I’m 72% addicted to blogging.
I happened to visit Cotton-Pickin’ Days, where I learned that blogger “Cottontimer” is 77% addicted to blogging. I clicked the image proclaiming this, took the test, got my own results, and, like a good blogger, posted them right here.
Are you addicted to blogging? Take the test and see.
Can following a person’s tweets make him a real friend?
Sometime last night or this morning — I can’t keep track with the time zone thing — Andy Piper posted a Twitter tweet with a link to an article by Clive Thompson about Twitter. Because the article reinforces something I’d mentioned in my most recent post here about Twitter, I thought I’d share it.
The key paragraph (as far as I’m concerned) from “Clive Thompson on How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense” on Wired.com is this:
When I see that my friend Misha is “waiting at Genius Bar to send my MacBook to the shop,” that’s not much information. But when I get such granular updates every day for a month, I know a lot more about her. And when my four closest friends and worldmates send me dozens of updates a week for five months, I begin to develop an almost telepathic awareness of the people most important to me.
This is pretty much I was trying to say in the introduction of my post. But I can go on to say that even though many of these people started out as strangers, reading their tweets day after day have given me a certain awareness about them that a real friend — but perhaps not a good friend — would have.
I see Twitter as a way to make friends across the world. Although, I don’t ever expect to ever meet most of these people in person, there is a chance that I might actually make real friends with one or two.
For example, I’m actively seeking out interesting Twitter members who live in Arizona to follow. By following their tweets, I can get a sense of what these people are all about. If we have a lot in common, it’s easy enough to take the next step to start a real friendship. And it’s easy enough for them to respond or ignore me.
I’m not talking instant friendships here. I’m talking about possibly months of watching tweets as part of my day. In my case, that means having Twitterific open on my Mac’s desktop and peeking at the tweets of a handful of people as they come in. I delete “friends” who really don’t seem to be on the same wavelength with me and add “friends” who might. Over time, the ones who remain on my desktop are the ones that could become real friends. If they’re in the area, why not get together for coffee or a hike or a museum trip?
It all comes down to using Twitter seriously, which I’ve discussed in at least one other blog post about Twitter. Use a Twitter tool (like Twitterific or some other program that selectively tracks tweets) to track only the tweets of people who interest you. Obviously, real friends should be included — if you can get them to use Twitter.
To find new people to follow, I’ll occasionally watch Twittervision and read the tweets posted in the US, especially in my area. I’ll add one or two “friends” to track for a while. I also use the Public Timeline to find interesting tweets and add corresponding Twitter members. In both cases, I limit my time to about 5 minutes — without setting a limit, either of these monitoring tools could suck hours away from your life.
My biggest problem: Most Twitter users are between 18 and 27 years old. That really shows in their posts. (Take that any way you like.) My goal is to find mature, interesting people to follow.
And, little by little, I think I’m building up a good group of Twitter “friends.”
But the question remains: will any of these people become real friends? We’ll see.
My site reaches an arbitrary milestone.
Just before I [finally] got to work today, a peek at my Blog’s home page revealed that the site has had more than 100,000 visitors since July 1, 2007 — or in less than a year. And no, that doesn’t include my hits.
That’s a big deal for me — reaching this number in less than a year. It means I’m not blogging in a vacuum. It also means that if even 50% of the people who came here did so by mistake (hey, it happens), 50,000 people came and read at least one article. And if 90% came here by mistake (let’s hope not), 10,000 people came and read at least one article.
The number, of course, is arbitrary. I’ve been keeping a Web site since 1997 — more than 10 years now — and a blog since 2003. But my counter has only been at work since July 1, 2006. So I have no idea what the total count is. I’m just pleased about this count.
My next milestone: getting the comment count to exceed the post count.
Don’t mind me…I’m just crazy about stats.
Turning a fun thing into more marketing crap.
I’ve been using Twitter for about two months now. It’s part of my daily routine. Unfortunately, other people have also been using it — for their own selfish purposes.
I start up my main Mac and Twitterific automatically appears. I use it to scroll back to see what the folks I’ve been following have been up to for the past few hours. Sometimes, their tweets include links to interesting articles on the Web. Other times, they give me ideas for articles or stories or just things to think about. And other times, they’re just plain boring. Let’s face it — we can’t all be interesting all of the time.
I tweet throughout the day while I’m working. I also have something set up somewhere (I forgot now) that automatically posts a tweet whenever I post a blog entry. That’s all automated, which is a good thing. On a good day, I can put out 5 or more entries.
I like the reassuring tweet and ping sound when a new tweet comes in on Twitterific. I work alone at my desk with only Alex the Bird (in the next room) and Jack the Dog (under my desk) for company. While Alex does plenty of talking, none of it is very meaningful. Getting tweets from people I follow is like hearing from the outside world. I may be physically alone, but there are people out there doing stuff and thinking about things and they’ve made me part of their world by tweeting. Andy’s doing his computer and hacking stuff all over the U.K. Miraz is raising her dogs while working at a desk in New Zealand, not much different from mine, 20 hours into the future. Leanne is practicing her saxophone, doing gigs, and teaching at a college. Mignon is researching and recording podcasts and getting interviewed. Mike, the good dad, is doing stuff with his kid and making plans for the next addition to his family. It’s digital but it’s live and real and it gives me company throughout the day. And, in more than a few instances, I’ve actually learned things from these people, most of whom are complete strangers to me.
I also tweet when I’m out and about. When I invested in my Treo, I also invested, for the first time ever, in a text messaging plan. I get up to 250 text messages a month. That might not seem like a lot to the folks who text to their friends and family members throughout the day, but to me, it’s a ton. So I post tweets via telephone. (I also use my Treo to post photos to my TumbleLog when I happen to see something interesting or funny.) For example, I tweeted whenever possible during my recent Alaska vacation and maybe — just maybe — I gave a few folks some ideas of what to see or do if they ever head up there.
