Ray's 2.0

My advice to indie musicians about Twitter

2012-01-28T14:56:00.001-05:00

I think Twitter is a phenomenal vehicle for interacting directly with the world, especially your fans, and your future fans.

My advice to you is the following:

1. Tweet links to your songs that people can play.

2. Tweet links to your music videos.

3. Tweet about upcoming gigs.

4. If you would like to get mp3's of your music circulating out there, tweet links to free downloads when available.

5. Be interactive with people who show an interest in you; don't be a stiff.

6. If you think that as a "creative" person you're too busy to do what I just suggested... revise your thinking.

7. If you think all you need to do is get signed with a label, and then they can take care of everything for you... revise your thinking. The record companies are out for them, not you.

8. When you tweet your music, DON'T (a) address your tweets to any specific person or (b) send direct messages... that would be s.p.a.m. [unless you are actually engaged in actual dialogue with them]

9. If you want to connect with other people tweeting about your type of music, use "search" to find them, and follow them if you like what they tweet.

10. When you tweet about your music, consider using hashtags to make it easier for people searching for your type of music to find you. [E.g., if you are a jazz guitarist you could use hashtags #music #jazz #guitar, whereas if you're a gospel vocalist you might want to try #music #gospel #spiritual]

11. Think of twitter as a place to interact with, and hang out with, your fans, and to show interest in, and respect of, others... not as a place to just keep promoting yourself and tooting your own horn. Some examples of great musician peeps, who treat their fans like friends, not "fans", are @zoecello, @amandapalmer, and @marysarahmusic.

Any questions? Post them in a comment to this post, and I'll try to answer them.

Any additional twitter tips for indie musicians? Post them in a comment, and I'll select some for inclusion below.

Additional tips [most recent first]:

5/10/11 4:25 pm tip from @rob_t_firefly: Avoid the temptation to just hook your Facebook or similar to Twitter, let it pull down your posts into Tweets, and think "okay, I'm on Twitter" and leave it at that. Most Twitter users will not be pulled in by posts they could see elsewhere; if they wanted your Facebook they'd probably be following your Facebook. Tweeting your Facebook posts, Youtube uploads, or whatever else is a good thing to add to a Twitter presence, but it's not the only ingredient in itself.

1/11/11 5:04 pm tip from @GraceRodriguez: Use a tool like Hootsuite, CoTweet or Tweetdeck to schedule reminders for upcoming gigs or links to merch/music for sale.
Since Twitter is a constant info-stream, you can't expect people to see every single tweet..... just make sure you inject your personality into it so it doesn't become spammy [note from RB: I use SocialOomph to schedule time delayed tweets. Also sometimes Tweetdeck Desktop]

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Follower management on Twitter

2011-12-27T13:13:00.001-05:00

What's the problem?

In order to reduce spammy "following", Twitter has a rule that applies to all accounts which follow more than 2000 people:

Your "following" number must be no more than 10% higher than your "followers" number.

Example A: following 2001; followers 1700 ==> You will NOT be allowed to follow anyone new.
Example B: following 2001; followers 1897 ==> You are ok.
Example C: following 8700; followers 8000 ==> You are ok.

Tip [if you're unable to follow more people at this time]: my suggestion is to start unfollowing some of the people who aren't following you. See below for how to do this most efficiently.

Tip [if you want to avoid this problem in the future]: make sure to maintain your "following" number at less than, or at least not much more than, your "followers" number, so you don't wind up having to spend a lot of time some day unfollowing people.

Follower management tool: the ideal

The ideal follower management tool would enable you to:

-quickly see at a glance all accounts which you are following but are not following you back, and any lists of yours on which they appear;
-check off which accounts should be unfollowed and/or removed from lists; and
-whitelist and hide those which you are willing to continue to follow even if they do not follow you back.

If you know of any such tool, please let me know. I haven't found it yet.

Follower management tools which do exist

The follower management tool I use the most is refollow.com. I can't remember if it's free, or if I had to pay a very modest fee to get it. What's cool about it is it has filters, and the ability to "lock" -- i.e. whitelist -- those accounts you're willing to follow even if they don't reciprocate. So you don't have to keep looking at those each time. And it's very easy to unlock an account whenever you want to. Refollow also has other useful filters which might help you weed out things, such as, e.g., the number of days of someone's last tweet. So, e.g., if you want to remove accounts that haven't tweeted in 90 days, refollow makes it easy to do. You can't actually unfollow with it unless you're using their paid version; you have to click on the account's name, which takes you to twitter.com, where you do the actual unfollowing. Thing is, I would do that anyway, because before I unfollow I want to check whether the account is on any of my lists. An advantage of refollow is you can view quite a number of icons all at once in a very handy format. A disadvantage is it takes around a minute or two to load all of the accounts you're following.

The "Cleanup" Tool offered by tweetfindtools.com provides you with a list of all people you're following who are not following you back, and you can check off the ones you want to unfollow. It only allows you to view 100 accounts at a time, and it provides no "whitelisting" or "safelisting" or "hiding" or "locking", so that if there are some accounts you're willing to follow, whether they follow you or not, their avatar will come up each time, wasting your time. [tweefindtools seems to have a very responsive development team, and I think they're working on adding a whitelist]

Another good follower management tool I use a lot is who.unfollowed.me (h/t @klbkultur). This gives you a report of who unfollowed you, and the ability to unfollow them. Importantly it separates those you're following from those you're not. One thing I don't care for is they suggest tweeting that you've found a bunch of accounts who've unfollowed them, and you "know who they are"... I think it would be really dumb to send out such a tweet. They used to have daily reports, so that if you were off the site for a week, you could come back and find out everything that had transpired during the whole week; they do not presently have that feature.

