Today is Everything You Know is Wrong Day. It is a reminder that we must take the time to take in new information as it arrives (especially these days,) and embrace when we discover what we “know” is lacking, either due to previous mis-education or simply new advances in knowledge. It’s time to make sure we truly deserve the mantle of the most intelligent species on Planet Earth.

How many times have we all sat back and heard our grandparents tell us stories of the way things used to be? Of how all of the magic surrounding us emerged on the scene? I’ve often stopped and imagined how much of my grandparent’s world has changed, moved on, or been cast aside. Relativity. Space flight. Geosynchronous orbit. Nuclear power. Thermonuclear devices. Social upheaval. Microprocessors. Green energy. Streaming media. DNA sequencing. Genetically modified foods. Weather forecasting.

How much of what we all used to know as fact and relied upon in our daily decisions has become broken crockery by the roadside, as technologies have emerged in all sciences, casting new light on previous notions?

It seems that almost every year there is an advance made somewhere that affects a technology everywhere. Using advanced boolean search technologies, historians have been able to draw from mountains of scanned documents to paint far more accurate (and humbling, or dare I say humanizing) life accounts of notable figures from our past. Ancient and severely damaged documents such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, long abandoned as illegible, have been re-assembled and digitally enhanced to provide a more complete (and sometimes confusing) picture of our great faiths. Disparate technologies are being brought together by brilliant minds to create almost magical things, such as organic digital storage, self-lighting walls, holographic newscasts and flying cars.

If you think your grandparents have been getting a little lost trying to keep up with things in the last 20 years or so, wait to see what happens in the next 20 years! In almost every aspect of our lives, that which we as individuals or a society thought was crystal-clear has been shown to be fuzzy at best. Everything we thought we knew, even what we hold near and dear, is being questioned. We’re discovering everything we think just might be wrong.

Twitter is unlearning me. I click on the links provided to me from individuals from a variety of backgrounds and interests. Because of this, I am exposed to the news they feel might be of interest to all. I read articles and papers from psychological, agricultural, astronomical, historical and even mathematical journals, just to name a few. Because of the wonderful hyperlinks steadily moving under my eye, I’ve found that there’s been an awful lot of incorrect information jangling around in my brain. I’m removing what is out-dated, and painting a new picture of the World around me as I go.

Did you know….

• Sailors in Columbus’ day already knew the Earth was a globe.
• We actually use 100% of our brain’s capabilities.
• The Pilgrims of Plymouth never wore black, tall hats or buckled shoes.
• Hair and fingernails do not grow after we die.
• Abner Doubleday did not invent Baseball.
• Napoleon Bonaparte was a man of average height.
• Humpty Dumpty is never referenced in the story as being an egg.
• Cracking your knuckles does not cause arthritis or other inflammatory conditions.
• A bull cannot see the color red.
• The Roman Catholic concept of the Immaculate Conception does not refer to Jesus himself.
• Sugar doesn’t make a kid act more hyperactive.
• The “Coriolis Effect” does not determine the direction of your toilet’s water flow.
• Nobody knows what the original forbidden fruit was.
• The term “Theory” does not, nor has it ever when used in Science, insinuate doubt in the veracity of the concept.
• Our tongues are not the same with regard to taste, or which “zone” tastes what.
• Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb.
• Shaving does not cause our hair to grow back either thicker or more dark.
• Henry Ford did not invent either the automobile or the assembly line.
• Being out in the cold does not increase your chances of catching one.
• All bats have eyes and are capable of sight.

I chose the above because many of us (including myself at one time) held an opposing viewpoint, until proven otherwise. I could cite for the reader all of the underlying sources disproving these popular notions, but figured the information is readily available for anyone really interested in it. So take a drive on the Information Superhighway, then shoot me a few particles on the Social Media Superconductor.

Because the integration of so much information has caused (and continues to cause) such sweeping change everywhere, some suggest that we are rapidly approaching a Singularity — a period of time scientifically when our knowledge level and abilities, whether through integrated discovery or technological convergence, begin to explode around us. How could such a thing happen?

We are an incredibly intelligent species; however, our brain power is only so limited. Which is why we find supercomputers to be of such great help in accomplishing complicated tasks. We continue to make great strides in artificial intelligence, and it is only a matter of time before we begin to be able to more fully converse our needs to the computers, letting them do the heavy lifting in unison for the rest of us.

We currently share our scientific and sociological discoveries by reading about them or attending lectures, by purchasing licensing rights and making agreements over days, weeks or months. What if one day our working computers talked real-time amongst themselves, sharing all emerging technological advances in all areas from around the Globe, computing in micro-seconds the usefulness of all that is known thus far? When this happens, will we be able to keep up?

My list of bulleted items above were based on long-held beliefs and myths held for great periods of time by large groups of people due to misinformation or misconception. I wonder, when we reach that apex of advancement and a technological Singularity finally occurs, will we be adding to that list:

• Humans are not the most intelligent species on Planet Earth.

Until that happens, I will sit back and enjoy the steady flow of info and comraderie I find here… I meant me and you, not the computer…

In social media, it’s all about the followers, isn’t it?  Have you ever come across someone providing status updates and information on Twitter or Facebook, without anyone listening?  For social media to work for us, to be interesting, we need to develop relationships with others, to provide something of value in our written words, and keep it up.  It’s always nice to have others learn about you and decide to listen too – social media is a very large campfire to tell our story around.

DUNBAR’S NUMBER

The Guardian newspaper in the UK in an article last year stated that the average Twitter account holder has around 126 followers.  I’m sure that the average has gone up since then.  Recently published research by Robin Dunbar, professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford, underscores the long-held belief that the average person can only successfully maintain up to 150 relationships, even when looking at interactions in social media.

THE NUMBERS GAME

Up to last month, I had over 4,000 followers.  I’m not bragging, so bear with me.  I suppose I was doing well, if one provides a greater emphasis upon the number of followers as a measure of tweeting success.  I began to wonder about my actual level of interaction with my followers, so I searched for a few tools to help me measure my true interaction level with(or influence on) these people.

One of the tools I found and used (and I recommend you try it out too,) is Friend or Follow, which provides you, without having to log in, a clickable listing of:

• The people you are following that are not following you back (Followings)
• The people who are following you that you are not following back (Fans)
• The people you are following that are following you back (Friends)

Each of these listings provides a grid of avatar images.  A pause over each avatar shows each person’s:

• Full name
• Number of follows and followers
• Location
• Date last tweeted
• Date their Twitter account was created

Pretty cool stuff.  A question that arose in my mind was “What was I trying to get out of Twitter, anyway?”  After all, who you choose to follow creates your social media experience, right?  So what happens out there? What (and who) exactly do we all have to choose from in Twitter?

Not long ago, Pear Analytics of San Antonio, Texas analyzed 2,000 tweets from U.S. accounts over 2 weeks, and broke down what they saw as follows:

• News-related tweets from mainstream media accounted for 3.6% of the tweets
• Spammed content was being sent out 3.75% of the time
• Shameless self-promotion by companies made up 5.85% of the traffic
• Pointless babbling (incoherent on their own merit messages) were passed 40.55% of the time
• Conversation-based messages made up 37.55% of what was seen
• Passed-along retweets of others’ content constituted 8.7% of what was found

WHAT DO YOU NEED FROM SOCIAL MEDIA?

I know what I want from social media.  Relationships.  Friendships.  Community.  Just how much of this was happening with my 4,000 followers?

I discovered that almost half of the people following me (2,000 people!) hadn’t tweeted in over a month.  The average length of time someone keeps a Twitter account is about 18 months — had so many simply given up on Twitter?  Over 1,000 of them hadn’t tweeted in more than 3 months, and hundreds hadn’t said anything in practically a year.   How could I build a relationship with someone who wasn’t even on Twitter anymore?

I also found a ton of spammers, self-promoters, and a fair share of people who simply babbled on without actually responding to people who replied.  Among these accounts were a few jewels, shining examples of people who were using Twitter in the manner for which it was designed — to actually interact with others.

REBUILD IT – THEY WILL STILL COME

I began pruning my followings carefully over many, many hours, with an eye for the people that I either cared to listen to (regardless if they followed me back,) and people who actually conversed with me on a regular basis.  I got down to following around 800 people, (20% of my followers) and waited to see what happened.  Over the next 3 days, I lost 400 people in response to my actions, and not one contacted me to ask why I had dropped them.

