Social Media
Is Magpie a Good Way To Monetize Your Twitter Account?
Be-a-magpie is a way to “convert your tweets into bling-bling”. In other words, make money from your Twitter account. It first came across my radar because I was seeing tweets with the #magpie hashtag. When I checked it out, I was momentarily surprised but realized that it is inevitable.
In short, it works like this:
- Advertiser approaches Magpie to purchase advertising.
- Magpie matches the offer with Twitter users who are signed up to Twitter.
- Magpie tweets the ad out on your account in a ratio of 5 to 1, tweets to ads.
- You get paid.
Any businessperson can immediately see the theory behind Magpie. We know that social media and “going viral” are killer when it comes to promoting online. Twitter is huge and it makes sense (from the business standpoint) to use it to get out commercial messages. Just like PayPerPost and ReviewMe for blogs, Magpie has come in with a way to pay for tweets. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Assigning a Dollar Value To Your Twitter Account – Is It Just Wrong?
As you guys know (if you read this blog), I am a pro-blogger and that means I blog for cash. I turn my blogs into businesses which can feed me an income. So, I’m interested in monetary value.
But, there are some things where monetary value doesn’t – and shouldn’t – matter. And one of those is Twitter. So, when I saw TweetValue last week, I was rather taken aback. Here is the tweet I sent out when I found it:
Oh sweet jesus: http://tweetvalue.com/ – Now we’re assigning monetary value to a Twitter account? [sigh]
Unlike Twitterank, this one doesn’t ask for a password. Just plug in your Twitter username and out comes a value. It valued my Twitter account at $602. When I tried to find out how this was calculated, it only said “The value is calculated with a PH.D algoritm (sic) that is based on public information available on your Twitter profile”. I don’t think the guy could have possibly been more vague.
Assigning a value to a Twitter account is good for nothing except a fuzzy feeling. It just doesn’t matter because:
- Twitter accounts have followings because of the PERSON behind the account. If that account is sold, it would not retain the value.
- Value is only based on what somebody would pay.
- There is nowhere to buy Twitter accounts (that I’m aware of)
At the end of the day, this is supposed to be SOCIAL media. I understand that it is the natural inclination of people to rank and file things and Twitter is no exception. However, some things aren’t about money and I think Twitter is one of them. It just FEELS wrong.
What do you think?
What Is Your Twitter Grade?
It seems as if we’ve been seeing a wave of various sites that rank you among other Twitter users. Like Twitterank and TwinFluence. I came across another one called Twitter Grader. It ranks your Twitter profile up against other users of Twitter, based on things like number of followers, the power of your follower network, how often you update, and your profile bio. It gives you two numbers: your overall rank and your percentage out of 100.
It scored me at 99.5, and ranked me #1517 out of the 365,650 who have used the service since launch. Woo. Hoo? Not really sure.
These things are nice for a little moment of zen, and I guess it is the natural human inclination to want to take something like Twitter and rank and classify the people in it. Oh well.
So, what’s your Twitter grade? Post it as a comment. Oh yeah, and follow me if you’re not already.
Is Social Media Killing the Blogosphere?
I find it rather funny, but this question (or bold statement, I should say) gets repeated all the time on the Internet. In fact, I just came across a story from Wired which states that Twitter, Flickr and Facebook Make Blogs Look so 2004. Here we go again with the whole “blogging is dead” argument.
The Wired story even starts out this proof of the author’s idiocy:
Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.
He says your time is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook or Twitter.
The author talks about Jason Calacanis who so publicly “retired” from blogging and has, instead, taken his thoughts to a semi-private mailing list. Jason said that the blogosphere had become too impersonal and “lacks the intimacy” that drew him to it. That is fine, and probably a valid opinion, but it is also a statement of his personal taste.
Instead of telling people not to start a blog, the Wired author would have been better to simply state that the decision to start a blog depends on your intentions and that, yes, it is a lot more competitive than it used to be. He laments that popular sites show up in the search engines before your blog post. Well, how dare those evil search engines deliver the content most likely to be relevant to the searcher!
If your only purpose to being online is to occasionally publish random pieces of your life, then social media is great. If you don’t ever want to offer anything of any length to the Internet, then social media sites are fine. If your purpose is to make “friends”, then great. Get going on Facebook.