3 other useful follower management tools, each of which loads quickly and gives you a good overview of the peeps who you're following who are not following you back:

-friendorfollow.com
-justunfollow.com (h/t @rM1L)
-Tweepi (h/t @Penny_Wyse)

justunfollow.com has whitelisting but limits the whitelisting to 500 accounts. So if you're only whitelisting 500 or less, you're good to go. It's added the ability to unfollow inactive accounts, too.

Tweepi likewise has a safelist which you can't hide, which makes it almost useless. It lists the peeps 20 to a page, which wouldn't be a problem if it had a hideable safelist, but which is a nightmare without it.

Friendorfollow, who.unfollowed.me, and justunfollow present the view in a nice, usable manner, with a large number listed per page, but provide no whitelist at all.

Other tools helpful in follower management are:

rssfriends.com (h/t MariKurisato): provides you with an rss feed of all follows & unfollows; very helpful, can be followed through Outlook email.
DoesFollow: most reliable way of finding out whether a particular single account is or is not following.
Twitcleaner (invokes various interesting criteria for unfollowing, such as spamminess, inactivity, potentially boring, repetitiveness, lack of substance, lack of engagement, etc.)
followerhub.com

[If you know of others which work well, or if any of my information has become outdated, or if you have any additional information on this evolving subject, please let me know in the Comments section, and I'll check it out. Thanks.]

(A short URL for this post is: http://is.gd/bcVIS )

List management on Twitter

2011-11-05T12:49:00.004-04:00

Twitter gave us the ability to construct up to 20 lists of up to 500 members each. But it gave us no tools with which to view, update, prune, or otherwise manage, these lists, so that our lists get out of date rapidly. (Believe it or not, there's no way on Twitter to remove someone from the list if their account has been suspended or cancelled. And if you've unfollowed someone, or they've unfollowed you, they are still on your lists, which may or may not be your intention.)

Since Twitter leaves us in the lurch with these unwieldy lists, there should be internet applications and/or desktop applications which give us the ability to:

1. view each list in its entirety on a single page, including member's account name and avatar;

2. sort and/or filter by different variables, including (a) date of last tweet, (b) name, (c) date listed, (d) whether following you, and (e) whether followed by you; and

3. go down the list, select members by check boxes, and then (a) remove selected members and (b) move and copy selected members to another list.

I'm aware of no tools that do the above, and would appreciate your telling me, through the comment section, of any which may exist. I will update this post as new information, on software which appears workable, comes to my attention.

[My advice to the twitter API developers out there would be to concentrate, if feasible, on desktop applications which can save and store data on the user's hard drive, so that "API" calls would not have to be drawn upon except to upload the updates.]

These are the only list management tools I know of:

Refollow This follower management tool has added some list management functionality. You can pick out one of your twitter lists, load the entire list, review the list members seeing their icon, last tweet, and certain other information, remove list members in bulk, and add designated list members in bulk to another list or a new list. Indirectly it gives you the ability to move list members from one list to another, since you can add them to another list and then remove them from the list you're working with. What is more, you can filter the list members by certain variables -- e.g. find all members of a list who haven't tweeted at all in 90 days, all who have no icon, who you're not following, who's not following you, etc. This is clearly the best list management tool out there right now. When Refollow added these functions it went directly to the head of the pack in the list management area.

Tweetfind's Twitter Lists Tool. This tool lets you view the membership of a list, in a serviceable manner, and provides checkboxes. So it's a start. However the only thing you can do with the checkboxes is to add the people to a list, which is the least useful function, since (a) they're already on a list, and (b) adding people to lists is the one thing twitter does enable us to do without too much trouble. And the view populates somewhat slowly, and does not show all the list members on a single page. The developers at Tweetfind seem to be pretty cool and responsive. It will be interesting to see if they can (a) improve the view (b) add functions to be invoked by the checkboxes such as remove, copy, transfer and (c) provide sorting and/or filtering. They're adding a "remove from this list" button, which is helpful, and you can tell -- from the presence of a "follow" or "unfollow" box -- whether each list member is or is not being followed by you, which is also quite helpful.

Tweetdeck. Multipurpose desktop twitter portal application. Enables you to "edit" a list, removing list members one by one, or to add non members one by one. It doesn't sort the lists, but does sort the non-list members alphabetically.

Listomatic. An internet application, its "manage" function assembles lists, collects members to be viewed from 20 to 100 at a time, allows easy removal from a list by double clicking the icon, on hover signals the following status of each list member. Does not have sorting. Slow to load. [a word of warning: if while using this you want to look at someone's profile on twitter.com, when you come back you may have to wait for screen to repopulate to 100 members; best workaround --> try to open "in a new tab"] h/t Liss (@lissnup on Twitter)

http://TweetBe.at. Internet application. Has sortable lists and 'select' buttons for bulk operations on a list. These guys really "get" it, about what's needed to manage lists. Unfortunately, tweetbe.at doesn't show the list members' icons, which in my view makes it worthless. h/t Liss (@lissnup)

Listorious. Internet application which does one thing brilliantly, and does nothing else: it provides a great view of the list on a single page, sorted by the number of followers each has. It shows the icon + the bio of each peep. It provides no ability to sort by any other variable, or to perform any operation at all. Caveat: it seems that Listorious updates the lists very very slowly, if at all. So if you make changes in your twitter list, I don't know how long it will take to get updated at Listorious. [update, Listorious seems to be going out of business; there seems to be little going on there]

lists.doesfollow.com. Website which enables you to check, on a one-by-one basis, whether a particular person is on a particular list.

mixero. A desktop application which provides some list management ability, such as the ability to remove people from lists. You need to go to the field for 'adding contacts' in order to delete contacts. It automatically sorts the list members alphabetically, so that's a plus.

formulists. Web site which falsely bills itself as being for "list management", but is really just for creating new lists. It doesn't help you manage your existing lists. I don't need a tool to help me create new lists.