I was still unsatisfied that I better start to meet my needs in social media.  After all, I still had thousands of followers who weren’t really there.  I decided to take a much bigger leap, and created a whole new Twitter account – an absolute do-over, documented here.  I followed everyone important to me, then tweeted invites to anyone listening for a solid week.  I then deleted my old account.  I was a new man…

I’m up to 530 followers now, only 25% of what I had before.  And you know what? The level of interaction is the same.  Although my followers have relatively more recent accounts, only about 20% of them actually say something to me once in awhile, comfortably below Dunbar’s magic number of 150.  And I am okay with that, because I simply adore these people, and I know they wish to build a relationship with me.

I still have my share of spammers and self-promoters following me.  I’ll welcome anyone who wants to follow.  I like my new, albeit smaller family.  We share our joys and trials together, and care about each other.

JOIN ME!

Are you courageous enough to follow too?  To interact with someone who will ask you questions about your life, who will provide assistance when asked, who will laugh, cry, think and pray with you in times of need?  Who will never ask you if your teeth are white enough, or if you’d like to see photos of me being naughty? Are you ready for some community-building?

If the answer is yes, then why not take a chance on me?  What are you waiting for? Please join me on Twitter today!

For Pete’s Sake Day

Today is For Pete’s Sake Day, a commemoration of those verbal replacement players we call in during times of extreme anger, stress or pain, so as to not cause Grandma Lorraine, quietly watching Golden Girls in the next room, to spray her chamomile tea all over the sofa.  We all have our perennial favorites — Criminy, Dagnabbit, Doggone, Gadzooks, Jeepers Creepers, Judas Priest, and Tarnation, to name a few.

It’s always amazing to me, how a split second after slamming a hammer on our thumb our minds can register the presence of others, and instantly rein in that primeval desire to shout obscenities aloud like the foulest of sailors.

Explanation and Origin

To those who care about terminology, they are officially known as minced oaths, introduced into our vernacular during the Middle Ages, when the Church monitored the language and actions of the common folk, and were quick to punish any offenses.  Commonly used euphemisms launched at God or Jesus in times of anger and stress had to be glossed over and reworked to avoid such punishments.

Later, as things religiously loosened up, minced oaths became personally chosen alternatives for those who wanted to maintain an air of greater dignity about them, even in times of agony.

Fun Examples of Minced Oaths

Here are 77 ways to cuss out loud without actually cursing, along with what was meant, courtesy of Phrases.Org, with some censoring done by me (Hey, this is a family blog…).

77 Minced Oaths

Begorrah –> By God
Bejabbers –> By Jesus
Bleeding heck –> Bloody Hell
Blimey –> Blind me
Blinking heck –> Bloody Hell
By George –> By God
By golly –> By God’s body
By gosh –> By God
By gum –> By God
By Jove –> By God
Cheese and Rice –> Jesus Christ
Chrissakes –> For Christ’s sake
Christmas –> Christ
Cor blimey –> God blind me
Crikey –> Christ
Criminy –> Christ
Cripes –> Christ
Crivvens –> Christ defend us
Dad gum –> God d*mn
Dagnabbit –> God d*mn it
Dagnammit –> God d*mn it
Dang –> D*mn
Dangnabbit –> God d*mn it
Dangnation –> D*mnation
Darn –> D*mn
Darnation –> D*mnation
Doggone –> God d*mn
Drat –> God rot it
Egad –> A God
Figs –> F*ck
Fink –> F*ck
Flaming heck –> F*cking Hell
Flipping heck –> F*cking Hell
For crying out loud –> For Christ’s sake
For Pete’s sake –> For St. Peter’s sake
For the love of Mike –> For St. Michael’s sake
Freaking –> f*cking
Gadzooks –> God’s hooks
Gat Dangit –> God d*mn it
Gee –> Jesus
Gee whizz –> Jesus
Gee willikers –> Jesus
Godfrey Daniel –> God
Golly Gee willikers –> Jesus
Good garden party –> Good God
Good grief –> Good God
Goodness gracious –> Good God
Gorblimey –> God blind me
Gosh –> God
Gosh darned –> God d*mned
Heck –> Hell
Holy spit –> Holy sh*t
Jason Crisp –> Jesus Christ
Jebus –> Jesus
Jeepers Creepers –> Jesus Christ
Jeez –> Jesus
Jeezy Creezy –> Jesus Christ
Jehosaphat –> Jesus
Jiminy Christmas –> Jesus Christ
Jiminy Cricket –> Jesus Christ
Judas Priest –> Jesus Christ
Land sakes –> For the Lord’s sake
Lawks a mercy –> Lord have mercy
My goodness –> My God
My gosh –> My God
Odds-bodkins –> God’s sweet body
Sacré bleu –> Sang de Dieu (God’s blood)
Sam Hill –> Hell
Shoot –> sh*t
Shucks –> sh*t
Strewth –> God’s Truth
Suffering succotash –> Suffering Saviour
Sugar –> sh*t
Tarnation –> D*mnation
What in Sam Hill? –> What in d*mn Hell?
Wish to goodness –> Wish to God
Zounds –> God’s wounds

Phew.  Glad I got that out.  Why use minced oaths in our daily lives?  Well, chamomile is hard enough to get out of the chintz without Grandma staring us down in disgust.  And then for most of us there’s the worry about the blunt and instantaneous anger of Mom and Dad, or the feared disapproval of our Aunts and Uncles.  How about around co-workers or the boss?  And nobody wants to be excommunicated after an outburst brought on by slamming our head on the low door frame at our local Church, either.

The Proximity of Caring

Distance.  Perhaps that is what minced oaths are all about.  Whether due to geography, ages or emotional bonding, the closer people are to us, the more proximate to our daily lives, the more we care about what they may think about what we do or say.  While I held my emerging sailor mouth in check around Uncle David and Aunt Debbie, I explored the profound and resilient usage of the F-bomb while playing in the back yard with my brothers and cousins.  While our bosses believe we have a clean mouth, that guy in the next cubicle over, who heard when we spilled our coffee all over last month’s project, likely knows better…

Suffering in Silence

I moved into an apartment almost 3 years ago, along with my two daughters.  My oldest got the room next to mine, built-in cabinets providing her with gobs of storage space.  Wanting to help sort things into these same cabinets, I opened them all, small wooden doors gaping into the room, as I knelt over her innumerable collectibles on the carpet below.

Hearing my daughter bring a number of boxes up the stairs into my room, I wanted to make sure they were being put in a place I could get to easily, so I dropped what I was doing and stood up rapidly.  My forehead met, with enormous impact, the bottom corner of one of the doors I had opened not five minutes earlier.

If you bang your skull just right, you actually can see stars.  I know, because they danced through the sheer pain in my head as I fell to the floor in a fetal position, wanting to scream out creative variations of every obscenity I had ever learned, but not doing so because my children were in in the next rooms.  I lie there, gritting my teeth to the point of cracking them, feeling warm blood trickle between my fingers, as I held my head (and fortunately, my tongue…)

The Proximity of Social Media

I’ve been doing a great deal of blocking lately in Twitter, and have had to remove certain individuals from my friendships in Facebook from time to time.  It’s been for a variety of reasons, such as being insulting to others, or exhibiting small-minded or bigoted behaviors.   When I see it, I don’t entertain it any longer, and am always left wondering how someone can treat relative strangers in such offensive ways.

I believe it’s got a lot to do with the unique feeling of distance in social media, in all facets – geographically, due to to a large user age range, and an overall lack of emotional intimacy.  We’ve all had our share of young idiots who storm into Twitter and see just how many people they can tick off before their account gets disabled from the angry feedback.  We navigate Facebook alongside people whose language is less-than-guarded more often than needed.

Is the problem of how we talk to each other in social media due to not really seeing each other?  Is it because we don’t really spend time, physically, in each other’s presences?  If the loss of civility in social media is due to not having social cues similar to those in real lives, then how do we create replacement signals to use in our own personal experiences online?  Please let me know, as I’m open to suggestions in the comments section, and plan to write about social media intimacy and personal boundaries in the near future…

Samuel began speaking out in support of the working men and women of his day. He quickly became noticed by the Liberal Party, whose local leaders asked him to join.