If you use Twitter regularly, you’ve likely gotten e-mail messages from Twitter telling you that you have a new friend and offering a link to that “friend’s” tweets on the Twitter Web site.
At first, you might feel flattered — here’s a stranger that wants to keep track of what you’re doing. You might decide to thank him or her (or it — sometimes gender is unknown — by making him/her/it your friend.
But stop! Wait! Do your homework.
I’ve discovered that more than a few Twitter users don’t give a damn about anyone else’s tweets. All they want to do is suck other Twitter users into following their tweets. And their tweets are full of self-promotional bull or plain old advertisements.
Take, for example, PersonX. I won’t use this person’s name because, until recently, I was following her tweets and she may still follow mine. I didn’t realize it at the time, but PersonX had at least 3 Twitter accounts. It should have tipped me off when all three became my friends at the same time. Two of the accounts — I’ll call them AccountY and AccountZ — were for informational “services” posted as tweets. One, for example, provided quotes from literature. I can’t remember what the other one did — I didn’t stick with it long. PersonX’s tweets were all about how popular AccountY and AccountZ were getting. Or, if they weren’t getting popular, they were musings about why they were being ignored. It was pretty obvious that this person’s accounts were solely to promote herself and these useless services.
One particularly popular Twitter member tweets throughout the day with the latest on who he’s interviewing and what cool new product he’s been allowed to play with. Then, later in the day, he releases a bunch of @name responses to the people who have tweeted directly to him all day. Reading a dozen of these in a row — especially when you’re not following the tweets of the person he’s responding to — is a real bore. Thank heaven Twitter only allows 140 characters. I could see a person like this filling the bandwidth with one-sided personal conversations that no one else cares about.
A few other people I’ve followed in the past just tweet links to articles they’ve written or promotional material. Someone who’s curious might follow these links and, thus, waste a bunch of time reading ads. There are quite a few of these people out there. More than there should be.
All this, in my opinion, is Twitter spam.
It’s easy to prevent yourself from adding self-promotional opportunists as Twitter friends. Just do your homework in advance.
How? Simple. When you get an e-mail message telling you that PersonY has added you as a friend, click the link in the message that displays the person’s most recent tweets. (This will be something like http://twitter.com/username.) Read them. Decide whether this kind of content is something that interests you. If it’s not, ignore him. If it is, add him as a friend.
It sounds cruel, but if someone you’ve added as a friend turns out to be someone who posts a lot of crap that you’re not interested in, it’s easy to remove their Tweets from what you see.
There are a few ways to do this. One way is to go to your Twitter home page (http://twitter.com/yourname/) and click the Friends link in the About box on the right side of the page.
This will list all of your friends:
For each friend, you should see at least two links beneath the Friend’s name:
To my knowledge, the friend does not receive an e-mail message saying that you have left or removed him. So you don’t have to worry about insulting him or him bugging you about it.
Oh, and if a Twitter member is obviously using Twitter solely for spam-like communications, do us all a favor and report him. The Twitter team offers a form for assistance; you can use the same form to report a Twitter member’s unacceptable behavior.
I still like Twitter. It makes me feel as if I’m part of a community, even while I’m sitting alone all day in my office. I’m just very picky about who I follow — I have only 33 Twitter friends as I write this — and I’m quick to turn off the Tweets of the people too quick to promote themselves or their products.
And I think that’s vital for any serious Twitter user.
It never ceases to amaze me how rude some people can be online.
Although I don’t closely follow any one blog closely, I do tend to read posts I stumble upon — including the comments left by other readers. And it never ceases to amaze me how incredibly rude some blog commenters can be.
What is it with people? Can’t they read a blog entry for what it is — a personal view of a particular topic?
Yes, I said personal view. That means a view formed, in part, by opinion.
Today, I read a post on a blog where someone commented in brief about the new features of Mac OS X Leopard. His comments were generally positive, but certainly not the comments of a “fan boy.” The first commenter attacked by saying that Leopard was a Vista rip-off and had absolutely nothing in it that couldn’t be found in Vista, which was a far superior OS. But rather than say this in the spirit of friendly debate, he went on the attack, rudely contradicting and belittling everything the blogger had to say.
Later today, I read a post by a blogger who made some negative comments about George Bush and the Iraq War. These were comments I’ve read in many other places, opinions that are shared by millions of people worldwide. Yet the first commenter went on the attack, presenting a laundry list of fallacies that he intended to prove that the blogger was wrong. Again, his comments were rudely presented, meant to belittle the blogger on his own blog.
Earlier today, I wrote a blog post about why I won’t be buying an iPhone. That post immediately attracted comments suggesting that I was stupid to be a Verizon customer, that AT&T was a far superior company than Verizon, and that no one cared about whether I bought an iPhone. Some of these comments were obviously written to make me look like a fool.
On my own blog.
What I can’t figure out is why. Why would someone take the time to bash a stranger for voicing an opinion?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: When you visit a person’s blog, it’s like stepping into their living room. Use some manners when you have something to say.
The blogosphere is filled with hate — people going out of their way to be nasty and spiteful to other people. Why? It’s so completely unproductive and, frankly, it makes these nasty people look like a bunch of stupid, rude SOBs.
I’m not saying that commenters shouldn’t voice opposing opinions. I’m just saying that they should do so with a certain amount of restraint. Kindness gets you a lot farther in this world than a bad attitude ever will.
And for heaven’s sake, if you have a constant need to post nasty comments on other people’s blogs, take a few days off to cool down. You need a break. You need to mellow out. You need to find your life and get back to it. And you need to grow up and stop acting like a spoiled child.