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Twitter etiquette for commenting on tweets & blog posts

2011-10-03T17:50:00.000-04:00

Tweets

If you want to comment on a tweet you should retweet it.* That is by far the best way to comment on a tweet. Detached comments are time-wasters.

When you retweet, you are sharing the underlying tweet with your followers, helping both the tweeter and your followers. You are helping to build conversation and dialogue and community. If the tweet is really of interest to people, and is short enough, your comment and retweet might even be helping it to "go viral".

If the tweet is too long to accommodate both the retweet and your comment, retweet part of the tweet and/or keep your comment short, or send the comment in a separate followup tweet.

Almost always, the right way to comment on a tweet is to retweet it with your comment.

If you retweet, it's not necessary to add a comment; the act of retweeting itself is a powerful comment in and of itself. It's a statement that "this is something I find worthy of sharing with those people who trust me enough to follow me".

To comment on, or otherwise respond to, a tweet, without referencing the underlying tweet, is just plain w.r.o.n.g. None of your followers know what you're talking about, and the recipient usually has no idea either, so you're just wasting a lot of other people's time.

So if you're going to take the time to comment on a tweet, you might as well send something intelligible.

Tweets referencing blog posts

If you like a blog post which has been tweeted, you should post your comment on the blog post itself, either instead of, or in addition to, retweeting. But you should not merely tweet.

Some people try to get into a Twitter conversation about a blog post. While that's okay, it's not enough... especially where the tweet is from the author of the blog post.

Where the tweeter has tweeted about a blog post, the blog itself is the most important place for you to comment.

Twitter is very fast moving, and we miss most of what goes through our stream. By leaving a permanent comment on the blog post, you help to build a genuine, lasting, growing conversation about the substance of the post. If you fail to do that, none of the blog post's readers will know what you had to say.

And the 140 character limit which controls tweets is... well...limiting.

So if you're going to take the time to comment, you might as well leave the comment where it will have some impact.

* By "retweet" I mean "traditional retweet" not the twitter "retweet button" rubberstamp "retweet".

(Short url for this post: http://is.gd/f66bf)

How to create a "tree menu" in Blogger.com

2011-09-26T12:29:00.002-04:00

The major drawbacks to blogs are that they are organized strictly chronologically, rather than by subject matter.

Here's an interesting article which tells you how to create a "tree menu" in a Blogger.com blog.

My advice to people joining Empire Avenue

2011-09-10T17:47:00.010-04:00

If you're thinking of joining the Empire Avenue social media 'stock market' game, here's my advice:

1. Before you join, be sure to have your .jpg for your avatar lined up, and be ready to immediately link your blogs and your twitter, facebook, youtube, flicker, fousquare, facebook page, & linkedin accounts before jumping in (The reason I say this is that your "recent arrival" time is the time you are most prominently displayed, so that you shouldn't waste that time by having no avatar and no linked accounts for people to look at). It's probably a good idea to tell some of your friends who are already on Empire Avenue just before you join, as they will be avid buyers.

2. In the beginning you will have very little 'money' so in that early stage don't buy any stock in anybody unless they've bought stock in you. You will receive a 'commission' when people buy your stock (in the beginning it's 50% of the purchase price; it drops down to increments until it's only 10%). Take at least 75% of each 'commission' and invest it in the person who bought your stock, unless it's really someone you're sure you want nothing to do with.

3. Although Empire Avenue purports to measure your social media activity on other sites, it also measures your activity on Empire Avenue, so if you want to have good 'earnings' & 'dividends' & a good stock price, you should be active on Empire Avenue doing things like: endorsing people's feeds & blogs, giving people 'thumbs up', and communicating. (I've been told that buying stock in small increments, instead of large increments, increases your activity, but I don't know if that's so. There are specific ways, other than simply being active and 'influential' in social media, to increase your E.A. dividends, such as diversifying your activity over different social media sites, giving a lot of "likes & comments", writing blog posts, etc.)(I'm not really one of the experts on supercharging dividends; if you can get one of those experts to let you know how it's really done, I'd be curious to know what they say :)).

4. Don't join Empire Avenue unless you're prepared to 'take a hit' when you 'unplug'. If you take a vacation, or a weekend, or are busy with work or family, and reduce your tweeting and 'facebooking' and Empire Avenue activity, etc., even for just a couple of days... your dividends and stock price will sink.

5. Don't join Empire Avenue if you're worried about getting another internet addiction; it's fun, but it's addictive.

6. The best way I've found to view, and to keep track of, your EA portfolio is the new website http://empireave.net developed and operated by (e)BEN and (e)CLOUDOWL. You can download your portfolio and save it as a spreadsheet.

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/1GVdWT)

What to do if Twitter account hijacked & sending out spam DM's

2011-08-11T13:39:00.000-04:00

This post was first published Nov. 2, 2009

Twitter has been plagued lately with people's accounts being infected, then sending out spam direct messages (DM's), such as "is this you", or "i found you here", or "look at this", or "i made $426.23 online today with ", or "I make money online with google. i learned how here", or "would you join my twibe", or "i sent you a gift, now you should send me a gift", or "i've added a twable", etc.

Probably the way you got infected was by clicking on one of those links when you received it, and then doing something at the site with which you were connected.