Known as a voice of the people, Samuel eventually made his way into Parliament, where he continued championing labor issues and people’s rights. It didn’t take long for the plight of the English merchant sailor to arrive at his desk.

The Coffin Ships

They were called “coffin ships,” because so many poor souls had been dying on them as of late, leaving behind widows and orphans and broken families. Typically unseaworthy vessels, these ships were purchased literally from salvage yards (where they awaiting dismantling) by unscrupulous owners who had no intention of repairing them. Sailors who agreed to serve on board these floating wrecks typically knew nothing of the dangers until they were well out at sea. Concerned only with profits, these same ship owners heavily overburdened the ships then insured them against expected losses of cargo.

How seaworthy are you?

Are you trying to hold everything together in your life? Are you finding yourself increasingly trying to hide your cracking edifice from others, as burdens are piled on your shoulders well beyond your ability to stay afloat? We’re surrounded by what feels like a crumbling economy, continued layoffs, political discord being shouted from the rooftops, and natural disasters reminding us of the fragility of what we have. Does it feel like you’re waiting for that final issue to breach your life and sink you? You’re not alone, despite feeling like you are adrift without help…

Stress warning signs

Undue stress leads to not only mental unrest, but also physical symptoms in those suffering from it.   According to FamilyDoctor.org, personal signs that you may have reached (or exceeded limits) in what you can carry in life include:

1. Anxiety
2. Increased aches and pains in one’s back
3. Constipation or diarrhea
4. Depression
5. Fatigue
6. Headaches
7. Insomnia
8. Arguments with your significant other increase
9. Shortness of breath
10. Upset stomach
11. Weight gain or loss

Samuel’s fight for sailor safety

As you fill a ship with cargo, it sinks deeper into the water. Samuel pushed hard against the major shipping magnates, many of whom were also fellow members of Parliament, for increased safety for those sailors manning the ships. He demanded that a maximum cargo burden be determined for each ship, and a numbered line be painted on the hull, for all to plainly see when that upper limit was reached. No ship was to be filled such that this line went underwater.

In 1876, after shouting down the entire Parliament and shaking his fist in the face of the Speaker himself, Samuel Plimsoll managed to get a bill passed to require all ships have a visible line marking its maximum carrying capacity. This line became known as the Plimsoll Line, and today is known simply as the Water Line. Because ships move across waters of varying salinity levels and temperatures, this line can shift up or down, and ship owners are required to keep the changing conditions of their shipping lanes in mind when loading their vessels.

Do you know where your Water Line is?

So what is your personal Water Line? Have you figured it out yet? Do you know what changing stressors in your life can change how much personal load you can handle, and how to deal with them? Whether it is in our personal lives due to spouses, family or children, or at work with coworkers or bad working conditions, we all need to figure out ways to handle what we are given.    Remember that no matter your issues, someone somewhere is handling more than you – not because they are superhuman, but because they likely have developed coping mechanisms or techniques.  You can too…

How to move your personal water line

If you find yourself sinking due to feelings of being over-burdened, here are a few tips that may help you out.

1. Get out a piece of paper and write down your personal burdens.  Then write next to each whether or not you can control them.  Consider whether or not you should keep worrying about those things you can’t control, such as bad weather or a dropping stock market.
2. Order the list of issues from little to big.  Number them, and consider the first little problems on the list.  Tackling this one first will be easy, and provide a feeling of accomplishment that will help you with the others.
3. Take the bigger stressers, such as job interviews upcoming, and write down ways that you can prepare for them.  Use a formal calendar and write in times to prepare as best you can for these events.  Then move on.
4. The most troublesome of worries and stresses you have can be written down on a separate piece of paper, with some space.  Take some time to try and look at these issues from a variety of angles, not just your own.  Ask a friend to help you try and see these issues as challenges and not threats, and to see the value in the changes.
5. If you have issues with coworkers, family or friends, write down ways that you can slowly work toward resolving these conflicts.  Try the easier methods first and keep at it.
6. Talk.  I don’t care if it is a buddy, an uncle or aunt, a co-worker or boss, or a therapist.  Talk.  Social media can be therapeutic as well, as long as you have maintained some semblance of secrecy regarding your identity if the issue is very personal in nature, or you don’t want the issue to get out publicly.
7. Use that same calendar to put in what you are working on, your goals in life, whether it is at home or at work.  Block in time periods.  Learn to say no to others when you see that there are no more open time periods.  And don’t forget to block in times that you will be doing nothing but reading and relaxing.  Might seem odd at first, but pencil in time for a movie or latté.
8. Get a gym membership and actually use it.  Or buy some dumbells and go jogging.  But do it regularly.  Exercise is one of the best ways to relieve stress around.
9. Eat better and regularly.  Don’t skip breakfast, and you will see your energy level increase over the course of the entire day.  Oh, and get a little more sleep, already.  You look tired.  Seriously.
10. Spend some quiet time to simply close your eyes and meditate.  Let your mind wander free, and think about great things happening in your life.  Listen to soft music or sounds of nature CDs.
11. Belong to something outside of work, whether it be sports, a book club, church event or simply a hobby you have been meaning to take up.

Plimsoll Line Day

Today is Plimsoll Line Day, in honor of Samuel Plimsoll’s fight to save countless sailors from sure death.  Ship owners since have been reminded that there are things even more important than the loss of cargo.

It’s important to know your own personal limits, to know the signs of stress, and to figure out how to paint your own personal water line.  Don’t wait for others to fight on your behalf, while looking off into the worrisome, stormy future.  Test the waters, set your limits, and have a safe journey!

Oddly, if the second shot is worse than the first, the term for that is a Finnegan.  Why is there so much meaning behind Irish names?

We all built it, and they are coming (and asking some serious questions)

Twitter is still popular, because we made it so; but as more people step into social media, straighten themselves up after climbing the learning curve and look around, questions come up.  Newbies are beginning to ask why it is that some unknown guy in Pakistan who stopped tweeting 6 months ago has over 45,000 users, while they are fighting to come up with original multi-media content that connects them with their (average user follower base of) barely over 130 people?

Twitter’s errant first swing

Twitter’s been around for 4 years, and has proven to be one of the most successful social media networks in the World, with an estimated 10,000,000 users interacting with each other.  It’s incredible simplicity in design has allowed for its growth to be directed organically by its many users.

Because of the desire to keep things open, a number of abusive practices have occurred on Twitter over time, and we have simply grown used to them while we say “hello” and “how are you” and “I can lick my own elbow” with our friends…

The stranger behemoths - We’ve all seen these guys.  They stomp around on Twitter with their insanely huge followership, but don’t say anything of value.  They’ve developed and played systems designed to artificially inflate their numbers, rather than earn it through making comments people actually appreciate.  To them, it’s all about the big, shiny rodeo belt buckle…  We are not impressed.  Planning to cash in those followers for some cold, hard cash someday?

There are tens of thousands of Twitter accounts held by these otherwise unknowns that have for years driven up their numbers by auto-following a thousand people daily, and unfollowing those that did not automatically follow back.  The process is repeated daily, as Twitter allows for up to 1,000 follows a day.  How daunting it must be to a new Twitterer to see these large, lumbering beasts of false renown!  And how frustrating to see how hard it is to quickly connect far and wide.

The recommended list - Newbies upon account creation are provided a list of celebrities, authors, chefs, social media mavens, sports figures, former MTV spotlight-mongers and whatnot that Twitter has hand-picked as desirable to begin with, to simply get the conversation started.  Although I’m not sure how much @sockamillion the cat will actually listen to what’s happening in your life, and stop to chat with you.

There’s an issue with the Recommended List.  Many on its occupants don’t necessarily tend to follow or talk back to all the newbies coming in, so no conversations really get started by following them.  C’mon, someone with 450,000 followers and 147 follows simply isn’t going to talk with you, even if your avatar is completely naked and you’re smokin’ hot.  Okay, maybe he’ll follow you. Being on this list can also inflate one’s numbers in a fairly rapid manner, with no actual social work required.