Social media sites are great, and they should be used by anybody with any form of Internet presence. The blogosphere is not dying because of these things. On the contrary, it is evolving and, in some ways, getting better. No longer does a blog have to be a little island that you have to market to get anybody to it. A blogger can put their digital tentacles our across the Internet so much easier today – because of social media.
In fact, a blogger who is actively engaged in social media often has an advantage over some of the larger media conglomerates. The importance of social media and social proof is increasing every day online.
The Wired author is dead wrong. If you want an Internet presence, DO start a blog. It can act as a hub of your digital world. A place where you can post long-form content as you see fit. A place which can act as a hub to your activities on all social media. And in addition to your blog, you ALSO want to be active on sites like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr and the like.
The motto is BE EVERYWHERE. And that includes your blog.
Digg, The Server Killer And How To Rescue Wordpress From It
I love Wordpress and I’ll continue to recommend it to anybody over another blog platform. On top of a great product, you also have a HUGE library of available plug-ins available which allow you to extend Wordpress into almost any situation. That said, that same extensibility also beefs up the code-base of Wordpress. This leads to server load.
I have talked about high server load with Wordpress before. I got the problem under control at the time, but it had gotten progressively worse over time. PCMECH had been dealing with some serious server load issues. With enough incoming traffic, the server would literally use up all it’s swap file space. When that happens, Apache literally just gives up and restarts. While that happens, the site is inaccessible.
Last week, to compound this problem, one of our stories on PCMECH made it onto the homepage of Digg. As expected, we got a HUGE influx of traffic.
The server could not keep up. Apache was dying and restarting every couple minutes – literally. For this reason, the incoming traffic logs did show an increase in traffic, but clearly not the huge effect we would usually see from the Digg homepage. All this because it was literally KILLING the server.
Click Here To Continue Reading »
FriendFeed Point System: My Proposal
The Internet is serious business, as I’ve been told. 
It is very competitive and we’re all out for blood, right? In order to be able to keep track of this fact, we need a point system and it looks like one has been informally developed over at FriendFeed.
The exchange goes like so:
[blah blah] posted a message on Twitter
“Bush sucks. Obama walks on water. Palin. Lipstick. Pigs. Neocons.”
+1 blah blah – [fellow blah blah]
[Sorry, I had to get in a jab at the leftie vibe over on FriendFeed 
]
So, “blah blah” gets a point. And we see this all the time. I don’t rack up as many points as some mainly because I don’t go on there and bash conservatives all day. Some people on the site have racked up lots of points, assigned by their fellow FriendFeed hounds. And this, of course, means they’re winning the game, I guess.
Where do we keep the scoreboard?
And how do we determine how many points a person gets?
Usually, it seems to be +1. Has everybody ever gotten a +5 for a particularly juicy post?
I propose the following point system for FriendFeed:
- -10 for saying something extremely hateful or disruptive, as determined by the community
- -1 for saying something somebody else disagrees with
- 0 for run-of-the-mill crappola
- +1 for saying something somebody else agrees with
- +2 for saying something notable, something with contributes to the conversation (regardless of people agreeing with it)
Here is the beauty of this point system: This is SOCIAL media, right? And regardless of whether there is a community bias or not, when you go the way the wind blows, you score. When you piss against the wind, you lose score. Hey, its social. If you say something noteworthy to get people thinking, to raise a good point, to be a thought leader – you get points regardless of whether the community agrees (only seems fair). And, lastly, if you say something very disruptive and hateful, the community is going to backlash and you lose major pointage.
To be fair, we would need a “pointage committee” to act as judge in the event of a dispute. Nominations?
[Disclaimer: The previous commentary was obviously written completely tongue-in-cheek. If you don't like it, -1 for you]
Tip: Finding Companies on Twitter
I know that a lot of smart companies are using Twitter these days. They are using the service to keep in contact with their customers, to field new ideas, to let their customers know of new announcements, etc. The commercial uses for Twitter are many.
As a consumer who might be using Twitter, it can be hard to find these companies on the site without manually searching for them or getting lucky. For example, when I was flying Southwest Airlines a few weeks ago to Seattle, I only by chance came across the fact that Southwest is active on Twitter.
In looking for a directory of companies using Twitter, I ran across a very useful resource called Social Brand Index. Their Twitter directory has a lot of accounts listed, including non-profit organizations, government agencies, media organizations, etc.
There is also Twellow, where you can search not only for companies but also people, categorized based on information in the profile bio.