I'm not a techie, and if I'm wrong I'd be pleased to be corrected, but in my opinion, if this happens to your account, the best way to deal with the situation is as follows:

1. Go to your profile "settings".

2. Change your password to a new password having a different length.

3. If there's a "connections" tab visible, go to it and revoke access to everything you see.

4. Clear your browser cache.

5. Exit your browser.

6. Log on to twitter again. Make sure there is no "connections" tab showing. If there is, revoke access again to everything, and repeat all of the above.

[Update 11/4/09 12:45 PM. 2 excellent additional suggestions from "Anonymous":]

7. Verify that your associated email hasn't changed.

8. If the password for associated email is the same as the twitter password, change your email password too.

And in the future, don't ever click on any DM link unless you're totally sure of it.

If you receive a spam DM there are basically 2 things to do:

1. if it's someone you don't know, block it and report as spam

2. if it's someone you do know, notify them that their account has been hacked (and if you like you can refer them to this article)

Also what I do now as a regular practice: any time I have to use an "OAuth" twitter application, after I'm done I go back to my profile "settings" "connections" tab, and revoke access to whatever is there.

(Short URL for this article: http://is.gd/4Le1K )

Who can see your "replies" & "mentions"?

2011-07-25T12:39:00.000-04:00

The rule of thumb on who among your followers can see your replies and mentions, in their "home" or "all friends", feed, is this:

1. If the very first character in your tweet is a @, then the tweet can only be seen by (a) the recipient and (b) any of your followers who are also following the recipient.

2. If the first @ is preceded by anything, even a single character, then the tweet can be seen by all your followers.

This distinction has no real logic to it, since the following forms of a reply are synonymous and of equal validity:

[a] Dear @RayBeckerman I enjoyed "Up Above My Head" sung by Sister Rosetta Tharpe
[b] I really enjoyed "Up Above My Head" sung by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, @RayBeckerman
[c] @RayBeckerman I really enjoyed "Up Above My Head" sung by Sister Rosetta Tharpe
[d] I'll tell you, @RayBeckerman I really enjoyed "Up Above My Head" sung by Sister Rosetta Tharpe

But they are treated differently. (c) will be visible only to those of your followers who also follow @RayBeckerman (So if you have a follower who loves you, loves Rosetta Tharpe, and can't stand or never heard of @RayBeckerman, that person will miss out on seeing your tweet.)

(a), (b), and (d) will be visible to all of your followers.

This distinction comes about only because of an historical anomaly.

Once upon a time Twitter offered an option in "settings" on how to treat replies and mentions [in those days they were all called replies, even if they weren't replying to anything]. You could elect to see all replies and mentions, or only those which were addressed to people you were following.

One day, in an effort to save bandwidth, Twitter -- without telling us -- removed that option, and prevented us from seeing any replies or mentions unless the person to whom they were addressed was also being followed by us.

When people became aware that many, sometimes most, of the tweets they'd been reading were now unavailable to them, and that they were unable to see conversations, there was a great uproar... for a lot of reasons. [E.g., (1) you were missing a lot, maybe even most, tweets of people you were following (2) it's much more meaningful to hear both sides of a conversation than just one side (3) for many of us, these conversations were a primary means of expanding our social circle in Twitter, since they offered a way of meeting people known to our friends, but not yet known to us; i.e. they served as 'social' introductions (See examples below).]

In order to satisfy our complaints, Twitter narrowed its definition of "replies" to tweets that begin with a @. We continued to be unable to see those unless we were following the recipient as well as the sender.

But if the @ appeared anywhere other than as the first character, we could see it, since it was no longer classified as a "reply".

So while the viewer or follower can no longer elect to see all of the sender's replies and mentions, the sender has it within his or her power to control which of his or her replies and mentions will be visible to all of his or her followers.

If you've ever wondered why some people will start a tweet with a "." or a ">", now you know why.

* [example 1: A, whom I follow, and I, are both interested in healthcare reform. One day I see A engaged in a conversation with B about healthcare reform. I might start following B at that point, knowing that (a) B is someone who is also interested in healthcare reform, and (b) B is someone who is valued and respected by my friend A. But if I never saw the tweet, I would never even know B] [example 2: A, whom I follow, has tweeted about an exhibition of an artist whose work I like. I then see A thanking someone named B for retweeting about that art exhibition. I know that B is someone who (a) probably shares my admiration for that particular artist, and (b) is someone who values and respects my friend A. But if I'd never seen the tweet, I would never know of B's existence] [example 3: I love giving my friend A a hard time. One day I see A engaged in a conversation with his friend B, who is also giving him a hard time. I might follow B, so we can both give A a hard time together :)].

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/cLyG2)

Why is @Twitter butchering URL's?

2011-07-06T13:01:00.001-04:00

I and many of my Twitter friends have noticed that Twitter is now doing strange things to URL's that make them unusable in subsequent replies, tweets, and retweets.

Needless to say, this greatly hampers the Twitter 'conversation'.

This is yet another example of Twitter shooting itself in the foot.

Does anyone know if this is accidental or intentional, and if intentional what the geniuses at Twitter are trying to accomplish by it?

Is it another step in Twitter's war against traditional, or classic, retweets?

Twitter Basics

2011-07-02T17:59:00.001-04:00

The 5 basic rules for happiness on Twitter

1. Upload a picture for your 'avatar' so people can see who they're talking to.

2. Put something in your 'bio' so people can get some idea of what you're about.

3. Be interactive (see "the power of ' @ '").

4. Be yourself, not phony.

5. Don't be all about yourself, take an interest in others*.

That's it. Those are the basics. Follow them, and you will have a ball.

Application of the 5 basic rules

The following points are just refinements of points 3, 4,and 5.

6. Retweet other people (see "awesomeness of retweets"). If you like it, retweet it**.

7. Don't worry about how to get a lot of followers. Just follow, and pay attention to, people you appreciate, and your network will keep on growing. As a general rule, unfollow people who aren't following you. (To learn how to identify and unfollow them, go here).