The auto-bots – If you joined Twitter in the last year, you got your share of Britney porn-bots, and blocked dozens of them on an almost monthly basis.  Businesses began monitoring tweets using the search feature or creating monitoring systems.  If you so much as mentioned Starbucks, you got a follow from them.  If you talked about how much you loved chocolate, Ghirardelli showed up as a follow.  If you say you can lick your own elbow, there’s this woman in Milwaukee that will start coming on to you…  Sorry Sadie, but someone had to say something. It’s getting embarassing.  So please stop DMing me.

Anyway, the gist of what I’m saying is that if you are new, there are many who came long before you and have found ways to gain vast followerships, and they drive those Cadillac accounts around town proudly, tooting that horn and shouting “Orálé!”  I have no idea what that means.  They also try to sell you their SEO-Godlike “proven techniques” for gaining a following, despite knowing they used a below-the-counter method to gain theirs.

Twitter has done quite a bit lately to tone down this activity.  They’ve recently shut down open account access to applications that allow you to bulk auto-follow and auto-unfollow users, so you will never be able to game the system like that guy in Pakistan (and so many others) previously did.

But what to do about those people that already bulked up their accounts artificially? Hmmmm…..

Should Twitter get a Mulligan?

I’ve seen posts begin to emerge asking if Twitter should have a Mulligan of its own. Should @Ev and @Jack and the other folks who brought us this wonderful means of sharing rich multi-media simply hit the reset button?  How would things look if everybody, from the new guy with 28 followers to the social media moguls with over 4,000,000 lost all their connections, overnight?  What if all the follows and the followers disappeared, and we all had to start over from scratch?

Oh, it sounds enticing, doesn’t it?  Or downright scary.  Some reading this have already peed a little in their undies.  Sorry. As you can see, @socksamillion is not happy with this concept. The stranger behemoths would lose all of their fine work, and may even have to resort to tweeting again.  The celebrities to be sure would see their following return again, fans being what they are.  You might see the auto-bots more readily if all you had were 200 followers for awhile…  And it would be difficult to pretend I was a social media powerhouse if all had were 137 followers, and those “proven” techniques I previously bragged over and over about to “connect” and “gain a following” seemed to be missing the mark…

Those that honestly worked hard to obtain their following would see all of their fine work lost overnight, and to me that seems to be such a waste, a great hardship to bear for them.  I’m sure they deserve their following, and to reap the benefit of these relationships built over time.  So how does Twitter allow for a more even playing field, while allowing those legitimate hard Tweeters to keep their social media structures?  I’ll explain a possible method in a moment…

My Personal Twitter Mulligan

Last Friday, I broke a big Twitter rule.  I jumped off the online cliff.  I did a crazy thing.  I thumbed my nose and flew in the face of 4-year-old Twitter conventions.  Just what terrible catastrophe did I willingly wreak upon my social media existence?

I announced to my followers that I’m going to drop my old Twitter account.  That’s right, I am starting over, and have informed my 3,400 followers. Yes, a whopping 3,400.  LOL. Those of you who are social media heavyweights with 200,000+ followers, you can stop your snickering now. I created a whole new Twitter username.  And avatar.  And background image.  As the social media pundits call it, I am de-”brand”-ing.  Woot.  Can you hear the crickets in the background? Skreek, skreek, skreek…

To be sure, I am not starting over completely from scratch.  I’ve invited everyone who wants to follow me over in this transition to please do so.  A handful did so almost immediately.  Because I took the advice of Twitter heavyweights, I previously used an auto-follow feature with my old account, and had to meticulously pour through my reciprocated 3,500 follows.  I chose 500 to follow with my new account, and sent out a general invite.  It’s a joy to see what these amazing people have to say without the distractions of others selling me something, asking me if my teeth are white enough, or trying to show off their thong.  Okay, I think I saved her, but she is really nice, and is a Democrat…

The process has been humbling, to say the least.  By doing this, I have found out who is actually listening to me, appreciates what I have to say, and wishes to continue interacting with me.  I’m giving a full week for the process, and plan to continue the invitations between now and then.  When i formally close down my old account this coming Friday, I will be dumping almost 3,000 businesses, porn accounts, SEO “Gods,” serial RTers, stranger behemoths, recommended favorites, auto-bots and more generally people who continued following me only because I auto-followed them back.  To me, it’s the equivalent of leaving the huge ballroom, drink in hand, and inviting the pretty girl to step outside on the balcony, into the fresh night air…

Twitter 2.0

I believe the discussion about a Twitter reset has a lot of merit, and wish there were an environment where we can take all of our lessons learned and begin anew, all from scratch.  I also understand the need to reward those that worked hard for their current following.

Here’s how to keep both intact…  Twitter could:

• Purchase another URL, like http://www.twittertoo.com
• Load Twitter’s code on this new place.
• Usernames in Twitter.com are automatically reserved in Twittertoo.com, so people won’t have to worry about losing their cool Twitter name suddenly, and people won’t be able to pretend they are @aplusk in the new environment just ’cause they got there first.
• Twitter.com will stay up, and people can continue to stay there if they please, glaring at the lumbering giants or blocking the spambots.
• In Twittertoo.com, everyone begins with zero follows and followers from the start.  Develop your connections as you normally would.
• People may go to Twitter.com and invite their followers to follow them to Twittertoo.com
• Bulk transferring of follows and followers from Twitter to Twittertoo will not be provided for or allowed in the coding process.
• There will be no recommended lists.  Find people on your own, dude, or provide everyone 20 randomly chosen people from a survey of what their interests are.
• The new partnerships with desktop apps like Tweetdeck will be controlled through closer partnerships and monitoring.  No open authorization for reciprocal follower websites.
• No bulk-following or auto-following, to remove the incentive for stranger behemoths, auto-bots and spammers.
• We must approve our followers by manually clicking an approval button.

I believe that by Twitter asking us for a Mulligan, and using careful new controls, those who make the move to this new and improved Twitter environment will find many people there working hard to develop relationships, same as in the old Twitter.  And they will enjoy the new quiet as the spammers and behemoths stay in the old environment, working their dark, evil magic.

Those that worked hard to achieve their merited following will be able to invite their following to successfully follow them over.   If they don’t all move over, then they weren’t listening anyway, right?  C’mon, how about a reality check?  Prove your cinnamoney sweet SEO magic works.

I believe celebrities, legitimate news providers, wonderful personalities and individuals of renown will see the same large tide of followers vying to interact with them, sharing their tweets with others and enjoying the social media realm.  People with little to say will still not “get it” and have a limited following.  Social media flowers will blossom, just as they did in Twitter, version 1.0

Until then, I will send my invites out to my new account, and enjoy all of the wonderful people who have joined me in the cool, night air…  Let’s hope that I didn’t pull a Finnegan…

You can humor and follow me at @TheSteveWoods on Twitter.  I’ll find you pretty easily, trust me…

I’ll stop sucking on the sour grapes, but it’s been 5 hours since the video was launched via live stream from Seesmic’s website, and I’m still looking for a rebroadcast of it somewhere.   I look forward to another chance to see what Loic has to say about his team’s new product…

I have downloaded Look and have run it through its paces, and until the video is made available, I’ll simply focus on the mechanics of the interface.

The download is pretty quick from Seesmic’s servers, and is a desktop client, to be installed on your machine.  After an easy install I started things up, and used my Twitter account information in the login boxes at top of the intro screen.

Right off the bat, I saw a pretty menu on the left-hand side, my avatar atop, and a cool, dreamy bubbly effect going on, as trending topics melted in and out of view, calling silently to me to click on one…

Navigation

Look has an integrated back-arrow that appears as you move through the nested menus.  Choose something from the menu, and the sub-menu appears with the changed interface, along with the arrow to navigate you back where you started.  Looks and operates very smoothly..

The middle of the screen transitions depending on where you are in the interface, and the very right-hand side is reserved for commonly-used twitter functions such as profile viewing, replying, direct messaging, retweeting and favorite-ing.  There is also a button to view a user’s tweet stream, something you typically see in a profile view.

Trends

The default view after login is the Trends section, which displays an additional sub-menu for trending topics on Twitter now, for the day as a whole, and for the week in general.  Very pretty blue bubbles fade in, and the trending topics form on the screen (see image left.)

