I’ve been using Twitter since March 20, 2007 (with hat tip to @jebro for his Twitter API solution for getting that exact date) — that’s about a year and a half now. I follow only 80+ people and currently have 300+ followers. I’ve tweeted over 7,700 times.

Although I’m the author of a bunch of books, I’m not a “celebrity author.” I tweet about the things in my life, which include using computers (which is what I write about), flying helicopters (which is my side business), taking photos (which is my hobby), writing, raising chickens, riding horses, etc. I tweet in full sentences and don’t go for any of that txt msg abbreviation stuff. My blog posts are automatically tweeted, as well as photos and other information I send to BrightKite and TwitPic.

I don’t think my tweets are boring, but I also don’t think they make for fascinating reading.

I really do follow the people I follow. That means that I read what they tweet. That’s why there’s only 87 of them. It would be tough to follow many more. I reply to many tweets directed at me with an @mlanger lead, but not all of them. Sometimes I just don’t have anything to say in response. But I also reply to other tweets when I have something to say that’s related.

I like my Twitter friends. They live all over the world. I hope to meet some of them in person some day.

But lately I’ve picked up a follower who seems to hang on my every tweet. This person sends me an @reply to almost every tweet I send out that isn’t a reply to someone else. Sometimes, this person sends several @replies directed to me in a row, related to tweets I made hours ago — or the previous day. Since I tweet 20-40 times a day, it’s tough to remember what the @reply is replying about.

As I mentioned, I don’t think my tweets are particularly interesting. I get responses from a lot of Twitter friends throughout an average day, but this particular follower replies 10 to 20 times a day. That’s at least 5 times more than any of my other followers.

It’s starting to really freak me out.

I’ve actually considered blocking this person so he or she does not see my tweets. I don’t follow this person, mostly because this person’s tweets are all meaningless @replies to other people he or she follows.

Now I know this person is going to read this — after all, all my blog posts are being tweeted — and I don’t want to hurt this person’s feelings. But I really do want this person to stop @replying so often. Maybe even stop following me.

After all, I’m really not that interesting.

The other day I discovered Facebook ads.

Let me take a few steps back before I move forward.

I have a Facebook account. I even have 50+ friends on that account. But I don’t use Facebook. Frankly, I feel that I have far better ways to spend my time than “writing on walls” of my friends, playing online games, and browsing a social networking site for social interaction.

The only reason I ever go to Facebook is to respond to friend requests. If I personally know the requesters or interact with them on Twitter, I accept the request. Otherwise, I ignore it. I also ignore invitations to most groups. After all, if I’m not there, why join a group?

Every once in a while, I come really close to killing my Facebook account. Then I figure, what the heck? It doesn’t cost anything and I have most of the notifications turned off so it doesn’t even bother me much.

But the other day, when I was on Facebook responding to a request from someone I don’t know who happened to go to the same high school as me (I can’t make this stuff up), I noticed the ad column on the right side of the page. At the very top was an “Advertise” link. Since I’m always looking for new, affordable ways to advertise my helicopter tour and charter business, I clicked the link.

I won’t bore you with the details. Simply said, the advertising feature makes it very easy to create targeted text/image ads that link to a site or page. You can pay per impression or per click. You can set per click and per day maximum budgets, so you don’t have to worry about going broke. And, since the only place these ads appear is on Facebook, you don’t have to worry about some Webmaster clicking up a link to squeeze a few more pennies (or dollars) out of you.

I set up two ads. One (left) is for my multi-day excursions. It’s displayed to male college graduates throughout the US, aged 25-50 who like helicopters, adventure, etc. My logic is that this is the kind of trip that would appeal to men and since it’s not exactly cheap, the college graduate and age requirements may limit the impressions to folks who have more money to spend. (Although who has any money to spend these days?) The other (right) is for Christmas gift giving. I targeted that geographically to the Phoenix area, with no other limitations. Clicking either link takes you to Flying M Air’s Web site where the clicker can find more information and pricing.

Facebook has some good management tools to help you see how many times each ad has appeared and has been clicked. For example, on the first two days my ads were online — and that’s not even 2 full days — they appeared a total of 60,000 times and were clicked 16 times. While you might not think that’s very good, I’m thrilled. I don’t want people to click if they’re not interested, since I have to pay for each click. The campaign is under its daily budget (so far) and I can remove or suspend either (or both) ads any time I like.

So I’ve set up two ads to run for a full month. Let’s see where it takes me.

Comments? Want to share your experiences with Facebook advertising or some other pay-per-click system? Use the comments link or form below. Please limit your responses to experiences as an advertiser, though. I’m not interested in reading about the success or failure of someone’s get-rich-quick on Web advertising scheme.

My friend, Jim, is an Idaho-based R44 pilot with a company very similar to mine. He’s a single pilot Part 135 tour and charter operator who sometimes operates over very remote terrain.

Of Flight Plans and Flight Following

One of the challenges we face as charter operators is last-minute route changes requested by paying passengers. For example, suppose the passenger books a flight from Scottsdale to Sedona. I’m required by the FAA to file a flight plan that indicates my route so that if we don’t turn up in Sedona, they’ll know which way we went and can [hopefully] find us. But at times — sometimes after the flight is already under way — the passenger might say something like, “Can you follow the course of the Verde River to Camp Verde?” This is not the most direct route and it’s not likely to be the one I planned. But what do I do? Say no?

[The right answer is yes, say no. That's the answer the FAA wants to hear. But the FAA is not paying by the hour to conduct the flight. The FAA is not going to refer its friends to a friendly, accommodating pilot.]

The problem is, if I deviate from a route and something goes wrong, the search teams may not be looking for us anywhere near where we are. So they might not find us. And sure, I have an ELT (emergency locator transmitter) in my aircraft — even though it is not required by the FAA. But how well do those really work? It certainly didn’t help them find a pilot and his co-worker when they literally disappeared on a flight between Deer Valley in North Phoenix and Sedona nearly two years ago. They’re still missing.

And then there’s Steve Fossett. Or maybe I should have said, where’s Steve Fossett. They must have spent millions by now to find him and he’s still among the missing.