8. Don't follow celebrities, "suggested" accounts, "must follows", "power" twitters, or "best" or "top" twitters or lists; that is all hype meant to benefit them, not you***. Following these types is the easiest way to get frustrated and wind up -- like most people -- quitting, or going inactive. Look for people who are interactive and unselfish, whose style you like, and who tweet about things that are up your alley. You're not here to be a "follower" but to make friends.

9. Don't let yourself be boxed in by Twitter's terminology as to what it is for. It is for anything conversation and writing are for: making new friends, making people laugh, getting a laugh, sharing thoughts, sharing information, making the world a better place, learning, teaching, kvetching, commiserating.... Using it mainly to "update" your "status" is a good way of ensuring that your status is.... lonely.

10. Avoid spammy behavior, such as :
(a) sending auto DM's to people who were kind enough to follow you;
(b) asking people for favors;
(c) following people and then paying no attention to them;
(d) picking fights, starting arguments, splitting hairs, and/or responding to tweets without making it clear what you are responding to; and
(e) sending comments on tweets without retweeting them.

11. If you would like to be retweeted, here's how to improve your chances: (a) make your tweets good, (b) make them short, and (c) be a retweeter yourself.

12. Get one of the free software applications or "clients" that provide a nice, conversational interface and make it easy to follow people's tweets. My favorite is @Tweetdeck desktop.

13. Don't follow someone until you've looked at their tweets, and decided you're really interested.

* If you're promoting a "cause", help other people promote their causes too. Promoting your agenda, but not those of others, is just selfish.

** When I use the term "retweet" I'm referring to the traditional retweet, not the "rubber stamp" button which Twitter implemented in early 2010 and mislabeled a "retweet". For a more detailed explanation of why you should never ever use Twitter's rubber stamp version, go here.

*** One day I looked at the featured tweeps on Twitter's home page; 2 of them hadn't tweeted a single tweet in 4 months. Ask yourself, why did Twitter recommend them?

(Here's a short URL for this post: http://is.gd/cJ9XN)

A word about working with YouTube playlists

2011-06-19T15:05:00.005-04:00

I had some lengthy youtube playlists and found it impossible to sort them.

I've since figured out a few things by trial and error:

1. If the lists have 100 videos or less, they can be sorted by:

-order
-newest
-oldest
-most viewed
-longest
-shortest
-A to Z
-Z to A

So to keep your lists sortable keep them to 100 or less in size.

2. If you need to cull out duplicates from such a list you can just sort alphabetically and find the culprits.

3. If they're longer than 100, they're not sortable.

4. If you need to cull out duplicates from an unsortable list, or from multiple lists which have duplicates among them, there is a way to do it, based upon my discovery that while youtube playlists tolerate duplicates, the 'favorites' folder does not. So if you clean out the favorites folder, and move the offending playlists into the favorites folder, you'll have the duplicates automatically removed. At that point you can put the videos back in their respective playlists and remove them from 'favorites'.

For example:

-Ray has 580 blues videos in 6 playlists; he knows there are duplicates but doesn't even know how many, or which ones.
-He empties his favorites folder.
-For each list he (a) "adds" the videos to favorites, then (b) "removes" them from the list.
-When he's done with the 6 lists, he finds there are 530 videos in favorites, telling him there were, but are no longer, 50 duplicates.
-Now he "adds" the videos back to their lists, removing them from 'favorites' after he adds each column to its proper list.

[the way to do bulk operations is to click the arrow in upper left, wait for column to be selected, then perform bulk operation... for me it operated slowly, but it's better than nothing]

How to get retweeted

2011-06-15T08:10:00.002-04:00

If you would like some of your tweets to be retweeted, there are -- in my book -- 3 simple rules:

1. make them good;
2. make them short; and
3. be a retweeter yourself.

If you have to ask people to retweet you, it's because you're not doing a good enough job at (1), (2), and (3).

As to what I mean by "good", there's no simple rule, but studies have shown that tweets with links to substantive content are more likely to be retweeted than those without.

And as to keeping them short, studies have shown that using shorter URL shorteners like is.gd rather than longer ones like tinyurl will increase the likelihood of getting retweeted too.

And to those of you who feel it's wasteful if you fail to use up all 140 characters every time you tweet... it's not.

(PS, if you want to know "How to get unfollowed", one good way is to send a DM to someone whom you rarely, or never, retweet, asking them to retweet something of yours.)

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/cUAym)

My 200,000th tweet. Even I think that's a bit much.

2011-06-10T14:54:00.001-04:00

Well, today I posted my 200,000th tweet:

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter ~ Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. #rays200k

I definitely tweet too much.

But I have met a lot of extraordinary people on Twitter, and learned an awful lot.

The experience has been priceless.

Of the 200,000 tweets, the only ones I would take back are the few I squandered responding to right wing nutjobs and other trolls, before I learned not to do that.

I chose that Martin Luther King, Jr. quote, because it best exemplifies why I take Twitter seriously. As citizens we have important work to do.

Here's a screenshot of what my home page looked like, including my 200,000th tweet, and the two which preceded it.

Twitter lesson I learned from Carolina (@MissBrazil) : the power of @

2011-06-06T16:58:00.000-04:00

One of the greatest Twitter lessons I learned was from Carolina (@MissBrazil), cofounder of The Bloggers School (@BloggersSchool).

Carolina taught me the power of " @ ".

I was just getting started, and really didn't "get" Twitter, having bought into its founders' misguided use of language, calling my stream a "timeline" and my tweets "updates" about "what I'm doing".... and wondering why on earth would anyone want to read my "updates" on "what I was doing".