Click on a topic topic box, and it will show you a timeline of tweets now on it (see image above.)  You can easily scroll through them, and the boxes are very big and very easy to read; however you are limited to only 3 – 4 tweets at a time, depending on screen resolution.  (I can resolve about 5-6 with my 23″ screens by stretching out to full-screen.) To reply or retweet, click on a showcased tweet and use the icon menu on the right.

Inbox

The next choice is the Twitter message Inbox, where you can see all of the @replies you received on Twitter, in the same very pretty manner.  I do see an issue with only having just over 2 tweets show up, and believe Look should have a slider available to let you scale down the size of the tweet boxes, so you can see more of them at one time.  Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur said he wanted to create an interface his mother could use, but the huge boxes seem to me to be the social media equivalent of shouting at Grandma so she can hear…

Again, to respond, choose a tweet box and use the Twitter-like menu icons on the right-hand side.  Left-hand sub-menus allow you to move on to direct messages and sent items (public Twitter replies.)

When retweeting, the newer (and controversial) non-commenting retweet function of Twitter is replicated by Look.  So when you highlight a tweet to share with your followers and choose to retweet, you will see a new box with the tweet, and a confirmation to retweet it, but no ability to add your own commentary.  This feature is almost universally worked around in Twitter clients, and I do hope Look fixes their limited retweet function as well…

Social

The social link puts your friends stream front and center, alongside a sub-menu for your lists.  this is kind of nice, as you can jump around quite easily.

This feature in itself makes the lists feature a bit more fun to use than in Twitter itself.  The giant tweets tend to overlay the names of the lists, however, an issue that needs to be fixed soon…

As with other screens, click on a list to see tweets from them, and the Twitter icon menus are on the right-hand side.

The A-Z and Playback (TV) buttons

The default method of seeing tweets in your stream is the Timeline view, which is represented at the top of your stream by the little clock icon, and provides tweets in a chronological order.  Swap over to the A-Z view, and it will show you tweets in your stream based on alphabetizing by username.  Playback mode gives you the cool and dreamy (not in my opinion not overly useful) bubbling effect of tweets coming in.  I will likely stick to the default Timeline view…

Profiles

To see the profile of anyone on your screen, simply click on their latest tweet and choose the profile icon on the right-hand side.  It’s the top one (you have to put your mouse over them to see what the icons are for.)

The profile shows up in a pretty box, showing their Twitter avatar, name, username, website, biography, how many followers they have and how many are following them.  There is a follow/unfollow button, and a place where you can favorite them or add to a Twitter list.

Where this falls short from Twitter is the ability to click and see just WHO they are following are are being followed by.  In fact, there is no “jump to their Twitter profile” button anywhere in the Look profile section.  I have to leave Look to find that sort of information out, which is disappointing.  Don’t make me leave your interface, because it makes me feel a twinge of guilt…

Another way to see a tweeter’s profile, is to simply click on their avatar in the stream.  This will take you to a view in Look that includes both their latest stream of commentary and customized Twitter background.  It is a pretty view, and you get to see around 4 tweets at a time without scrolling (I got 7 with maximum screen resolution.)

Favorites

One nice (and eminently usable) feature is the ability to save not only favorite tweets, but also favorite people, so you can easily return and sneak peeks at the streams of your favorite follow.  This ability shows up when you are looking at a tweeter’s profile using either profile view method.  Viewing your favorite people is under the Favorites menu, where you also get to view your saved Favorite tweets.

You are only allowed to view one favorite person’s twitter stream at a time.  If you want to see all in a group, then simply add them to a list and view the list’s stream, same as on Twitter.

Interests

Ah, we are getting to something very interesting and unique to Look.  It’s the Interests section.  Click on the link, and you will be provided 14 different categories of topics, including News, Entertainment, Business and Technology.  Click on any of these topics, and a live stream shows up with tweets related to it.

I chose Technology as a sub-menu item, and received yet another sub-menu, with 28 different larger providers of technology information on Twitter.  I’m unsure as to the method used to choose them, but they are certainly desirable providers…  By default you get all technology-related providers’ tweets, but you can choose a single provider by clicking on it.  I chose the Huffington Post Tech, and am including a screenshot for you of the tweets.

Channels

Another feature of Look is the development of channels by major providers of content.  Read here – Branding.  Again, I am unsure as to the method Seesmic used to choose who gets into the interface.

Out of the variety of Twitter-based content providers on Look, I chose to sneak a glance at the Life Channel, and got the @Life stream, same as it shows up on Twitter, replete with their background.  You can also choose their celebrity, animals, sports, travel or news streams to view.

Channels is not as unique a feature as the Interests section, as I can always visit @Life on Twitter whenever I want and see the same thing, but we’ll see who this develops over time.  I have a feeling most brands will work within Twitter and Facebook for their needs, and allow clients like Look to just pick up and use their feeds if desired.

Searches

The final link allows you to perform searches on Twitter using Look.  Type in the box labelled Search at the top right of the interface, and click on the search button that magically appears.  I chose to type in the name of this blog, Dopodomani.  Go ahead and say it, I’m vain…  I know.

The results show up in a Twitter stream, as we are used to seeing in other applications and clients.  Unfortunately, you are not given the option to save your search, which would’ve been nice to have, and is widely available in other clients.  I often perform the same searches over and over, so could we have this soon?

First-shot assessment

Seesmic Look has billed as a Twitter tool for those who are not “Power Users,” to provide a simpler, prettier interface for the more casual social media individual.  At first glance, Look merely hints at what the user should do next, without actual instruction on the screen.  I had to feel my way through Look by actually clicking around the interface, which is how a “power user” tends to get around in new digs.  Although Look’s environment is rich and beautiful (and shows a great deal of promise,) I am left wondering if this truly is an easier environment for the casual user than Twitter itself.

I do hope this takes off for Seesmic, and provides a first-step for casual users.  I also hope it brings many times more users to the Twitter environment.  I love the people I meet, and hope to be able to interface with many, many more.  I don’t think I’ll be using Look very often (as it was not designed to help me,) but I do think that I should be giving Seesmic Desktop another glance or two soon…

Steve Woods

@_stevewoods

Ahead is the cleanup, and how to help over 2 million Chileans affected for some time to come.  What will be needed, and how long will it take to get help to them after the widespread need is figured out?

Whether from terrorism or Mother Nature, disasters will continue to strike, and coordinated efforts will be required, in the news, on television and radio, and yes – here in social media.

USING SOCIAL MEDIA’S POWER TO PREPARE FOR A TRAGEDY

Although social media allows all of us to demonstrate some level of influence, the greater power has always been in the sharing of our ideas freely.  So what ideas are out there that would allow a person, group or organization to stick their proverbial toes in the social media waters, and make a big a ripple helping others in the event of another disaster?

Here are a few methods to prepare and act, broken down based on whether you are a regular person, business or organization, or the very government representing all of us.  I’ve used war-time examples (semi tongue-in-cheek) to demonstrate how we all can show our uniquely American social media style of helping others around the World, on all levels, when tragedy strikes.

ONE PERSON – GROWING A SOCIAL MEDIA VICTORY GARDEN

If you are just a “regular guy” you may be unsure as to what you can do to help, especially in light of seeing what all of the support larger companies, organizations, governments and non-profits are providing.  But there are little things you can do on your own turf, the equivalent of growing your own little “Victory Garden” during times of crisis…

1. Talk to the boss – Talk to your employer about putting together a social media campaign (see below, If You Are a Business.)  Offer your services to put together and direct the campaign when asked to do so.
2. Go local - Raise money at your local level. Hold bake sales at work, school, or place of worship.  Ask your neighborhood to hold one big yard sale.  Print out and hand out flyers encouraging neighbors to participate and donate.
3. Blog about it – Put together a blog and post your own unique viewpoint about the tragedy, and tell them what you are doing to help.  Read the blogs of others writing about the tragedy, and thank them for taking the time.
4. Letters to the editor - Write your local newspaper and encourage your entire city to do something.
5. Use your social media account - Tweet and retweet, write Facebook updates, share on MySpace.  Repeat.

CELEBRITIES! ELVIS DID IT – WHY CAN’T YOU?