Airplane pilots and pilots flying in the flatlands of the midwest can request something called flight following from the flight service station (FSS). Flight following keeps you on radar so they pretty much always know where you are. The problem with helicopters is that we fly so darn low. Even if I flew up in nose bleed territory at, say, 1500 feet above ground level (AGL), the terrain in the area I fly is too mountainous to keep me on radar. I’d have to fly much higher to stay on radar. And if I’m going to be that high, I may as well fly a plane. So flight following is not a practical solution.

The True Geek’s Solution

Jim also flies in remote and often mountainous areas. And, like me, he’s a true gadget lover — someone who likes to fiddle with electronic toys. (I think he’s lusting for a POV.1 after seeing mine.) He was based in Chelan for cherry drying season and happened to see the SPOT Messenger displayed at the local Radio Shack. He went in and checked it out. Then he did more homework. Then he bought one and told me about it.

The SPOT Satellite Messenger is a personal location device. It’s about the size of my Palm Treo and, as you can see here, bright orange so it’s easy to…well, spot.

My understanding of the unit is that it combines GPS receiver technology with satellite transmitter technology. So you turn it on and it acquires its position via GPS. You can then use one of four different features, depending on the subscription plan you choose:

• The SPOT standard service plan, which costs $99/year, includes the following three features:
  • OK sends a text message or e-mail message to the phone numbers or e-mail addresses you specify. The message, which is customizable, tells the people on the list that you’re checking in OK and provides the GPS coordinates for your position. Those coordinates include a link that, when clicked, displays your position on Google Maps.
  • Help, is similar, but it sends a customizable help message to the people you specify. The idea here is that you need help and have no other way to contact someone who can help you.
  • 911 sends your GPS coordinates to the folks at the GEOS International Emergency Response Center, who, in turn, notify the appropriate emergency authorities. This is for real, life-threatening emergencies. The Response Center folks also contact, by phone, the two people you specify to notify them of the signal.
• The tracking upgrade option, which costs another $49/year, includes live tracking, which, when activated, sends you GPS position every 10 minutes or so to the SPOT folks. This information is visible to anyone who has been given access to a Share page you configure with or without a password.

Jim went with both plans. When I bought mine on Monday, I did the same.

First Thoughts

I’ve been playing with SPOT on and off since Tuesday morning. In general, I like it and I think it’ll do the job I intend to use it for — flight following on those long cross-country flights.

After configuring message recipients, I started out by sending a few OK messages. Although the marketing material makes it seem as if those messages are instantaneous, they’re not. After pushing the OK button, the unit will try for up to 20 minutes to send your OK location via satellite uplink. It’ll send the message 3 times, but only one message is forwarded to the people on your list. For experimental purposes, I made myself one of those people. I had to wait longer than 20 minutes to receive one or two of the messages. To be fair, part of the reason for that could be my location at the time — flying between Wenatchee and Seattle in mountainous terrain. (I don’t think my cell phone was receiving very well.) The delay is satisfactory, once you realize that it’s not an instant communication.

For obvious reasons, I have not used Help or 911 yet. Let’s hope I never have to.

I did set up tracking. It took several tries to turn it on properly. The unit does not have a screen, so you have to rely on understanding the blinking lights to know what it’s doing — if anything. Twice I thought I was enabling tracking, but discovered that all I did was send OK messages. Once, tracking was on and in trying to turn it on, I really turned it off. In all cases, it was operator error. Evidently, you cannot turn on tracking during the 20-minute period in which an OK message is being sent. Since both features use the same button, it’s pretty easy to do one thing instead of the other if you don’t pay attention to how long you hold down the darn button.

My husband complained that the messages he received did not include the date and time. We later realized that it was because he was not viewing the message on his phone; he was viewing its summary. (My husband is text message challenged.)

The e-mail version of the OK message is handy because of the link it includes. Click it and go right to Google Maps with the position clearly marked. Here are two examples. In the first one, we’re flying just to the east of Snowqualmie Pass over I-90. In the second one, we’re sitting on Pad 6 at Boeing Field in Seattle. These images are at two different magnifications. All GoogleMaps features work — it’s just the location put into GoogleMaps. My personal Messages page on the FindMeSpot.com Web site displays all points with the option of displaying any combination of them on Google Maps. It also enables me to download these points to a GPX or KML format file for use with a GPS receiver or GoogleEarth.

The Share page feature, which is still in beta, was not working when I first tried it. But it’s working now — and quite well! I set up a page that does not require a password so anyone could check in and see where I was when I was traveling with SPOT tracking turned on. Apparently, it only shows the past 24 hours of activity, so it you’re checking it now and there’s nothing going on, it’s because I’m not traveling with SPOT. But here’s what it looks like right now; as you can see, I spent a lot of time exploring Walla Walla, WA today:

A few things about this feature:

• The lines between the points (which, for some reason, are not showing up in the screenshot) do not represent tracks. I was in a truck today and did stay on roads.
• If the unit did not have a clear shot of the sky, the point that should have been recorded wasn’t. This wasn’t a problem today, since I had the unit sitting on the dashboard in the broiling sun — partially to see if heat would affect it. (It didn’t.)
• Clicking a point in the list on the left side “flashes” that point in the display. You can also click other controls to get more information.
• If you leave this page open, it will automatically update. So you can watch new points appear if you’re tracking someone. Way cool.

The URL for this feature is long and impossible to remember, so I created a custom URL using TinyURL: http://www.tinyurl.com/FindMaria. I invite you to try it for yourself.

Overall

My overall opinion is very positive. It will certainly give me peace of mind while flying in some of the remote desert locations I fly in. I think it’s worth the $150 unit cost plus annual subscriptions.

Even if something goes terribly wrong out there, I want to be found.

My next challenge: getting it to send OK messages to my Twitter account. Anyone have any ideas?

I’m an avid Twitter user with 5,000+ tweets to my name since I joined up over a year ago. I tweet from my computer, usually using Twitterrific, and from my Treo smartphone, usually using text messaging. I don’t follow tweets via text message, but while I’m out and about, I occasionally will use the Treo’s Web browser to see if I’m missing anything interesting among the people I follow in the Twitterverse.