I find it odd that Twitter is depending on third-party directories like this. Seems these would be extremely useful additions to the main Twitter site.
Introducing Twitter to Your Non-Geeky Family
A lot of us who use Twitter realize the value of it. We participate in it, gain value from our contacts, offer value to others, market our own sites, etc. Twitter is a valuable resource of knowledge when used properly.
OK, I get that. Perhaps you do, too. But, most people don’t. And nothing makes that more clear than trying to explain to a family member why you use it or, more so, trying to convince them to sign up.
My wife recently joined up with Twitter, mainly because I tell her every now and then of interesting exchanges I’ve seen on the site. However, she has participated very little. She tells me it seems stupid. Seems like a waste of time. “Why do I care about what other people had for lunch?”, she asks.
Valid question. I tell her, though, that perhaps she is just following the wrong people. The value you get out of Twitter is in who you follow and then, secondly, who follows you.
So, what benefits might there be to Twitter that your average non-techie family member might identify with? Perhaps:
- The fact that you can connect with people from around the world in real-time.
- The fact that you can ask a question and perhaps get an answer from your network.
- The fact that many companies are on Twitter and that can give you an “in” with them
- The fact that having a wide social network is valuable as an asset
At the end of the day, too, many of these people aren’t going to see the light until they actually experience the social interaction that Twitter can offer. Once they see that people actually talk back, they’re more likely to like it.
It helps that we’re seeing Twitter become more used in mainstream circles. I’m even seeing it mentioned on TV now. It also helps that Twitter has drastically improved their reliability. I haven’t seen a fail whale in some time now.
So, have you successfully introduced anybody to Twitter who isn’t a geek? And if so, how? What makes it finally click for a person?
Does FriendFeed Politics = Leftist Politics?
I might have been a bit slow to warm up to FriendFeed (wouldn’t be the first time), but today I am a pretty avid user. Yesterday, I actually spent quite more time on the site than I usually do, participating in discussions and monitoring the little squabble I got into with Scoble. But, one thing is very clear to me: FriendFeed has become extremely political.
Now, I guess it is to be expected. We are, after all, in a political season. The Internet is mostly dominated by the U.S., but people in other countries also monitor the U.S. election pretty closely. As an aside, I have always been impressed that people in other countries are almost consistently more aware of what is going on in the U.S. than even much of our own population. Sad, really.
Many have complained about the politics on FriendFeed and Twitter, as have I. But, as I said a couple days ago, this is SOCIAL media and that means the conversation is going to reflect society. Deal with it.
But, there is another issue and that is this: Is FriendFeed biased to the left due to the nature of it’s audience?
I don’t think it is any surprise that the west cost of the U.S. is primarily left-leaning. It’s just true. I was in Seattle recently and felt I was in the home of Obama supporters. Likewise, technology and web start-ups do primarily seem to come out of the west cost. So, is it possible that the nature of the population has led to a skewed political bias in the social media outlets? And I tend to think FriendFeed is probably more affected by this because Twitter has reached a much more mainstream audience than FriendFeed. FriendFeed is still in the early adopter phase.
When I am on Friendfeed, I see very little commentary which is positive for the Republicans. On the contrary, most everybody is an Obama supporter. And some get downright nasty with the comments against the Republicans. The attacks on Palin have been brutal. And being that such comments generally are to a sympathetic audience, it is more of a cheerleader mentality rather than an actual debate.
I’m a pretty fair guy and I quite honestly do not get into the team politics game. I have my opinions and, from time to time, you may see them poke through my writing or make their way onto FriendFeed. Being that I am not an avid Obama guy, perhaps the political leanings of FriendFeed are more obvious to me. If I were an avid Obama guy, I’d probably feel right at home. Perhaps not viewing everything through a party-centric lens makes it stand out that much more. And I’m quite aware than any Obama guy would read this and knee-jerk react that I am in love with McCain. And you would be wrong. Again, I have my opinions, but I despise party politics in all its forms and would classify myself as an Independent.
It’d be nice to see a little more balance, but alas I think FriendFeed just has to become more mainstream for that to happen. It could very well be that the kind of people who are most likely to use social media are also more likely to be Democrats. It could also be that social media users warm up to Obama because of his campaign’s extremely adept use of the Internet and social media.
But, I’m not here to give an answer. I’m just making an observation.