It takes a war-level effort to overcome major tragedies in the World. One of the biggest periods of recruitment during any historic war we’ve been involved with, was after a major celebrity put their hat in the ring too.  Are you a celebrity or social media persona? Do you have tons of followers who actually listen to what you have to say?  During times of crisis, it is incumbent on you to use your much louder voice to reach out to others as an example.

1. Just talk about it - You have a ton of followers, and they love what you have to say.  Whether or not you have embraced the celebrity nomenclature and all that comes with it, you are in the public eye, even in social media.  Take the time to tweet and retweet messages of encouragement and support.  Share on all your social media network accounts often.
2. School your followers – Find great sources of information regarding the background of the region and its peoples, and share the links with your fans.  If you have first-hand knowledge of the location where the tragedy took place, use this knowledge to add support to your concerns.  An incredible example of this is @Alyssa_Milano who has travelled far and wide in support of others nations during tragedies.  She is friendly, knowledgeable and accessible.
3. Donate a portion of your proceeds – If you are an artist with an upcoming CD, or a movie maker with something out there in theaters, donate a portion of sales.  Fine examples of this are @JoshCharles, @BillZucker and @AriaaJaeger who are all donating a portion of the proceeds of their new CDs right now .  There are so many of you who could join in! Many of you (such as @kirstiealley) humbly keep the majority of your donating activities a secret, and I commend you for that.  But if advertising your philanthropic activities will boost sales (and therefore donations) you might want to reconsider in this case…
4. Create a storefront - Have you considered taking the lead from celebrities such as @MarielHemingway and creating an Etsy storefront?  It’s easy to do, and allows you to generate an income from selling simple items.  Etsy takes care of everything for you, including marketing and sales.  You simply collect a check! Make it known that all proceeds will go to charity, and see if people are interested in buying t-shirts or coffee mugs with your own mug on them. You have nothing to lose…
5. Sold to the highest bidder! – Find a major non-profit relief organization, and setup a partnership with them.  Ask the non-profit to establish a donation account code for the donations you personally bring to them.  Then when a tragedy occurs, take a photo of and offer up something one-of-a-kind to your followers, to the person who donates the most to your chosen non-profit using that special code.  Ask the non-profit to track and provide you the name, email address and Twitter username of the person who donated the most using that code, so you can contact the winner directly.  Tweet out the username and congratulate them!  What a thrill for your fans!

ORGANIZATIONS AND BUSINESSES: JOIN THE ALLIED FORCES!

During any major world-changing event, it has taken the combined ingenuity and support of American business (and their employees) to be victorious.  They have the shared, larger resources, ongoing consumer base, mailing distribution lists, telephone networks and web presences worldwide.  Why shouldn’t they continue to be a partner in the efforts to combat a tragedy somewhere in the World?

1. Turn off the block and turn on the love - You have employees, and many of them are on social media. Provide your employees an email or printed sheet with recommended messages of encouragement and support, or links to resources (including your own.)  Turn off the company block on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter for a week, and let your employees freely take time during their breaks or lunch hours to tweet and retweet these messages and others they find online.  Encourage them to take one post of their blogs and say something about what they are doing at work, and let them write the post during office hours…
2. Fundraising can begin at the office - Arrange for office fundraisers and support the staff in taking the time to put something grand together and develop interest.  Let the copiers or printers to be used (within reason.)  Letting your employees do something helps remove the sense of helplessness they may have as they read the news, which ultimately will help with productivity in the longrun…
3. Get the message out – Use some of those terrabytes of webspace you’ve got to highlight the tragedy, what your office is doing, how proud your company is of its efforts and employees, and what your customers can do to help.  Add a nice banner ad on the main page of your site to take people there so they can see what you are up to, and can suggest other methods to you…  Send links to the page everywhere using your newly-enabled employees!
4. Collect a Twitter Dollar - Does your business ever collect an extra buck from your customers, have them write a short message and put a little piece of colorful paper on the storefront in support of something?   If your business has a social media account (and it had better,) perform the social media equivalent.  In your stores collect that same dollar, and ask your customers to include their Twitter username on the paper.  Create a method for your store managers to send that info to corporate, so your social media people can tweet out a personalized thank you, including the donor’s Twitter username, so others on Twitter can also thank them for their donation. I will call this the Twitter Dollar concept.
5. Tweet, damnit! - Use your company’s social media account to provide hyperlinks to places to donate, to thanks others for their fine work, and what you are doing to help out.  Make sure your company has a plan for the social media maven (or mensch) to keep your followers alerted and engaged.
6. Make your customers into mini-philanthropists – Create a method for your customers to donate to help those suffering from the tragedy, simply by doing what they do anyway – purchasing from your store.  You pay people in Marketing to figure this sort of stuff out, and if they aren’t doing that good of a job, contact me and I’ll help you figure something out!  One fine example is to create a 10% off coupon offer and place it freely available online.  Tweet out a link to this coupon far and wide and ask others to retweet.  Customers who present this coupon at time of purchase are offered the chance to donate as much of that 10% savings as they’d like to your company’s efforts to help the victims of the tragedy.
7. Buddy up with the bigwigs – Discover who the social media heavy hitters are, and contact them.  They know their networks and how to communicate with their followers.  They’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. Ask their advice on what else you can do to get the word out and help alleviate the effects of the tragedy.  Ask if they would work with your company to get the word out.  In exchange for this service, you could offer to highlight them for their help on your webpage.  It’s win-win…
8. Integrate it all - This is where a social media position at your company helps.  Keep a running tally of donations from your coupon offer and Twitter dollars on that great new webpage you’ve created.  Tweet out milestones and encourage others to help with each status update.  Take photos of your employees working hard to help those in need and use a photo sharing service to highlight them.  Keep track of what works and use it over and over…

GOVERNMENTS: IT’S TIME FOR THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARSHALL PLAN

The Office of Social Media Relations – I ask federal, local and state governments to consider the creation of their own Office for Social Media Relations (OSMR).  Work together to create a Social Media Marshall Plan, to provide helpful information freely to help businesses, organizations and individuals create and maintain social media marketing campaigns with the sole purpose of helping others  in need.  Develop and maintain state and federal websites with best practices used, helpful documentation, and examples.  Invite people to follow your OSMR on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace in order to receive word when a tragedy strikes, and how they can help.

I invite a newly formed Federal OSMR to provide a website where individuals, businesses and organizations can register their contact information for the purpose of partnering to help in the event of a tragedy such as Haiti using their own social media accounts.  Everyone will be offered downloadable help in creating their own Social Media Marshall Plans.  Allow the registrants to state whether they are willing to help with tragedies affecting others on a local, state, or national level (or all of the above.)

When something terrible happens, the Federal, State or Local OSMR will send a groupmail to its registrants, depending on the level of the tragedy.  Organizations will be asked to implement their own newly-created Social Media Marshall Plan to get the word out and to help.  OSMR will continue to contact and coordinate efforts in the most desirable and efficient manner, whether it be asking for money to be donated, clothing and blankets, or even transportation.

Like a ripple, the word would them move outward quickly, and in an organized manner….  From there, social media users would push the word out further in an organic manner.  Blog posts would be written, employees will see blocks to social media lifted, businesses will begin fundraising campaigns, and we can all work together as proud Americans, battling to help others once again.

Because of organized efforts of businesses and non-profits, millions of dollars have been raised quickly since the Haiti tragedy not so long ago.  People on Facebook and Twitter have made their friends and followers aware of simple $5 or $10 text message donation campaigns.  And what’s easier than sending a text message?

I give a thousand shoutouts to the many nonprofits and celebrities tweeting to others and encouraging them to donate whatever they could.  I bow before those that continue this effort to this day, realizing the enormity of the plight of those in Haiti (and now Chile,) and that it will take more than the millions of dollars already donated.

Haiti and Chile need much, much more than what has given thus far.  It is up to our government, businesses, and people like you on social media to continue the interest, and to find novel new (yet simple) ways for people to donate and get involved in helping as Winter continues for those people affected by the quakes.  It is also incumbent on those of us with the ability to do so, to create a Social Media Marshall Plan, in order to be ready for whatever tragedy the future holds.  We’re waiting to be organized.  You showed the path to using social media to get into office, @barackobama.  Now show us you remain committed to directing our new “Virtual Nation” to help others!