If you know Twitter, you know that you can select whether you should be notified by e-mail when you get a new follower. I have this option turned on. Each time someone follows me, I get an e-mail message with a link to his/her page. In the past, this has enabled me to identify new, interesting people to follow.

Twitter, like all online services, has abusers. In the old days, this was limited to people who tweeted more promotional material and links than real “What are you doing?” content. These people used bots to follow everyone they could. And there were just enough idiots out there to follow them, making them look somewhat legit.

For new followers, I’ve always applied the 10% rule. I wrote about this rule in my post, “Twitter Sluts.” This rule states that if the Twitter member is following more than 10 times the number of people who follow him, he’s following indiscriminately and is probably abusing the system. In reality, he’s not “following” anyone at all. He’s just trying to get suckers to follow him.

Now there’s a new breed of spammers. They set up a Twitter account and post a single tweet with something like “This make money fast plan really works: http://www.somebogusplan.com/.” Then they use bots to follow every person who tweets.

People like me, who want to find new, interesting people to follow, get the notification in e-mail and click the link to check out the user’s Twitter page. What I see is the promotional link and stats that include thousands of people being followed and only a few idiots following in return.

Obvious spammer.

This wouldn’t be so bothersome if it were just one or two of these abusers a week. But I’m getting 2 to 5 of them a day. Following up on these people is becoming annoying.

While I could turn off notifications, I’d also miss out on the real Twitter users who are legitimately following me, people who I might want to follow. So that’s not an option.

Now the folks at Twitter have a technique in place to report spammers. It requires me to go to a feedback page, fill in a form with a number of fields that don’t apply, and put in the spammer’s account name. The entire process takes about 3 minutes to complete — when my currently funky Internet connection cooperates. With 5 spammers a day, that’s 15 minutes of my day pissed away on report spammers.

I don’t know about you, but my time is more valuable than that.

While I could simply ignore them, I’ve taken to using the Block button at the bottom of the user’s Twitter page to block them. This feature is designed to prevent the person from bothering me again or from seeing my tweets. But I think that if enough people do this and if the folks at Twitter occasionally glance at who’s being blocked by more than 5 or 10 people, it could be a quick and effective way to identify spammers. Just two clicks — Block, then a confirmation I want to block — the job’s done.

Of course, if the folks at Twitter installed a “This is a Spammer” link on the user’s page, it would make it clear what we’re all trying to say. I’ve put that in as a suggestion, but am still waiting.

The folks at Twitter have enough on their hands right now, just trying to keep Twitter up and running smoothly 24/7. I hope that when they’re done with that daunting task, they’ll tackle this one.

But they should keep in mind that once they put controls in place to prevent spamming, they’ll have a lot less activity on the site to worry about.

I don’t follow many people on Twitter — less than 100, in fact. I think part of the reason for this is that when I follow someone, I follow him/her. I sit at my desk with Twitterrific running on the right side and, thoughout the day, I peek at it to see what’s going on with the people I follow. I respond a lot, which I know is falling out of favor these days. But that’s because the people I follow are my office co-workers, so to speak. They keep me company while I work and, like any workplace environment, social conversation is part of the picture.

Enter, the Abusers

Anyway, because I read all the tweets of the people I follow — well, at least all of those that appear in Twitterrific while I’m at my desk or on the Web when I happen to take a peek with my Treo — I see patterns in the way they tweet. I wrote about this at some length last June. (Is it that long ago already?) And I soon discover which ones have joined Twitter for purely self-promotional reasons.

You know these people. Almost every tweet they make is a link to something they’ve written. While I’m guilty of using Twitterfeed to automatically tweet about new blog entries as I post them, these folks often go far beyond that by repeatedly tweeting the same damn links, sometimes over several days. This wouldn’t be so bad if what they were linking to was something worth reading, but often, it’s just more self-promotional crap.

These people don’t last long as my Twitter friends.

Three Strikes and You’re Out

To make it easier to identify the Twitter friends who are most guilty of using Twitter primarily (or, worse yet, exclusively) for self-promotion, I’ve developed the Twitter Strikeout Rule. It’s very simple and can easily be applied by anyone who knows the rules of American baseball.

Here’s how it works:

• Each time a person tweets, he’s “at bat.”
• If the tweet is entirely self-promotional in nature, that tweet is a strike.
• If the person has three strikes in a row, he’s out. (That means I simply stop following him.)

The way I see it, my life is already bombarded with advertisements. One of the few places I can get some relief is in my own office, at my desk. Do I really need to see an endless stream of self-promotional bullshit from the people I let into my workplace? Of course not. So I merely push them out.

Once of the nice things about Twitter is that it doesn’t tell people when someone has stopped following them. That’s nice because it means I don’t have to insult anyone. They don’t even notice I’m gone. Most of these folks have far more followers than they deserve anyway.

A Home Run

Taking the baseball analogy a bit further — heck, why not? — a Twitter Home Run is a tweet that’s really good. Usually it’s a link to a video or blog post or plain old Web page that is funny or makes you think or teaches you something really useful.

Sometimes — but rarely — its just a plain linkless tweet that does the same thing.

Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies), for example, has the uncanny ability to pop these things off more often than anyone else I follow. Here’s one from a while back that I favorited:

Starting a blog solely to make money is like learning ventriloquism to meet girls.

John Gruber (@gruber) writes the funniest rants. Sherrie Holmes (@sherrieholmes) can be hysterically funny. Tom Negrino (@negrino) comes across as a very funny, grumpy, old guy. (Sorry, Tom. I know you’re not old. But you must admit you write grumpy tweets.)

Think about the achievement of using 140 characters or less to communicate something memorable, something to make a reader laugh or think. That’s pretty special. It’s something that all serious Twitter members should aspire to.

But then again, that’s just my opinion. What do you think? Which of your Twitter friends hit home runs? Use the Comments link or form to tell us.

More on Twitter

I’ve been using Twitter for about a year now. (The first blog post where I refer to it dates back to March 21, 2007.) I’ve tweeted 3,806 times since then. Most tweets come from Twitterrific, but I also tweet right from the Twitter Web page at my desk or via text message from my Treo when I’m out and about. Amazingly, I still enjoy it. I’ve made a bunch of real friends and have strengthened my relationships with people I knew before Twitter.

