Sick & Tired of Facebook SPAM

I am really starting to get tired of all the spam… “So-and-so” posted “something” on your wall, but when you look at it, you are sent to an application that is supposed to quiz you and has nothing to do with anyone, writing on my wall, a photo of me that someone commented on, a picture of me within a photo, a nquestion about me, or anything.  Spam is what made me walk away from Yahoo, they did not take my privacy seriously.  Google has, and although I don’t like their monopolistic corporate greed attitude, I am still there because they are seemingly serious about protecting my account.

This is the same reason that people left MySpace and strolled over to Facebook.  We were sick of all the spam.  But if Facebook is just going to become another damn haven for spammers, you can count me out.

Facebook, get your head out of your butt right now.  Or I will be gone.

Do You Need Like-Minded People to Follow on Twitter?

Are you looking for some like minded people to follow on Twitter?  If so, you may have been following people that your friends have been following, trusting their judgment.  But this has not worked out well for me.  Often it works very well, but there are the few trouble makers with a crappy mouth that I do not like my son to see.  Since TweetDeck is updating at regular intervals automatically, this is a big problem.

But recently Twitter has introduced “lists”.  Lists allow you to categorize other twitterers (or “tweople”) into lists.  In my case, I have categorized a whole mess of people into quite a few lists.  This should allow some of you who are designers to follow other designers, and etc.

A list of my current lists, with links to them, follows:

@Domainating/authors
@Domainating/entrepreneurs
@Domainating/marketers
@Domainating/artists
@Domainating/sports
@Domainating/tools
@Domainating/directories
@Domainating/siouxfalls
@Domainating/seoers
@Domainating/resources
@Domainating/southdakota
@Domainating/developers
@Domainating/designers
@Domainating/domainers

Hopefully that’s a good place to start, anyway. I actually spent quite a bit of time building those lists. I hope you can enjoy a few of them.

These lists are meant to allow others an easy means to follow other like-minded professionals, but you don’t have to actually follow each member, individually.  From what I understand, Twitter allows you to follow each individual list, making it much easier to add everyone listed there.

However, remember that you don’t have to follow anyone in order to put them in your own list, either.  That is, I started a list of designers and added all the known/recognized graphic and web designers to it.  But I didn’t actually follow the guys who’s Twitter posts (“tweets”) weren’t in English.  I still want them in my list in case I need someone who speaks Polish better than I (or some other language), so that I have easy access to them should I need to contract a freelancer on a project.

I do suggest that you follow like-minded people, though.  For instance, if you don’t know anything about domain names, and don’t especially want to, don’t go through the list of Domainers.  You’ll only get a bunch of info you don’t really want to know, such as domain name news, domain names offered for sale, or maybe something like how to use Google AdSense to monetize your website.  Professional websites don’t show Google AdWords advertisements, after all.

Happy Tweeting!

Getting Started on Twitter Info & Tips

I’m sure that you have heard all the buzz on social networking, social media and/or social marketing.  Rest assured that it is a big deal.  This is not all hype.  Social media allows us immediate interaction online, which makes it much more immediately effective and impactful because things do change over time.

For those of you that keep hearing how Twitter is losing visitor traffic to the website and therefore it isn’t important, don’t listen to the naysayers.  That is a bunk statistic because what powers all those Tweets are third party applications and texting from smartphones or PDA devices.  Only recently has Twitter updated the user home page with web 2.0 scripting which allows them to update the user with new Tweet alerts, so no one was really accessing Twitter webpages too much in the first place. Most people are using it from desktop applications on their PC, notebook or netbook, on their smart phone or PDA, and they are using it from all over as they live their day, not just from home.

I can even attest that I have increased sales through Twitter by trying to be helpful, a good resource, and plugging my websites a bit without being spammy.  If you need help with it, just tweet me as @Domainating, or through one of my branded domain names for sale posting account brand names of either @DomainNameGamer or @PremiumBrand.  I am also online there with other accounts, but you might think I am spamming the group if I listed them all (and some of you probably think I am already being too spammy, but I am also trying to elaborate on my point that if you have multiple brands to protect, you should do so).