As if Twitter was a game of solitaire, where I record my random musings, and others mysteriously would find that of interest.

But Carolina disabused me of that. She said "I want you to be a good citizen of Twitter, I want you to be courteous and polite. Many people don't know how to be polite, they don't know how to respond to tweets. But I want you to understand. When people send you a tweet, you must respond to it. That's just good manners."

And then she taught me how to unravel Twitter's mystery and find the mysterious hidden location of the tweets addressed to me, since Twitter had no inbox and was silent on the subject (it has since updated its format to include such a 'place', but at the time offered none).

She taught me that every tweet addressed to me had a " @ " before "raybeckerman", so all I had to do was search for "@raybeckerman" and I would find them.

And then I was able to respond to them.

I have since learned that the " @ " is at the core of all interactivity on Twitter.

Every tweet intended for my eyes has my name preceded by the @; every tweet I send to someone has their name preceded by the " @ "; and every time anyone gives another the honor of a "retweet", the retweeted person's name is preceded by an " @ ".

The other day, I noticed that when I am looking at someone's profile page, to decide whether I wish to follow them or not, the most important thing to me is the incidence of " @ "'s in their timeline. The absence of "@"'s tells me this is someone who is just talking "at" people; their presence tells me this is someone who is engaged in conversation and sharing.

Since sharing and conversation are what Twitter is really all about, for me, the " @ " is what it's all about.

I see many, many twitter accounts -- many of them accounts of people who supposedly are knowledgeable about "social media" -- which have very few tweets that include " @ ". I'm glad I avoided that mistake. In my opinion those people are wasting their time here, in self-promotion, self-adoration, or just plain isolation, and are missing out on the treasure that is here, which is community.

So thank you, Carolina ( @MissBrazil ), for the valuable lesson I learned from you: the power of @.

(Here's a shortened url for this post: http://twurl.nl/l4aqfu)

How to find info thru Twitter: lesson I learned from Leslie (@1txsage1957), Libero (@ldellapiana), & Eric (@ebrooks)

2011-06-03T17:19:00.003-04:00

Sometimes people comment about my ability to find important news and information that is not available elsewhere.

I really learned this skill from 3 people on Twitter who were here before me: Leslie (@1txsage1957), Libero (@ldellapiana), and Eric (@ebrooks)

I noticed that they were coming up with news stories that were simply not available to me in the mainstream media.

From their work I learned that Twitter was a great tool for finding the news that's hard to find.

I started (a) doing keyword searches for topics that were of interest, & following the people I found who tweeted good material, (b) following people who were retweeted consistently, and (c) following the RSS feeds of some of the more interesting websites to which my tweets had led me. These made twitter a powerful tool for finding the stuff that doesn't make it into the mainstream media and the mainstream history books.

I learned the importance of this firsthand in 2004, when I was basically an eyewitness to massive election fraud taking place in Ohio during the presidential election. The Ohio media were reporting on it, but the mainstream national media had adopted a "company line", creating a fictionalized version of what had occurred. I assume they did so because they thought the American people "can't handle the truth".

Most recently the US "mainstream media" suppressed information about the all important protests of the indigenous rainforest peoples of Peru, who were standing up against their government's illegal attempt to confiscate most of the remaining Peruvian rainforest for the benefit of oil and other mineral exploration interests. These humble people were waging a struggle not just for themselves but for all mankind. Not a single mainstream US media source covered the story. Had they been covering it, the bloodshed which ensued -- a massacre which appeared to include the hunting of unarmed people with machine guns from helicopters supplied to Peru by the US -- might have been averted. The only major media coverage of the protests was in the UK.

Only after the massacre had ensued, did the US media give any coverage, and it was slight, begrudging, and falsely reported.

So I continue to look for the real news. And Twitter helps me do it.

And I can thank Leslie, Libero, and Eric for showing me the way.

(A short URL for this article: http://is.gd/5tZ70)

How to set up your twitter apps (or "clients") to do traditional retweets rather than rubber stamp retweets

2011-06-02T09:09:00.002-04:00

As most of you know, Twitter's fake "rubber stamp" pseudo-retweets should never be used (see "The "traditional retweet" (#TR) : the key to conversation & visibility" ).

Some twitter applications (or "clients") can be configured to ensure that whenever you're going to retweet something, you will be doing genuine retweets instead of the fake ones.

This post will collect links to instructions on how to do that for each app.

If you know of any that aren't listed here, or if anything here is no longer the fact, please use the comment section to let me know the details and your twitter name, and I will incorporate them into this post, and credit you with a "hat tip".

If your app does not provide a method for defaulting to traditional retweets.... scrap it.

The following apps can be configured to do traditional retweets when you retweet; each link will take you to the instructions on how to do it:

-Tweetdeck
-UberTwitter
-Twittelator
-HootSuite
-Tweetdeck (Android): needs no configuration; once you start doing a retweet, if you tap in compose section it converts to traditional retweet.
-Twicca (Android): no need to set up; choose "quote" rather than "retweet" and it automatically uses "RT @" format.
-Twidgit (Android) uses traditional retweets only. h/t @jameld
-Twitterific is an app for Macs, iPhones, & iPads. I'm advised that it supports traditional retweets, where they are called "retweets with comments", but have no information on how to configure it.
-Seesmic desktop does not provide a method of doing it, except by making an extra click and using its "quote" function.