If you’re interested in reading more about what I have to say about Twitter, you might find these articles interesting:

• Four Steps to Get the Most Out of Twitter
• Twitter Spam
• Twitter “Friendships”
• Message to Twitter Users: Use a Lint Screen
• Twitter Sluts
• Twit This

Like so many techno-geeks these days, I’m involved in a bunch of social networking sites: Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, RedBubble, Flickr, MyBlogLog, etc. And all of these sites give each member the ability to include an avatar — an image to represent that user.

Maybe I’m not very creative, but my avatar is a photo of me. It was taken by photographer Jon Davison during one of our flights last September. It shows me in one of my favorite places: at the controls of my helicopter, flying over the Arizona desert. (I think I’m over the Little Colorado River Gorge in this shot.)

The way I see it, my avatar is supposed to represent me. What could represent me better than a photo of me doing something I like to do?

Evidently, not everyone has the same idea. While many of the avatars I see in Twitterrific are photos or drawings of the people they represent, quite a few are not. And in other social networking sites — MyBlogLog comes to mind — the majority of avatars don’t bear any resemblance to the people they’re supposed to represent.

I find this bothersome, especially among my Twitter friends. Why? Well, in most cases, an avatar is the only visual representation I have for a person. If the avatar features purple hair or a goofy cartoon face — you know who you are, folks! — that’s the image I have of that person. And it’s a lot tougher for me to take these unrealistic avatars seriously.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I find it easier to communicate with people I can take seriously.

A few more notes on avatars:

• Some people seem to like using their Second Life avatars as their social networking avatar. While I could write a dissertation covering my thoughts about Second Life — starting with, is your first life so bad that you need a second one? — I’ll just say that Second Life avatars are generally a highly stylized version of how people want to look. While few of us are supermodels, surely there’s a decent photo of these people somewhere that they can use online.
• Some people use glamour photos for avatars. I have a colleague who does this. When I met her in real life, I didn’t recognize her. Let’s face it, we only look like our glamour photos in our glamour photos — after they’ve done the photo shoot and brought our faces into Photoshop for some digital plastic surgery. Every time I see this avatar, I have to remind myself that she doesn’t really look like the photo.(Of course, it’s also made me want to get a glamour photo.)
• Some people use photos of their pets as avatars. Talk about going to the dogs! Do the dogs really look better? Or do they just identify with their dogs? Ditto for cats, birds, and miscellaneous wild animals.

Of course, none of this has to do with special-purpose avatars used to promote an idea or cause. An example is the Frozen Pea avatars that many of us wore on Twitter for a few Fridays to raise awareness and funds for Breast Cancer Research through the Frozen Pea Fund. I was a single pea for the day. My favorite avatar was one Twitter friend who created an image of his head sticking out of a pea car.

But I’d like to start a movement among serious social networkers. Be proud of your face and show it off as your avatar! It doesn’t have to be a full-face shot; it can be creative. (Some of the best avatars I’ve seen show only part of a person’s face.) But it should show you, as you really are.

I’d just like to see who I’m tweeting to.

A feed subscriber has indicated that he’s not too fond of the “Twitter Updates” posts that are posted automatically each night by Twitter Tools. He’d like to see them off the feed.

But if people want them off the feed, they probably also want them off the site. So that’s the question for this newest poll.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about and would like to vote, please look at some examples first.

Use the Comments link or form below if you like. Try not to be too cruel.

6-Sep-07 Update:
I turned the Twitter Updates post feature off over the weekend.

Today, I downloaded and installed the Ultimate Category Excluder plugin and set it up to keep the Twiiter Updates posts off the Home page and out of the feeds. So I turned the Twitter Updates Post feature back on. With luck, they should not appear in feeds or on the Home page. But they’ll continued to be archived to this blog, primarily for my own journaling purposes. Thanks everyone for the feedback. I’m closing the poll down now.

12-Dec-07 Update:
I decided to kill the Twitter Update posts completely. Not only did I disable the plugin’s features, but I deleted all the update posts from the system.

I recently found Twit This, a Web site that enables you to post any URL to Twitter as a tweet.

Here’s How It Works

When you browse to a Web page you want to share with your Twitter followers, you invoke Twit This. (I’ll explain how to do that in a moment.) The first time you use this feature (or if you have not set up your browser to remember your password) you’ll be prompted for your Twitter User ID and Password to log in. You’ll see a form like the one here. Choose an option from the pop-up menu to indicate the text you want to appear before the link and, if desired, add some additional text in the box beside it. Then click the Twit This Page button. The link and your text will be sent to Twitter as a tweet. A confirmation page with a link to the tweet appears so you can view it.

It’s quick and easy. The only thing I don’t like is that it doesn’t return you to the original page when it’s done. (But I’m just picky that way.)

Invoking Twit This

There are a number of ways you can invoke Twit This for a URL.

• Install and use the Twit This bookmarklet. On the Twit This home page, you’ll find a bookmarket that you can drag to your browser’s toolbar. You can then click the resulting button while viewing a page you want to Tweet about to access Twit This’s features.
• Click a Twit This button or link in the post. Of course, that requires the blogger or Webmaster to include a link like this. (Keep reading.)

Adding a Twit This Link to Your Posts

The Twit This site’s Home page includes code you can insert in your Web pages to add a link that will invoke Twit This. The code, which uses JavaScript, is available with or without a clickable button. You can include the code anywhere you like on a page.

If you’re a WordPress user, you might want to try the Twit This plugin, which will place a link for each post. I downloaded this plugin but I admit that I didn’t install it. I’m very particular about how and where my links appear, so I decided on a do-it-yourself approach.

To manually add a Twit This link to a post, insert the following code anywhere within The Loop in your template file(s):

<a href="http://twitthis.com/twit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>">Twit This</a>

When you save the change, the link will appear for each post. You can see the Twit This links on this site at the bottom of each post. I got fancy and included a tiny Twitter icon so it would match the format of the other bookmarking/social networking sites I listed.

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Try It!