I encourage you to share this article with all of your local, state and federal government officials, corporations and organizations you find in social media, and your friends. Tweet our leaders and demand they read this post!

- Steve Woods

Did we even need a Bill of Rights?

So, why do we even need a Bill of Rights?  Didn’t we have a Constitution signed just a few years before 1791? Well, even when the Constitution was being written, there were a number of divisions with regard to whether or not it should explicitly list what our rights were.  To keep everyone in line, a proper listing of rights was left out of our founding document, in part to cobble together enough signatures on it.

The Cons

Alexander Hamilton stated a concern that by listing our rights, we were actually limiting them.  What happened to those rights that someone failed to list?  Were they now lost?  Did we only have those rights that were in the document?  Hamilton’s argument was that what was being created was typical in a relationship between royalty and their subjects.  In those situations, a Bill of Rights was often abused by those that held the power to define them.  Hamilton wanted an approach more like that of Britain’s Common Law, which drew from Natural Law, or the belief that we had rights inherent to our very presence in the World, and those rights were equal in stature to all others alive today.

The Pros

On the other side of the argument was Thomas Jefferson, who stated “Half a loaf is better than no bread.  If we cannot secure all of our rights, let us secure what we can.”  Jefferson and others were deeply concerned that a strong, emerging centralized government would work quickly to limit and/or remove the rights of all Americans.  Jefferson viewed the then-strong Presidency as possibly becoming akin to a Kingship.  Those rights secured now were less likely to be taken from us later…

Covering rights not documented

After much debate and subsequent modification, the Bill of Rights was brought forth, providing ten proposed Amendments to our Constitution, each one securing and defining the limits to our fundamental rights.  To appease those that agreed with Hamilton, the 9th Amendment stated “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”  Basically, if it’s not in our founding documents, it’s still a right unless stated otherwise.

Facebook and Social Media rights

On Dec. 9th of this year, Facebook changed its privacy settings for all of its users.  Founder Mark Zuckerberg posted a message on Facebook letting us all know that he would be opening up his private page for all to see and comment on.  That was nice of him.  The second thing he authorized, however, caused quite a stir.  Facebook, according to Zuckerberg, would also be opening up our status updates and photo albums for all to see too, unless we logged in, went back into our privacy settings, and reset them.

As I type this, millions of Facebook users with protected content who have not been informed, or have not logged into Facebook for awhile, may be sharing their content with everybody.  Hope all of those busy politicians, supermodels, actors, police officers, military members and so forth have the time and remember their logins…

A not-so-public change (and not addressed in Mr. Zuckerberg’s letter at all) was a privacy setting related to Google and other search engines farming your public content.  If your content is public, search engines can farm your content as of 2007.  But apparently, a new check box disallowing this sort of behavior has made its appearance in your privacy settings, but defaulted to allow it.  Yes, that’s right.  The ability for Google to deliver your content to everyone well outside of your friends network was kept defaulted to “Yeah, I’m okay with that.”  To remove this, you’ll have to go into your Privacy Settings and click on the Search icon.  Then click to uncheck the Allow box.

After logging in and changing your settings, you will find far greater granularity in defining who gets to see what content, but it was a heck of a way to introduce these new settings….

So what’s next?

As social media continues to grow in popularity, and advertisers begin to smack their chops over peeking at what we say to each other, you will likely begin to see what you say being offered up to mass marketers.  Some of the handing over will be done very publicly, and you will have to make a choice about what to do with your privacy settings.  But I do worry about what might get shared without my knowing, as yet another check box makes its emergence under dark of night, with a setting allowing for what I say to you to be whispered far and wide…

So while I am still scaring you, I have devised a simple Bill of Rights for the citizen living within the borders of Social Media.  Read them and let me know how they should be modified.  Adopt them if you’d like and use them when determining whether or not you are going to create another account somewhere online.  Copy and send them to your social media website provider and ask if they comply with them, and how.  Retweet or share them as far and wide as you’d like…

The Social Media Citizen’s Bill of Rights

First Right - We have a right to social media sites that are not configured in a way to favor one religious viewpoint, sexual orientation, gender or race over another.  We are to be allowed equal access in the ability to share our lives and exchange our viewpoints.

Second Right - We have a right to social media sites that do not prohibit or limit our freedom of speech or ability to share multimedia information openly (or privately) with others.  In order to protect us from material we deem offensive, social media sites shall provide the ability for us to limit, hide or block another user’s content.  Social media sites are to ensure they do not create features that ultimately circumvent the limiting of viewing of our content.

Third Right - We have a right to social media sites that allow any news or governmental source to share and disseminate multimedia information to us in an equally fair and timely manner, without censorship or the provision of favor to any particular viewpoint or bias.

Fourth Right -We have a right to social media sites that list, in an accessible location, the rules of how we are to use the site, as well as how the operators of the site shall address violations of these rules.  Social media sites shall provide an easy-to-use method for us to petition the site in order to redress grievances or rule violations.

Fifth Right - We have a right to social media sites that provide to its users the ability to protect the privacy of their content, and to limit its viewing by others to the maximum extent possible. With this regard, our right to set, maintain and adjust the personal privacy settings for our multimedia content, shall not be infringed.  Changes to any of our personal privacy settings shall not occur without timely public announcement and our express individual permission.  All design modifications should endeavor to default in such a way as to leave in place existing privacy settings.

Sixth Right - We have a right to social media sites that will never enter into agreements with private or governmental entities in a manner which circumvents our personal privacy settings, without our express permission (except via legal means in pursuit of criminal justice.)  Legal circumventing of our content shall not be performed without a warrant showing  probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and shall describe in detail the content to be searched.

Spread these rights far and wide, to let people know they can ask that the natural laws of social media allow us to expect certain unalienable rights to privacy and protection from its providers, simply by creating an account and showing up in the virtual world, too!

-Steve Woods

The Main Page

The site to take your mobile browser to is http://mobile.twitter.com.  I’m an iPhone 2G user, regular ol’ locked mode with AT&T account.  That’s what I’ll use to give it a shot.

When you get there you’ll see a nice, pretty blue home screen, along with a Search box to find topics talked about on Twitter.

The Popular Topics are broken down by what’s popular now, over the course of today, and over the course of the last 7 days.

Under the Search box is the Trending Topics section, but called Popular Topics here.  Clicking on any one of the topics will give you an automated search on it.

Above it all, top right, is a Sign In button. Go ahead, give it a shot…

Note: There is no “Save my login information” option, so you always have to login so far…”

Post-Login

After you go through the basic login screen, you’ll have a few familiar choices to play with…. I’ll go through them quickly.

At top is the status update screen. Just click in the window, type something and hit Update.  There is the traditional 140-count rundown for you.  You can also see how long it’s been since your last update, for people like me who tweet way too damn much…

The tweets look pretty decent, showing the basics: a sender link and avatar, tweet, time since the tweet, and whether or not it is a reply.  Below that you have icons allowing you to reply, retweet or favorite it. Pretty simple.

Next to the Home button you can see your @Mentions, Favorites and Direct Messages.

Note: There isn’t a URL shortening method in Twitter Mobile, so long tweets will stay that way.

Using the Interface

I went through the basics, did a tweet using the copy n’ paste feature of the iPhone to see how it handled long addresses (see note above,) and shuttled through the different menus without issue.

I chose one of my favorites from one of my favorite tweeters, Gary Arbaugh, who always has great advice, stories and recipes for me.  Then I tried the reply feature on the favorites.

The interface works smoothly, same as Twitter. It’s barebones, so there are no customized background setting changes or photo change options. No biggie.

Other features in Twitter Mobile

I scrolled down to see that the screen fits 20 tweets, one after the other, along with a More button.  This amount is fairly typical of mobile Twitter apps.

At the bottom the screen you will additionally see your avatar, how many followings and followers you have, and your last update.

At the very bottom, you can also choose to go to Standard Twitter if your browser can handle it, and turn images off in order to speed up delivery (basically moving to the bare-bones old-style mobile Twitter feed.)

Popular topics are repeated here for your edification.

Clicking on any avatar will give you that person’s following/follower stats and tweets, as well as the ability to follow or unfollow. No blocking feature.

Final words?