(Here's a shortened url for this post: http://is.gd/d5jsp)

Article by @lizgannes makes me think new @twitter is a step back to 1950's network TV

2011-03-20T12:30:00.001-04:00

[first published 9/16/10]

I read, with sadness, this article, "10 Things You Didn’t Know About the New Twitter.com" in gigaom.com by Liz Gannes (@lizgannes), brought to my attention by my friend @polipaca, in which Liz writes that

Twitter wants to position itself as a place for fast and easy consumption of information. Product manager Josh Elman [@joshelman] said that he expects Twitter will be more like Google than Facebook: a destination for quick visits rather than extended time-wasting and engagement sessions. Twitter users come to the service when they have an extra moment waiting in line, and return throughout the day. Elman (who previously worked at Facebook) said it’s philosophically important for Twitter that the people don’t necessarily know what they’re looking for when they access the service; they just want to be informed. (More on Twitter CEO Evan Williams’ thoughts on that topic here.) Cheng said that it’s more important for people to get a lot out of each visit to the Twitter site than it is for them to spend more time there.

Sounds to me like the twitter management erroneously thinks we need another feedreader, and that that's the way forward for Twitter's business.

As most of my Twitter friends know, twitter has been a vehicle for engagement and interaction, and that is what makes it special and unique.

It is incredible to me how ignorant and short sighted a business plan this would be.

But I don't doubt that this is an accurate description, since I've been saying for many months now that a number of Twitter's actions have been inexplicable, except as paving the way for twitter to become just another means of broadcasting information, and monetizing the process.

Chief among them was the development of the false retweet -- the rubber stamp retweet -- instead of accommodating the traditional retweet twitter's users had developed (see "The "traditional retweet" (#TR) : the key to conversation & visibility" ). This was a move meant to benefit the big paying customers, with a side effect of cheapening the twitter experience for the rest of us.

Other things like the new home page with "top tweets", top peeps, paid search results, paid additions to 'trending', suggested peeps to follow, buying up independent applications and turning them into captive twitter-only "official" applications, requiring OAuth authentication instead of username/password authentication, etc., are all part of a scheme to turn twitter into a way for companies to use tweets to promote themselves.

It was particularly sad to see twitter management equating "engagement" with "time wasting".

Twitter is clearly regressing from Web 2.0 to Web 1.0.

What's next? 1950's era television advertising?

Very sad.

I hope twitter's competitors are paying close attention.

[update 9/19/10. Twitter's adding another anti-social device: taking over exclusive control of URL-shortening, with its own shortened URL's that will always take up 20 characters]

(A short URL for this post: http://is.gd/fdHcx)

How to set up a StatusNet (identi.ca) account in @tweetdeck desktop

2011-03-14T10:59:00.001-04:00

If you would like to set up Tweetdeck desktop to accommodate your StatusNet (identi.ca) account, here's how:

StatusNet

1. Go to accounts > add new account > twitter

2. Put in the StatusNet username & password

3. Click "advanced options"

4. For the "twitter base url" type in : [your url for status net home page]/index.php/api/

5. Save settings.

Your tweetdeck now handles your StatusNet account.

identi.ca

1. Go to account > new account > twitter

2. Enter the username & password for your identi.ca account

3. Click "advanced options"

4. For the "twitter base url" type in : https://identi.ca/api/

5. Save settings.

Your tweetdeck now handles your identi.ca account.

Question (to which I do not know the answer): Would these same techniques work for FriendFeed and other microblogging services?

( Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/cytOV )

I'm going to start tweeting less about the "retweet" button; those of who you who don't listen are on your own

2011-02-25T13:03:00.000-05:00

I've repeated many times my detailed article about why people who use Twitter's faux-retweet button are just hurting themselves.

But no matter how many times I tweet about it, there are still people on twitter using that button.

I recognize that most of the people who follow me are aware of the problem, and most of the people unaware of the problem are people who are new to following me, but there comes a point when it's just plain rude to my followers to keep repeating the same thing over and over and over again.

And I'm tired of wasting my time editing faux-retweets when I want to retweet them, to try and make the misguided "retweeter" less invisible.

So my present game plan is:

1. I'm only going to tweet about this subject rarely... maybe once a month or less.

2. If I want to retweet something which is in the wrong, "invisible", format, too bad for the person who retweeted it. I'm not going to spend another minute of my time making visible people who elected to become invisible.

Searching for tweets? Try Google

2011-02-09T14:03:00.002-05:00

It is hard to believe, but:

1. searching tweets through twitter's search engines will only give you the last 6 days of tweets

2. tweets are now searchable on Google.com

3. the tweets on Google.com go back much further in time

So if you are searching on twitter, and can't find what you're looking for, you might want to try searching on Google, and see what you pick up.

In order to find my tweet(s) about the screenings of the new Phil Ochs documentary I did a google search "screenings raybeckerman" which immediately produced what I was looking for:

http://twitter.com/#!/RayBeckerman/status/31437203997466624

The search results page produced lots of relevant tweets:

Supposedly, if you want to restrict your Google search results to tweets, you can start off with the following parameter: site:twitter.com I.e., if you wanted to do a search for references to the #philochs hashtag on Twitter, your search might be: site:twitter.com #philochs & hashtag. But, based on my playing around with it, it seems that using this method may, for some reason, limit the number of tweets you unearth.

I don't know if this works with other search engines. I tried it on altavista.com, and it did NOT work.

In case you're wondering why you can find the tweets on Google but not on Twitter, I'm guessing the answer is M.O.N.E.Y. Probably Twitter has been holding back on its search results to make searchability of tweets valuable. And Google probably paid for the access.

My Twitter "refollow" policies

2011-02-04T12:39:00.000-05:00

The following are my Twitter "refollow" policies:

My primary interest on Twitter is having good conversations with interesting people who care about people, and other living things, other than themselves.

Please do not follow me, as I am not likely to follow you back, if:

1. You describe yourself as wildly successful and completely happy, living a perfect life in total contentment. (You don't need me to screw it all up for you.)

