A caring person would never let this happen. Which is why I can say after looking at Obama’s Twitter page that Barack Obama doesn’t care about Twitter people.

Now that I’ve told you that you need to keep your numbers low, you might be wondering how you’re supposed to do that. Since I’m such a nice guy, I’m going to let you know. Keeping your friends number low is pretty easy, as you just don’t follow anyone. You have total control over this, and so if your friends number ever gets above zero, you have no one to blame but yourself. As for followers, that takes a bit more work. If you’re following this guide, you’re going to become very popular, and as such a lot of people are going to want to follow you. Controlling this can be a bit tricky, but I have some suggestions which generally work well. This first is to be as offensive as possible. I find that it’s important to drop a racial slur or ethnic epitaph every couple of days. Since keeping racial slurs fresh is important, I recommend checking out the Racial Slur Database for some ideas.  I also find that mixing in some off-color jokes can be productive. I’m always on the lookout for new and insulting things I can put in my tweet stream. I encourage you to do the same. If all else fails, just talk about how much you love Rosie O’Donnell and that’ll work to weed out just about everyone.

 

Take This Seriously

Twitter users are busy people. They have lives and schedules, and can’t be bothered to waste a lot of time reading your tweets. They follow you in order to find out what you’re doing, and don’t need to you be frivolous about it. For that reason, you should never be funny. Your average Twitter user doesn’t have the time for your jokes. Just be as direct and too the point as possible. That 140 character limit is there for a reason. Don’t be afraid to have as many as 130 characters remaining in a tweet. When you’re telling your followers important aspects of your life, don’t try to embellish what you say. Your followers are all very interested in your life, and you don’t want to waste their time trying to be clever, just say, “I’m eating a cheese sandwich,” and be done with it. Straight and to the point, that’s what they want, not humor. These people have enough laughter in their lives already.

 

Hashtags

After spending some time on Twitter you will probably notice that people use hashtags in their tweets. This is when you have the # character followed by a word, acronym, etc. These can be very useful for tracking what’s going on, and for seeing who is talking about what. There are some important rules to follow when using hashtags. First, be as vague as possible. Try to use a hashtag that no one else will know what it means. This way you can feel superior and smug when people have to actually ask you what the hashtag is. Feel free to laugh at them and call them stupid for not knowing that #SCTJFAIHAO is Simon Cowell, the judge from American Idol, has an opinion. Another important note about hashtags is to use them as frequently as possible. Try to work in a hashtag into at least one out of every three tweets. When making all of those off-color remarks we talked about earlier, go ahead and tag them all (ie,#insultagainsttheentirepopulationofasmallpreindustrialcivilization). You should also know that it’s a good idea to make your hashtags as long as you can. If you’re using less than 53 characters (not counting the #) for your hashtag, you’re just not trying hard enough. Anyone can make an acronym that’s three letters long, stand out against the crowd with one that’s 103 letters. The last thing about hashtags is to claim ownership on them. When you come up with a hashtag, you can tell everyone that it’s yours. In fact, you don’t even have to come up with it. Even if there are five pages on Twitter search of people using it before you did, that doesn’t mean you still can’t say that you were the first to use it. 

 

Your Avatar

In addition to your bio, another important aspect of your profile is your avatar. This is the picture that you choose to represent you on your page. The default avatar is not very good, and you definitely need to change it right away. What you change it to is a matter of personal preference, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. The thing that is important to remember here is boobies. Everyone likes them, and the smartest Twitter uses will use them as their avatar. Look at how many of the followers you get have an avatar of a girl in lingerie or a bikini. That many people can’t be wrong. What you don’t want to do is have some boring picture of you, like a headshot or something. 

 

Auto DMs

A DM is short for Direct Message. This is a private message you can send to a fellow Twitter user. It’s important to note that the user has to be following you in order for you to DM them.  A common practice amongst the very popular Twitter users is to use a service to do “auto DMs.” This is where when someone starts to follow you, they automatically get a direct message from you. This message is usually a thank you and includes at least one or two links to sites that they are promoting. These sites will be their blog, Facebook profile, their porn site, etc. People just love it when they receive one of these auto DMs. It makes them feel special because you took the time to write an automated message for your followers. As I understand it, these auto DMs can generate quite a bit of traffic to the sites that are linked in them.  You should try to find a good service that lets you set up auto DMs and try it out. If you can’t find something online that you think works well, then feel free to hire out the service to someone online that will work for 40 cents an hour.  

 

Retweeting

A retweet is where you repeat someone else’s tweet in your own tweet stream. When someone does this, it’ll usually start with an RT and then the other person’s name followed by what they said.  A lot of times you will say something that you want as many people to see as possible. When this happens you should make sure to say that you want everyone to retweet it. You should also DM a few (like 50) people, and tell them to retweet it to. You should definitely do this when it is for something you are promoting, especially if it’s something people don’t act like they care about. This is a great way to get the word out about something that you’re selling, or something else you’re doing that is for your own benefit. Going back to the auto DMs, it’s also a good idea to include in there that you want your followers to retweet everything you say. 

 

 

There you have it. A bit of wisdom for those of you wondering how to be more successful on Twitter. I hope that you were able to get something out of this post, and that you’ll find it informative. Feel free to share it amongst your friends. If I get enough positive feedback here, I might consider becoming one of those social media gurus and go tell everyone how to be successful on Twitter. I hear there’s big money in that.

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