When “tweeting” on Twitter, remember that you are limited to 140 characters.  All the people (tweople) who follow you will be able to see your tweets (your posts).  It is much like social blogging in 140 character increments.  Anyone searching for posts that use certain keywords can actually see your posts as well.  And you can use this to your advantage by searching for customers looking for recommendations, as well.

Some Simple Tweeting Tips:

Your tweets (posts) can also be seen by even more people when they are retweeted.

As an example, let’s say I saw this tweet from JoeTrippi:

JoeTrippi  Google to improve upon HTTP protocol? Tests show it could speed up page loads by more than 50% http://bit.ly/u6mt9

So maybe I think the Web Design and Development group (WDaDg) members and followers should know this, so I “retweet it” by copying Joe Trippi’s whole post.

Then I start the next post I make with “RT @” – RT means ReTweet, and the @ (at-sign) in front of a username functions as a mention so that they get credit and anyone seeing the retweet can check them out by clicking on the username (and possibly add them as a resource to follow).  so now it looks like this:

RT @JoeTrippi Google to improve upon HTTP protocol? Tests show it could speed up page loads by more than 50% http://bit.ly/u6mt9

…now, everyone following me will see that, as well.  So if you have something significant or valuable to say and do it consistently, you might be followed as a good resource by those who are searching related keywords in posts to follow.

When you mention other tweople’s usernames using the @ mark, they will see it in a special mentions area.  However, others may not see it if it is the @ sign is the first character of the post.  If you want others to see something, you just have to make sure that another character (other than a space) precedes the @.  Lots of tweople use a simple dot so that a reply to someone by mentioning them in the post where they want others to see might look like:

.@Domainating Thanks for the tip.

If you don’t use the dot or other character to precede the @, others still may be able to see it, so not using the dot or other preceding character does NOT make it a private message.  For instance, it still can be seen in your quick quip next to your picture on any of your follower’s (people following you) following page (the list of people they are following, which is accessible from their profile page) as the last post you made when listed there (there are usually multiple pages, you would only be listed on one of them).

If you want to send a message directly to another person (tweep) privately that only they will see, you can send them a Direct message by using a “D”:

D Domainating, you are ugly and your mom wears army boots!

…only I would see that post (or anyone looking over my shoulder when I was accessing it).

The catch is that you can only D (Direct message) your friends.  That means that in order to D the username you want to, you have to be following him/her/it AND they have to be following you (which is considered a mutual friendship).  Perhaps this is why they made @ kind of private if there are no characters in front of it and the username in a message?

The “#” (aka the number sign, the American pound sign of weight, or at Twitter it is most often called the hash tag) mark helps categorize posts and trends that people can access as a keyword or category, so that people can browse tagged messages according to subject.  So I might post…

ICANN accredidation means nothing because all registrars have to follow ICANN rules, and ICANN does not police registrars. #domain #domains

So now this post has been categorized using the hashmark so that other people looking for posts using the domains and domain keywords can easily find them.  They also speak to the trends of subjects in the social network.

Note that you will find tweople looking for recommendations on a web designer, a CMS, a domain registrar, a smartphone, a wireless service, an antiviri & security suite software package, and more, and Twitter can put you immediately in touch with these people.  Now THAT’s real time (social) marketing.

Twitter can be quite useful.  And you will find that as you establish relationships and have engaging conversations, you will reap the most benefits.

Twitter Tools and Utilities:

There are also several directories that specialize in listing tweople.  The most popular is wefollow and by listing yourself there you can gain a following of others interested in the same subjects.

Klout (http://) is a Twitter analysation tool that you may be interested in.

TweetStats n. an app to graph your Twitter stats (or anyone else’s, incase you want to check them out before you follow them if you are worried).  The graphs are nice, but I like to see the most used words and hash tags.

As noted above, I use a Twitter client (third party software) to monitor my Tweets.  My favorite is an Adobe Air application, @TweetDeck:

TweetDeck “TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more.  TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organised and up to date.” …from the homepage itself.

…hope that helps you get started (if you aren’t already)!

Thanks for reading!