Mar 21, 2009 | blog
It’s been there for awhile, quite awhile really. I’ve been able to ignore it for the most part, though it is getting a bit old.
I’m talking about those MLM types, thinking they can gain some advantage through sheer following numbers on Twitter. Fancy schemes to gain thousands of new followers in 48 hours or less.
What purpose does this serve? If your tweets/following percentage can’t even break 1%, why are you there? Why would I even care? Why are you gaming my account and others? We can see through what you’re trying to do.
Do you want to know why?
Like a bad 70’s disco LP, stuck in the past. Singing the same tune like so many previous polyester leisure suit wearing, used-car salesman before you. Am I stereotyping? Gee, sorry – there’s a reason for it. Your last-century marketing efforts are lost in the reality of the 21st century. You might as well try selling toothbrushes door to door for all the good your Twitter account does.
Take your glossy commercials with pop stars, your shiny hummer, that damn inflatable Gorilla, delete your spam account and start over. We’re not buying it.
Photo credit: Sunfrog1
Oct 11, 2008 | blog
I’ll warn you up font – this post is pretty much a rant about the blogosphere as it is today. Read on if you want.
I think I have it – the reason I’ve been blogging less these last several months.
It’s the stress. The stress of debate, of the times, of confrontation. That’s what I think I’ve been seeing develop around the blogosphere the last several months. I’d been thinking it was part of the buildup to the super bowl of political events – the U.S. Presidential election.
It’s more than that, however. It’s permeated nearly everything I had been reading and following the last several years. As such, I’ve found less interest in participating in the discussion. Finding most of it to be that very echo-chamber we complain only the A-List participates in. Not true really – it’s top to bottom A through Z.
The same tired topics, the same rhetoric, the same names, the same points of view, the same crap over and over until it becomes nothing more than a manifestation of the joke that the “unwired†population think “web 2.0†is. That makes me both mad & sad.
What’s my point? It’s that I started blogging because it was an outlet for ideas that I couldn’t share at work. It was a way to explore new topics outside the confines of my IT background into new fields of interest. It seems like that period has passed. Perhaps it hasn’t, but to me it appears that way. The tone, while civil, is changing. The conversations among bloggers is becoming debates.
Bloggers I’ve followed for years have developed into just another version of the mainstream media. It makes me wonder if there’s space left to really exchange new ideas and further explore them to the fullest. Instead, I find the same rehashed topics left over from CNN, Fox and CBNC. Oh joy.
Layer the economic issues coming to light in the last week or two and you get a cacophony of “sky is falling†postings from all the usual suspects. What’s worse than amateur journalism without a point? Uninformed, fear-filled, amateur journalism without a point. This point should back that statement up pretty well except that it’s not fear-filled, but rather loaded with disgust. Disgust that people who once came up with and shared new ideas, now can’t help but echo minor variations of the same theme.
On the other hand, some of those same popular bloggers that I used to read with gusto pointed me to the next great resource for ideas and inspiration. Fellow bloggers and writers who labor to share, teach, learn, improve and otherwise give back to their readers. I’m off to the explore and share those ideas and experiences. Bloggers who’ve yet to really get noticed by the who’s who (and maybe one who has) are what I’m looking for, so share some of the ones you know of.
How about you? What’s your take on the state of the blogosphere?
Photo credit: James Gordon (James has an interesting post that accompanies the above photo about the sliding rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, CA)
Update: Of course, an hour after I wrote this great post I ran across Coarsness Threatens Social Media Growth by Chip Griffin. That’s what I get for not staying on top of my feeds!
🙂
Apr 15, 2008 | blog
So Andrew Baron has his Twitter account for sale on ebay? Can anyone tell me what the point of this exercise is? Other than a money grab that is.
I mean, who among his followers would keep following the account when they discover it’s not actually him? So that negates the value of his follower list – without that the account has no monetary value.
Heck, any one of us can go and build a “Fake Andrew Baron” Twitter account and follow the same people that the real one does. Then go sell it on eBay for half the price the “real” account goes for. In the end, it’s essentially the same account.
Just for fun, I should start creating “Fake <famous blogger here>” accounts, following the same people that the real person does and sell them on eBay. The absurdity of it all just stuns me to the core.
Andrew, if you’re that hard up for cash, maybe you should take up a paper route… it builds character, at least it did in my case. 😛
What’s your take on this? Seriously?
Technorati Tags: Twitter, Andrew Baron
Apr 9, 2008 | blog
These public bitchfest’s by the supposed “A-List” really need to be taken offline. This crap has filled my RSS reader for too long – I want to be reading real, valuable, useful information from these “thought leaders”, not this drivel. If you can’t share an opinion in a way that adds value – why bother?
I haven’t bothered to read up on the current brouhaha involving Loren Feldman/Mike Arrington and Shel Isreal because I really couldn’t care less. The result is that TechCrunch has less value today than yesterday, and I now know that I’ll not even bother to stop in at 1938 Media. I’ve got better things to waste my valuable time on.
If you’re wondering when blogging will overtake MSM, you’ll first have to get the leading online “publications” to stop acting like 10 year old playground bullies. Until that happens, and people working on high-profile sites start acting like real professionals blogging will remain a little Gen-Y pipedream.
There – I feel better now. 😉
Jan 15, 2008 | blog
I really hate to pick on my favorite online service, but… I have to. Twitter started having issues today with all the traffic from “Mac (obsession) World” today. Supposedly over all the mcInterest in what mcRevelations of mystical mcGadgetry Steve mcJobs would reveal for the mcFollowers of the mcCult.
What get’s me curious is how Twitter handled the traffic from CES last week without nary a blip, and out of the blue, McWrld trips it up big time.
Perhaps I’m out of touch and there is more interest from McWrld and that drives higher volumes of traffic. I dunno.
At any rate, Twitter has proven it’s worth to hundreds of thousands of users, but they still have reliability issues when traffic ramps up. I’m on Twitter for the long haul, it’s a core component in my social networking toolkit, so I’m apt to be disappointed when traffic from a marginally relevant tech show drives it’s usability into the ground.
Ok, end of rant.
And yes, I feel mcBetter. 😀
It’s been there for awhile, quite awhile really. I’ve been able to ignore it for the most part, though it is getting a bit old.