Well, the interface works pretty smoothly, looks great on an iPhone, and am unsure as to how it will fare on much smaller cell phone screens.  Give it a shot and let me know in the comments section!

While looking for my Direct Messages, I did get to see how the Fail Whale looks like on Twitter Mobile.  Kind of heartening to see such a familiar blue guy!

On an iPhone, Twitter Mobile Beta is no Tweetie 2 or Tweetdeck Mobile, or even Twitterific.  But it’ll do on cell phones that aren’t as capable, and I welcome the foray into the playing field so dominated by companies other than Twitter.

I look forward to future offerings, and hope that Twitter continues to work toward reclaiming some dominion over their interface.

batteries. You’ve probably noticed the growing number of people on FaceBook and Twitter mourning the hostile takeover of their social media accounts.   I’ve helped a few over the phone, going over the basics to lock the offending individuals out and restore that warm, fuzzy feeling of security. Thank God for AT&T’s Nationwide plan.

There are a variety of ways your social media account can be taken over.  The US-CERT (Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team) warns of two common methods of Cyberjacking Social Media accounts – via hackers and through malware.

Hackers “hack” away at your account by figuring out your login information or exploiting known weaknesses in an online website or application.  This was the case when Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! email was hacked into during the last Presidential campaign.  Using a well-known exploit of Yahoo’s password reminder feature and a looksie at Google and Wikipedia, it took just 45 minutes for a college kid to get access to all of Sarah’s emails, and to block Sarah herself out.  The details as to how this was accomplished are well-documented…

Malware is a bit of software code designed to look in certain places that personal and private information is typically saved.  Many of us allow our web browsers to save our popular website login information for more rapid access during future visits.  This information is saved on a text file in a default location, easy to find by a software “worm” sniffing around on your machine.  To get the malware, simply download it by visiting an infected website…

Let’s talk about some ways you can protect yourself in Social Media from both hackers and malware:

PASSWORDS

The most important (and private) bit of information about your social media account is the password. Here are 6 tips to creating and maintaining a relatively indecipherable password:

1. Don’t use passwords based on personal information that can be figured out elsewhere (blogs, tweets, Facebook status information, Wikipedia.)
2. Don’t use a word that can be found in the dictionary. Any dictionary.  Some hackers use specialized software that will run through every single word quite rapidly.
3. Use both lower- and upper-case letters when you can.
4. Use alphanumeric combinations, and even special characters if allowed.
5. Don’t use the same passwords on everyplace you go on the Web.
6. If a passphrase (a pass-sentence vice a pass-word) is allowed, go for that instead.  It’s more complex to figure out.
7. Change your password every 6 months.
8. Avoid allowing your browser to save your login information.  This is especially true when using a shared or networked machine.

PRIVACY

After establishing your Social Media account, make sure that you have the level of privacy you desire.  FaceBook has a variety of settings to limit who can see your profile information, status updates, and replies to others.  Twitter allows you to lock down your tweets so nobody can see them unless logged in and are one of those you personally follow.

Try to strike a balance that provides the protection you feel you need while leaving the ability to network with others.  If you are a very private person, then I would suggest visiting these settings immediately after creating your account, as by default your comments are left pretty wide open for viewing…

Ticked off someone recently?  Then lock down your viewing settings until things cool down…

CONNECTIONS AND APPLICATIONS

Those games on FaceBook are pretty enticing, aren’t they?  I enjoy Café World but have let my field in Farmtown go fallow long ago.  I play along with a few Facebook friends.  There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the games, and they easily snap into your account by sharing login authorization information.  Be aware that many of these applications are 3rd-party, which means they weren’t created by you, or even by FaceBook.  They were made by another organization, and although their security level may be good enough to have gotten FaceBook’s seal of approval, if their servers are ever breached by hackers, your Social Media account information might be compromised too.

Your Facebook applications can be found by clicking on the Applications Settings under the Settings tab.  There you can delete or limit what the application can do.

There are a variety of web-based applications that tie into Twitter and enhance its desirability as well.  Twitpic, 12Seconds, Blip.fm, Tweetmic and other applications add photos, video, music and even your voice to the Twitter stream, making it a true multimedia experience.  To tweet the multimedia to your followers, you have to link the application to your Twitter account.  This means you are either sharing your Twitter username and password or allowing the application to connect using a special process the application’s creator and Twitter have agreed to.  The application then can draw information from your Twitter account or tweet something for you when desired.

The list of applications (or Connections as Twitter calls them) can be found in your Settings tab.  You can revoke access to a given application any time you want, and I do recommend that you go now, review the Connections you have made in the past (and long forgot,) and revoke Connections used only rarely, to limit liability if one of the great new tools you are using gets hacked itself…

DM LINKS

We’ve all seen them on Twitter by now.  The wonderful links in our Direct Messages telling us to check our IQs, or that we are in a funny video, and to please click here to see it.

These are often examples of the second method of account compromising, Malware.  The DM itself has been sent from an account that has itself been hacked, and forced to send out more versions of the original message that got this guy in trouble in the first place.

If you click on the links, they will take you to a website with a file that’ll sneak itself onto your machine.  If your browser security settings are low, your machine will allow the download. In your browser’s Tools settings, you should be able to find a security setting which will force the browser to ask you before anything is downloaded on it. An explanation of browser settings and adjustments from CERT are here… The code snippet contained in the downloaded file will sniff through your computer, looking for saved login information, and may even record every keystroke you make on the keyboard.

If you follow the bad link you may soon find your social media account hacked into and tweeting out whatever the hacker wishes to send on your behalf.  You may also find your bank’s Internet address and financial login information passed on if you are not careful! Best to never, ever click on the link in a DM, even if the DM came from someone you trust, without first clearing the reason for sending it openly on Twitter or via another method.  For the untrusting, McAfee offers a free download, Site Advisor, which will allow you to scan websites before visiting them for viruses, malware, or adware.

RECENT TECHNIQUES USED

The DM links have begun to move into the Twitter stream now, as hackers use automated Twitter profiles to tweet you what appear to be personalized links.  They always throw me off, as I’ve never spoken to (or follow) the individual(s.) These links will do the same damage as those that were once sent via DM, so steer clear of them, unless you know who sent them, and again have determined why.

The addition of hash-tagged trending topics in tweets containing bad links has shown some resurgence, as hackers try to get you to find their links by clicking on a trending topic.

The creation of accounts using names nearly similar to popular heavyweights on Twitter, in order to lure you into trusting their information.  Danny Devito created an account on Twitter not long ago, and immediately a fraudster created an account using the same avatar and a similarly-spelled name.  Make sure you are following who you think you are!

Methods to hack you or Phish (Internet slang for fishing for your private information) you will continue to evolve in Social Media, so take the time to read and heed the warnings that come through on the stream.

IF YOU ARE HACKED

So you have received a tweet stating that someone following you received a DM with a suspicious link, and you know you never DM’d them.  You can’t get into your FaceBook account anymore, and you see things on it you never typed in.  Now what?

Where you go from here depends on whether or not you can still login yourself to the account…

If you can get into your account still:

• Immediately verify that the email attached to the account is correct. If not, change it back.
• Change the password, logout, and then login with the new password.
• Take a look at the Twitter Connections or FaceBook applications and delete those that are suspicious, or revoke their access.  Remove access for those that you know you don’t need.
• Consider yourself lucky as you delete the undesirable comments and apologize to everyone.

If you cannot get into your account anymore:

• Contact customer service immediately with the problem, and be both persistent and forceful about getting them to verify your account information and reset the password for you.  Be prepared to provide any information asked of you to verify your identify…
• Customer service for Twitter
• Hacked account service for FaceBook
• After you get in, immediately verify all personal profile information, all login information, change your password and remove all unauthorized applications.  Then remove undesirable information and let everybody know what happened, to warn them…

I hope that this information helped you somewhat.  Don’t wait until you are hacked like Britney Spears, Guy Kawasaki, Bill O’Reilly, Rick Sanchez (right,) and thousands of others on Twitter and FaceBook to fix things. Here’s a great article by TechCrunch detailing a number of celebs who had some pretty embarassing things placed in their name by hackers…

Go look now and make the needed adjustments, because I want to keep reading what YOU have to say, not what some Cyberjacker makes you say!  I always knew Rick’s smile had something special behind it…