Obviously, if you’re a Twitter user, the bookmarklet is a great way to share your Web finds with your Twitter followers. But if you’re a blogger or Web designer interested in getting more exposure for your posts or site, including a Twit This link can help spread the word. After all, not everyone will have the Twit This bookmarklet installed. But many Twitter users will be interested in trying out a Twit This link.

After all, that’s how I learned about Twit This myself.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t a new term. And maybe I’m not qualified to define terms like these. But as I get an e-mail to inform me of yet another Twitter follower who has nothing in common with me, I came up with this term and felt a need to share it and its definition with the blogosphere.

A Twitter slut is a Twitter member who indiscriminately adds Twitter friends to his (or her) account. He may be doing this for one or more of the following reasons:

• He’s believes that all of the people he adds as friends will reciprocate and add him as a friend so he has a large audience for his tweets. I discussed this phenomena in my “Twitter Spam” post.
• He’s hoping that other people will respond directly to his tweets using the standard @membername format so other people will make him their friend.
• He’s desperate to follow the tweets of anyone who can type intelligible comments into Twitter. That is a minority that I am apparently part of.

Twitter sluts can easily be identified by their friends to followers ratio. If that ratio exceeds 3:1 (that is, 3 friends for each 1 follower), that person is may be a Twitter slut. If the ratio is around 5:1 (5 friends for each 1 follower), that person is likely to be a Twitter slut. It the ratio is closer to (or higher than) 10:1 (10 friends for each 1 follower), that person is definitely a Twitter slut.

Here’s an example. This person has been a member of Twitter for only 9 days. Yet he’s added over 4,000 members as friends. With only 9 updates to his name, he has apparently attracted 398 suckers to reciprocate his friendship.

(Okay, okay. I’ll try to tune down the cynicism. But it’s very difficult sometimes.)

The other day, a Twitter member on the public timeline asked, “Am I the only one who gets a bunch of new friends every time I post a tweet?”

The answer: no, you’re not. Like the rest of us, you’ve just been discovered by a handful of Twitter sluts.

After reading, mostly on Twitter, a lot of hype about Pownce, I finally got an invitation from a fellow Twitterer, newmediajim. I signed right up to check it out.

And was extremely unimpressed.

Sure, Pownce is pretty — much prettier than Twitter. And Pownce is apparently attracting the more mature crowd that I wish used Twitter more frequently. And Pownce offers a lot of additional features, like file exchange, event sharing, and the ability to send messages to just your friends — or a specific friend.

But, as one of the recent TWiT participants mentioned on the most recent TWiT podcast, why do we need that? We have e-mail to send files and online calendar programs to send event notifications.

Finding new Pownce friends is virtually impossible without a “public timeline” like Twitter has — you can only see the messages posted by your Pownce friends and the people you are a “fan” of. Of course, there is the occasional “public” message, which goes out to everyone. But in the one week I’ve been a member, I’ve only received one of those, so it’s obviously not a feature people want to use.

And I really like Twitterific, which works with Twitter. The Pownce non-browser solution requires you to install Adobe Air and then an application that runs within it. I don’t know about you, but I think Adobe is even worse than Microsoft at installing a lot of useless under-the-hood crap on your hard disk when you install its software. I prefer to keep new Adobe apps off my computer unless I need them to get my work done. (Can someone explain what Adobe Bridge is all about and why I should keep it when I have a perfectly good Mac OS Open dialog?)

And then there’s the advertisements vs. fees we can expect in the future. A note on the Pownce sidebar urges you to “Go Pro!” This will support larger files — certainly larger than you can send in e-mail — and will hide advertisements. Right now, there are no advertisements. There aren’t any on Twitter, either — unless you count the never-ending stream of self-promotional tweets by some Twitter members (which are easily blocked out). Pro will cost you $20/year. Is it worth it? We’ll see. But I know that if Pownce starts filling up with advertisements, I’ll use it even less than I currently do — which is once every few days, just to check in.

Because you must have an account to participate at all on Pownce, the folks at Pownce give new members 6 invitations so you can invite your friends. Trouble is, I have enough trouble convincing my friends to get online with Twitter, which I prefer. If I’m going to bring new friends online to this new kind of social networking phenomena, I’m going to ask them to join Twitter, not Pownce. I have no desire to monitor both services.

Now I know that Pownce was created by the folks who gave us Digg. And there are rumors flying around that any anti-Pownce Diggs are being buried by the folks at Digg. (It would be interesting if everyone who read this post dugg it just to see if it survived this test; you can find a “Digg This!” link at the bottom of the post.) And the TWiT-TV team seemed to have a lot of respect for the programming team. But even they aren’t pushing Pownce. And that says a lot because they push almost everything they talk about.

In any case, I have 6 Pownce invitations — unless the folks at Pownce take them away from me for being so unenthusiastic. I’ll hand them out to the first six people who comment on this post and specifically say that they want an invitation. Please do not put your e-mail address in the body of the comment. Just put it in the e-mail field of the comment form; I’ll find it.

And if you’re reading this and already have a Pownce account, please use the Comments link or form to tell us what you think about it. Am I missing something? Or do you have the same general thoughts about Pownce?

And, for the record, I was equally unenthusiastic about Jaiku. Sorry.

I write about Twitter too much. I know that. But Twitter has become part of my life and, like other things that are part of my life, it has given me plenty to write about.

Today’s topic is Twitter fluff. That’s my term for the kinds of tweets that are downright boring and childish, written by people who should know better. The sole purpose of these tweets seems to be to fill the Twitter world with content. Trouble is, the quality of that content is about equal to the quality of the stuff that accumulates in a clothes dryer’s lint screen.

While you expect that kind of behavior from people who really don’t have anything to tweet about or people too immature to realize the significance of their everyday experiences, you don’t expect it from people with experiences worth sharing.

I’m not naming names here. Or Twiter IDs, for that matter. But I recently added a professional journalist to my list of Twitter friends. This is a person who works for a media organization and typically follows stories relating to the Iraq war and politics — stories that matter. An adult. A professional. Someone who should have interesting tweets.