Political Correctness Goes Overboard on FriendFeed
Part of me says to let this issue drop because, yes, it started out with me making a stupid ass of myself. But, the other side of me is a blogger and you don’t become a blogger by being a chicken when you make an ass of yourself.
It all started with a tweet I sent out yesterday:
Does anyone else think its kinda gay that Google used a comic to introduce Google Chrome? A frickin’ comic?
This tweet turned into a shitstorm over on FriendFeed over one word: gay. Apparently, a few people took it to mean I was referring to homosexuals. In reality, I was using what is admittedly ghetto slang to mean stupid, lame, etc. Often it is spelled “ghey“, actually, but that spelling was created mainly to avoid potential claim that it targets homosexuals.
So, here’s the deal: I NEVER meant nor intended anything remotely having to do with homosexuals. Not in the slightest. When I got berated on Friendfeed over the word, I immediately realized I had stepped into a huge pile of bad because my use of that word brought on all kinds of emotion. It is not an argument I can win, and I immediately apologized on Friendfeed. I’m an adult and I can live up to a case of drive-by tweeting.
This conversation has drawn the attention of a few notables, including Louis Gray, Robert Scoble…I even saw that Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington liked the conversation. But, Scoble is the one who reacted most harshly and is the guy whose reaction borders on dangerous. Scoble, in fact, is my motivation for this blog post.
Scoble’s reaction devolved quickly:
Simian: I think David needs to be sent on a trip to Berlin to study Germany’s history and where it went wrong. The use of language against other people is horrible. I won’t allow it to be used that way here. David is very close to getting a block.
This just earned David a block. David, you really need to go back and study Nazi world history. How you can use a perjorative against any group without expecting to see consequences is pretty over the line in my book.
So, apparently Scoble blocked me on FriendFeed. What is interesting, though, is that (1) he puts so much weight into the symbol (a word) without even once questioning my actual intention, (2) he is cocky enough to think him blocking me matters. Especially after I apologized and made clear I was not referring to homosexuals, Scoble continued to pounce on it.
This is dangerous and is political correctness to the Nth degree. Perhaps I should expect this from a San Francisco liberal, but Scoble needs to realize that censorship and the use of symbols to control people is EXACTLY the way Nazi Germany operated. Scoble can be high-and-mighty with me all he wants, but I think he, too, needs to become more familiar with history to realize the danger political correctness like this can lead to. He is reacting in a way which brings on what he says he despises, but in reverse.
A word is a symbol and should never be confused with intentions of the heart. ESPECIALLY on the Internet where you do not have the benefit of reading a person’s body language and judging his/her character.
While Scoble overreacted, many others realized that I simply screwed up:
I can relate to what the guy is going through. I went through it with a different word last week
Apparently, I’m not alone.
Wow. Godwin’s Law in response to someone saying ‘kinda gay.’ That hasta be a new record, even for you, Robert. You might as well have quoted President Bush: “If you say something’s ‘kinda gay,’ that means the terrorists win!
Loren Feldman reacted to Scoble in his usual, colorful way:
In response to Loren, I don’t think Scoble was referring to the word “David”. My name is David and I think, perhaps, you misread Scoble’s comments. He was referring to me.
Nonetheless, I think a message from “Simian DA (Amber)” on FriendFeed sums up the lesson best:
If it is slang that was never used in a discriminatory manner against a group of people, slang should be fine. Its just if its going to FF, a lot of really liberal minds are going to see it.
And that was my mistake. I was using the word as a slang, and given that it had a lot of negative weight behind it as another definition, it was stupid as hell for me to use it. Especially considering the audience of FriendFeed.
I still, however, think Scoble’s reaction was not only overboard, but extremely narrow-minded and cocky (using a frickin’ FriendFeed block as a weapon of social change?). Being afraid of a word isn’t exactly a sign of intelligence. Scoble, don’t turn FriendFeed into a case of 1984 (and if you haven’t read that book, do).
I’ve learned something because of this, but I think it also brings up a larger issue of political correctness and that is why I decided to post a response today.
EDIT: THE MOTTO
There is a motto here that I learned and I want to make clear for the benefit of others. Social media sites like FriendFeed cast a wide net and have a lot of different kinds of people on there. We need to have an environment of respect among us and, for that reason, it is advisable not to use such slang on these sites. I learned this the hard way. I didn’t mean anything by it, but some thought I did and that is reason enough to jut be smart about the words used on these kinds of social media sites. Period.
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