What I found, however, is that more than half of this person’s tweets are messages to his new Twitter friends to greet them. For example, “Hi new Twitterfriends, @AlexTheBird, @JackTheDog, and @mlanger!” While it’s very friendly of this person to greet all his new friends, reading dozens of tweets like this throughout the day — between the daily “Good morning, Twitter!” and nightly “Good night, Twitter!” posts — is pretty much a waste of my time. I’m interested in what this guy is doing. Who is he interviewing? What has he learned? What insight can he share about his professional journalism world? How can what he’s doing make me think about the world around me?

I need to mention here that I don’t expect every tweet I read to contain some kind of deep revelation for me. (If that were possible, I’d spend all of my time reading Twitter tweets.) This morning, one of my Twitter friends posted a tweet in which the text was all upside-down. How the heck did she do that? She followed up with a link that showed us how. Useless? Yes. Trivial? Sure. But fun? You bet! And a heck of a lot more interesting than “Hello new Twitterfriends @joe, @jim, and @jake!”

And, for those of you ready to go on the offensive, I’m also not saying that my tweets are anything special. I just tweet about the things I’m doing. Some of them are pretty dull. (Who cares that I’m reading my e-mail?) Some of them are pretty interesting. (How many people land their helicopters in a new friend’s backyard?) But I’m not filling the Twitter world with fluff, either.

Anyway, I’m kind of hoping this journalist friend reads this and recognizes himself and thinks about what he’s typing to the world — especially to all of those new friends he keeps greeting. No offense guy, but you can do much better than that. I know you can.

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.

Twitter as a Way to Make Friends

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 Being Picky

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.

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.

How I Use Twitter

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.

Enter the Opportunists

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.

Do Your Homework

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.

Removing 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:

• Leave username basically ignores the friend for a while by not displaying his links for you.
• Remove username removes the friend from your list of friends. I’m ruthless, so this is the one I usually pick.

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, Despite Any Shortcomings

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.

I first heard about Twitter a few months ago on either the MacBreak Weekly or TWiT (This Week in Tech) podcast. (Both highly recommended, by the way.) I immediately checked it out. At first, I thought it was kind of cool, but then I realized that it was nothing more than a gigantic, worldwide chat room. Everyone talking, few people talking to a specific other person, some people even talking in languages other than English (imagine that!), few people saying anything of interest.

Twitter is a micro blogging tool. If you looked at 100 random blog posts from all over the blogoshere, how many of them do you think you’d like? This is the same. Look at 100 random tweets and you’re likely to find very few that are even worth the time it took to read them.

And they’re only up to 140 character long.

First Impressions

Miraz summed it up in a comment on yesterday’s “Reach Out and Meet Someone” post here:

I’m really interested by your previous post and comments here about Twitter. I’d noticed Twitter and found my first, and strong, reaction was Yuk!

The next time I looked was the other day when I thought I should include it in a book I’m writing for community groups. This time I looked and just felt old.

I see it as a monumental waste of time and a triviality, so I find your comments about feeling more connected to people particularly useful.

I felt exactly the same way. Yet people were talking about it and raving, in many cases. So I figured I was probably missing something and decided to give it a closer look.

You Need to Scrape Away the Bull

The main complaint about Twitter is: who really cares about what all these people are doing? What you had for breakfast isn’t very interesting. What you’re watching on TV isn’t interesting either. And why all the cryptic statements? Are you trying to be cool?

But if you could scrape away all the bull and concentrate on the content that may be of real interest to you, Twitter does have some value. I’ve gotten a glimpse of it. Not enough to convince me that it’s good, but enough to make me think that it might be.

Here’s what I did to reach this point. I recommend these steps to anyone who wants to give Twitter a real try.

Step 1: Create a Twitter Account

I’m not going to explain how to do this. You can go to Twitter and follow the instructions online to do it yourself.

I definitely recommend that you choose an appropriate image for your identity there. Something that gives people an idea of what you’re all about. For a while, mine was the same image I currently use for my Gravatar: my helicopter’s back end with hot air balloons in the background. Pretty but not very real. I’ve since switched it to my standard head shot, which I hope to get redone one of these days. Most Twitter users either use a photo or a cartoon for their images. My advice: don’t use established cartoon characters; one of these days, someone’s going to start suing.

While you’re in your account settings, be sure to create a one-line (they really mean about six-word) bio of yourself. It appears when someone goes to your Twitter page. Set your time zone, enter the full URL for your Web site or blog, and just provide the needed info. If you don’t want to be on the public timeline, there’s a box you can check. I wouldn’t check it unless you’re worried about stalkers or some other crazy thing. After all, there is a slight chance that you might impress someone reading the public timeline (whoever that might be) enough to make a new friend.

Step 2: Download and Install a Tweeting Tool

I cannot over emphasize the importance of this step. Sure, you can keep your Twitter home page open and refresh it once in a while to see what’s new. But there are better ways to get involved with Twitter.

For a while, I used a Dashboard widget to compose and send my tweets. This was convenient; press F12, fill in a form, press Return, and press F12 again to get back to work. This added my tweets to Twitter, but did not display the tweets of my friends.

Then I discovered Twitterific. Frankly, I can’t imagine using Twitter without this little application. (Now calm down, folks. You can use the Comments link or form at the bottom of this post to tell me why your favorite Twitter tool is better.) It features a resizable window that captures and displays not only your tweets, but the tweets of all the Twitter users that you follow. There are a variety of notification options with and without sound. And, best of all, there’s a tiny form at the bottom of the window that you can use to enter your own tweets.

Twitterific has just one problem — and it doesn’t affect me at all: it requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Yes, it’s a Mac-only application. (I’m relying on the PC folks reading this to use the Comments link or form to tell us what they’re using. Let’s hope they don’t let us down.)

Twitter also works with instant messaging and I’m pretty sure you can use your IM client (iChat, MSN, AOL, etc.) to interact with Twitter. But since this article’s intention isn’t to explain all the different ways you can use Twitter, I’ll let you explore that option on your own.

And Twitter does work with text messaging on a cell phone. But if you enable and regularly use that feature, you really need to get a life.

Step 3: Find People to Follow

You don’t want to monitor the public timeline. Trust me: it’s a waste of time. You want to follow the tweets of a select group of people. People that you select.

There are a few ways you can find people to follow:

• Ask your friends, family members, and work associates if they have Twitter accounts. If they don’t, use the Invite form on your Twitter account to invite them. Be sure to use the extra note field to explain what this is all about. You might want to point them to an article about Twitter (like this one?) or a favorable review. The people you invite should be people that spend a lot of time in front of a computer connected to the Internet, so tweeting will be easy and convenient for them.
• Track down the Twitter accounts of famous people you want to follow. Believe it or not, Barack Obama has a Twitter account. (I don’t follow him.) So does Stephen Colbert. (I do follow him.) Now, obviously, these people have better things to do with their time than send tweets out into the blogosphere, so their tweets are likely composed by their staff and have some kind of marketing value. Obama’s is strictly campaign stuff. Colbert’s is a bunch of typical Colbert-style one-liners. These are just examples. I’m sure plenty of celebs have Twitter accounts, if you’re into the celeb thing.
• Check the blogs you follow. Quite a few bloggers have Twitter accounts. If you like the blogger’s blog, then you might like his tweets. I found a number of interesting people to follow this way.

Make these people your “Friends” — that’s Twitter’s term for the people you follow. Doing that is easy; just go to their Twitter timeline and click an Add link under Actions.

If someone makes you a friend, he’ll be listed under your followers. It’s always nice to add them as friends, too. It might give you insight as to why they added you. And you can always “Leave” them if you decide you don’t like their tweets.

Which brings up the next point. Once in a while, you’ll discover that you really don’t like the tweets of one of your “friends.” (I really feel a need to put that in quotes since the people you follow might not be real friends.) Just go to your Twitter page, view your list of friends. and click a Leave link under his name/icon. I did this just the other day when I decided that one of my “friends” was getting a bit too political for my taste. (No, I don’t want to sign your online petition, thank you.) Click of a link and I don’t have to hear from him anymore.

Step 4: Post Tweets

Even if you have no followers, you should make it a habit to post tweets on a somewhat regular basis. I’m not saying you need to do it daily or hourly or weekly or every ten minutes. I’m saying you should do it at least occasionally, when you have something to say.

I tend to tweet when I sit down to start a project or finish one up. This morning, I tweeted about going down to feed my horses and about a new article posted on my site. When this article is finished and posted, I’ll tweet about it and provide a link.

Be particular about the content of your tweets. Try to limit yourself to tweets that people might actually be interested in. Okay, you had eggs for breakfast. But don’t tweet about it unless you fetched those eggs out of a henhouse and the rooster tried to kill you or you cooked them in a microwave, causing them to explode all over the inside and start a fire. Okay, so that’s an exaggeration. But you know what I mean. Something interesting.

You can make all your tweets self-promotional, but I assure you that you’ll have very few followers — unless, of course, you’re famous and people want to read about your latest book, movie, radio show, interview, podcast, etc. I admit that my tweeting about articles as they are released has an element of self-promotion to it, but I’d like to think that some people might want to check out some of what I’m writing about. After all, if you were using Twitter, wouldn’t you be slightly interested in an article about it?

Remember, Twitter limits you to 140 characters per tweet. Don’t feel as if you have to fill them. It automatically converts long URLs to short ones (using tinyurl), so don’t worry about URLs taking up all your characters. Just keep it short and sweet.

As for writing style, Grammar Girl wrote an excellent style guide for tweets, “Grammar Girl’s Strunk & Twite: An Unofficial Twitter Style Guide.” Read it and use it. Please.

The Twitter Virus

I first read the phrase Twitter virus yesterday. At first, I thought it was some kind of real computer virus. But apparently, it refers to a person’s active involvement in Twitter — in other words, tweeting the moments of your day all day every day.

A certain amount of Twitter virus is vital to using Twitter and attracting and keeping followers. But if you’ve got it too bad — like a certain person I follow who tweeted from his cell phone about being stuck in traffic waiting at a railroad crossing this morning — you probably want to take a step back and think hard about your involvement.

While a tool like Twitterific makes participating in Twitter extremely easy, don’t get carried away. The people who follow you don’t need (or probably want) every detail of your life.

Try It

Twitter is also a social networking tool. I participate because I find it interesting to see what other people do and think throughout their day. I leave the Twitterific window open — I have a 20″ monitor, so there’s enough real estate for it — and peek at it once in a while. And then I tweet when I have something to say. It’s pretty effortless and it certainly doesn’t take much out of my day.

Now you know what I do with Twitter and how you can make it a worthwhile experiment. Don’t be shy. Try it. It’s all free and, if you don’t catch the virus, you can quit it at any time.

I got my start in the online world back in 1984, when I bought my first computer. It was an Apple //c and I quickly began visiting bulletin board systems (BBSes) using my 300 baud modem. You could get away with 300 bps in those days — there were no graphics, no big downloads, no Flash or PDF or QuickTime files.

Back in those days I visited BBSes to participate in online discussions on what were called message boards: the precursor to today’s forums and blog comment features. Later, in 1989, when I bought my first Mac, I was quick to start my own BBS, The Electronic Pen. I kept it up and running for years, until the Web made BBSes archaic. Then I hopped on board Web 1.0 with a Web site — back in 1995 or so? — and have been a Web publisher ever since.

It Was about Meeting People

In exchanging comments and ideas on BBSes, I met a lot of people:

• There was Tim, who ran a BBS out of the same office where he sold tombstones. (Really!) Tim was my age and a Mac user and he’s part of what made me so enthusiastic about Macs. He introduced me to Mark, a legally blind albino guy who worked as a graphic designer. (Really!) Mark couldn’t drive, so we’d take him out to dinner once in a while. He had all this high-tech computer equipment that he’d show off to us: things like CD-ROM writers, 20″ monitors, and high-end graphic software. (Remember, this was in the early 90s.) Although I lost touch with Mark, I still exchange e-mail with Tim, who married his high school sweetheart, fathered three boys, and got a job as an IT guy for some medical information company.
• There was May, who ran a BBS for writers. She wanted to become a writer, but she couldn’t seem to get her foot in the door with any publisher. She even quit her day job to devote all her energy to writing. She wound up broke and depressed. She went back to work. Years later, she finally got some stories published. I don’t know what she’s doing now. She once called me an “overachiever,” which is something I’ll never forget. It made me feel as if I should be ashamed of my success.
• There was Art, a computer programmer who knew everything — or thought he did. At thirty-something, he still lived at home with his parents. When I met him in person, I was very surprised to see that he was only about 4′10″ tall. He bitched a lot about his employer and I wasn’t too surprised when he got canned. When he got 18 months pay in his severance package, I encouraged him to travel around a bit before getting back to work. He visited his brother in Seattle. “There’s snow on the Rockies,” he told me after his trip. “Art,” I replied, “there’s always snow on the Rockies.” Some people really need to get out more. We lost touch just a few years ago.
• There was Bill, a copywriter. Here was a middle-aged man who wrote for a living. And he made a good living. He offered me advice (when I asked for it) and was amazed when I told him that I thought something I’d written “sounded good.” “That’s the point,” he said, obviously excited that I’d made the comment. “Good writing should sound good when it’s read out loud.” I learned a lot from him, but ironically, we lost touch soon after my first book was published.
• There was Martin, a computer geek like me, but with an arty streak. He did design work and computer training for a local computer store. If my memory serves me right, he helped me get my foot in the door there and I worked for them for some time. I went to his wedding and, when I moved out to Arizona, he, his wife, and their new baby spent a day with us. When he set up his own consulting firm, he sent me a full complement of his high-class giveaways. I still use the logo-embroidered throw blanket when I sit on the sofa to watch television some evenings. I haven’t seen him in years, but he’s one of my LinkedIn contacts.

These are just some of the people who entered my world through the world of online communication. (And no, these aren’t their real names.) They were friends, despite our mutual shortcomings, and we socialized both online and off. In fact, I was better friends with these people than my college classmates.

What Changed

Somewhere along the line, things changed. I think it had something to do with switching from the two-way communication of BBSes to the one-sided Web sites of Web 1.0. Although I remained friends with this handful of people for some time, I didn’t meet anyone new.

And I didn’t miss meeting people.

After all, I was busy with work — writing books and articles, teaching computer courses for two different companies, writing course material. And then we moved to Arizona and I was busy with my new home, learning to fly, and exploring my surroundings. As my old BBS friendships faded away, new ones didn’t replace them. But I didn’t even notice the gap in my life.

Social Networking

Until yesterday, I never realized the value of social networking sites like LinkedIn, MyBlogLog, and Twitter. You see, I wasn’t in the market for new friends. I didn’t need any. I have friends around here, I have friends elsewhere.

The trouble is, our friends around here are either 20 to 30 years older than we are (remember, Wickenburg is a retirement community) or, if they’re younger, they’re transient, passing through Wickenburg on their way to someplace where they’re not always the youngest person in a restaurant or supermarket. (Okay, so that’s an exaggeration. There are usually a few people younger than me in the supermarket, and some of them are even customers.) We lost two friends our age just last month when he got a better job in Michigan and they just packed up and left. Other friends have been bailing out regularly: one couple to Colorado, one to San Diego, one to New Mexico.

Mike and I aren’t movers. We like to stay in one place a good, long time. But with the way things in Wickenburg are going, I’m ready to bail out. We’ve been here 10 years — that’s longer than most of our friends (in any age group).

So I’m starting to think about new friends who live someplace other than Wickenburg.

Yesterday, I read “How to Use MyBlogLog to Succesfully Build Massive Blog or Website Traffic.” I’d signed up for MyBlogLog back in January, but never did anything with my membership. I had some time, so I went through the instructions in the article. And I started finding blogs for people who write about the same kinds of things I write about. People with similar thoughts and ideas and concerns. And I began to realize that I could make friends online again. Perhaps even good friends.

Now if you’re reading this and actively participate in social networking sites, you’re probably thinking that I must be some kind of moron. Of course that’s what social networking sites are for.

Well, have you ever seen a hoof pick? There’s a picture of one right here. You use it to scrape horse poop and mud and rocks from the bottom of a horse’s foot. It’s standard equipment for everyone who rides a horse — a responsible rider wouldn’t even consider getting into the saddle unless the horse’s feet had been checked and scraped. But if I didn’t tell you this and you’d never needed one and someone handed one to you, would you know what it was for?

That was me with social networking Web sites. I couldn’t understand the purpose.

Now I do.

(Duh.)

Build Community Through Participation

Yesterday, I also realized that what’s holding back my blog from reaching the next level (whatever that is) is the sporadic participation of visitors.

Sometimes I’ll write a post, hundreds of people will read it, and a bunch of people will post comments with other viewpoints about what I’ve said. This adds substance to the blog and makes it more valuable not only to visitors, but to me. I learn by starting a conversation and reading what others add to it. (I love to learn.)

Most times, however, I’ll write a post and even though many people will read it, no one will post comments to it. Which makes me wonder whether I “got it right” or if anyone cared about what I said. Are these posts a waste of time? Are they useless bandwidth suckers? Why did Post A get a lot of response while Post B, with a similar topic, generate “dead air”?

I may never know.

But the one thing I do know is that I want more participation here. And since I want it here, I’m sure other bloggers want it on their sites. So I’m actively trying to add something to a comment string — sometimes even starting a comment string — when I have something to add. Even if what I have to say is just a quick note to thank the blogger or give him/her my support on that issue. (Whatever that’s worth.)

Twitter Really Is More than Just a Waste of Time

Yesterday was also the day that I realized that Twitter is a lot more interesting if you’re monitoring the tweets of people you know and/or care about. I realized this as I started adding “friends” to my Twitter account — the same people whose blogs I was beginning to monitor. When you follow the tweets of a select group of people, you learn more about them and the things they do. Like me, some of these people publish tweets about the major work-related things they do throughout the day. Or about ideas that have just gone through their heads. Or about life’s frustrations.

And I think that Twitter can be a great way to help decide whether I want to take another step toward a real friendship with someone. A person’s tweets reveal not only what he/she is doing or thinking, but his/her personality. I could never pursue a friendship with someone who composed tweets like AOL chat room IMs. Or a person who took him/herself too seriously. Or someone who used Twitter solely to market a product or service.

So I’m going to be more active in the blogging world, both in my blog and on other people’s it will be interesting to see what new friends I can make.