2. Your Twitter account is primarily about selling something, promoting yourself, promoting your religion, or picking fights with people like me.

3. You are a company or a bot.

4. You want to be my "coach", "guru", "visionary", or "thought leader". (I would much rather fail on my own terms).

5. You tweet frequently about how to make money, get more followers, and/or achieve as much success as you. (I will never be as successful as you, and I already am struggling with how to find the time in the day to give, to each of the followers I already have, the attention he or she deserves.)

Also, if I do refollow you, please do not send me automatic DM's suggesting I read something or do something; I already have too much to read and to do.

Thanks.

Ray

@RayBeckerman

(Here's a shortened URL to this post: http://is.gd/cNFKN)

@RayBeckerman's Twitter ReFollow Policies by Ray Beckerman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at beckermanlegal.com.

Shorty Awards orders vote-buying to stop; I resume my campaign

2011-02-03T16:49:00.000-05:00

The Shorty Awards has responded to my complaint about DustyTrice's vote-buying. This was their response:

We've looked into this. We don't want people exchanging anything for a nomination, but in this case it was a bit of a grey area since he only promised #followfridays shout outs rather than a physical good or money. We didn't anticipate a situation like this so the rules didn't clearly prohibit it. We just added a specific prohibition of a "promise anything of value in exchange for a nomination" and have sent an email to the offerer to stop doing that and he has agreed.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention and sorry for the delayed response.

Since they ordered him to stop this practice, I've decided to resume my campaign.

I would appreciate anyone who hasn't submitted a "nomination" yet to vote for me for a Shorty Award in #politics using the following link:

http://shortyawards.com/RayBeckerman

The deadline for nominations has been extended to February 11th.

I've been off the campaign trail for 11 days, so any help you guys can give me would be appreciated.

The @ShortyAwards finally respond to my complaints!

2011-02-01T13:24:00.007-05:00

The Shorty Awards have responded to some of my complaints:

(Click image below to get larger version)

(Shortened URL for this post: http://twurl.nl/v5ddrt)

Why I'm not campaigning any more for a Shorty Award cc @shortyvotes @shortyawards

2011-01-31T21:33:00.000-05:00

(Originally written Jan. 21, 2011)
I've decided that it's a waste of my time and my friends' time for me to campaign for the Shorty Awards.

I don't think it's a legitimate contest.

Here are my reasons.

1. Last year the award in politics went to an account which (a) had less votes than all the other candidates, and (b) was a basically noninteractive account, consisting primarily of tweets spit out from an RSS feed. What possible basis there can have been for granting the award to that account is a mystery.

2. Last year one of the accounts which did have a lot of "votes" received most of them from transparently fake dormant accounts, each of which had 10 or 15 tweets over the account's entire lifetime, and had clearly been kept on "the shelf" for the purpose of being used in just such a ruse some day. The Shorty Award's so called "audits" -- if they ever occurred -- never disallowed those fake votes.

3. This year, after a week of voting, the Shorty Awards began "suggesting" accounts to nominate. It is completely absurd and corrupt for an organization running a "vote" to "suggest" which names you should nominate. It would be like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences suggesting to its members who should be nominated for an academy award.

4. This past night, although I had 20 more votes than the person in 1st place, I was listed as being in 2nd place. While I know the Shorty Awards claims it discounts votes from illegitimate accounts, my votes were from legitimate accounts: I'd read all of the votes that came in, and all but 2 or 3 were from regular twitter accounts that were familiar to me. All, or almost all, of my votes deserved full credit. I can no longer continue asking my friends to take the time to vote for me, knowing that their votes are not being counted honestly.

5. This year, the account which is in 1st place, even though I have more votes, has acquired about half of its votes by a form of "vote buying". The account holder offered to give #followfriday recommendations in exchange for Shorty Award votes. So far he's bought and paid for approximately 200 votes that way. The Shorty Awards is doing nothing to stop the practice.

Bottom line, the Shorty Awards "election" and "selection process" are without credibility. An election with no integrity is not an election, it's a scam. I'm through campaigning, because in doing so, I'm just giving publicity to a dishonest event, and wasting my friends' time.

I apologize to my friends and followers for having wasted your time.

(A shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/frGkXe)

Retweet the old fashioned way, using 'classic' or 'traditional' retweets only

2011-01-12T12:49:00.000-05:00

Ironically, the most important feature on Twitter is one that Twitter itself did not develop, and has never adopted: the traditional retweet.

It was developed by the customers, on their own, and not by the company. And amazingly, to this date Twitter itself has never incorporated it, although doing so would be as easy as pie.

My advice to all Twitter users is that you should not use what Twitter calls a "retweet". It is a counterfeit, and does not have any of the key properties of a retweet. Just skip it.

The true, traditional "retweet" is the life blood of Twitter, and what has set it apart from other similar "microblogging" services. [See my blog post "The awesomeness of the RT" : http://is.gd/4PFbJ ]

Here's how to do a traditional retweet if you're accessing Twitter at twitter.com:

1. Copy and paste the message and name of person sending it to you.

2. Precede it by "RT @" [type "RT", then a space, then a @. It's important that the @ and the name NOT have a space between them].

I.e. it should start out like this: "RT @Username "

[Easier way: If you're using Firefox or Chrome as your browser, and are in "New Twitter", you can use the "Classic Retweet" button supplied by Jon Pierce's add-on "Classic Retweet 1.0". If you're set up with that, all you've got to do is hit the "Classic Retweet" button instead of the fake "retweet" button.]

It may be even easier if you're using a Twitter "client" or application.

If you use online Dash Twitter console provided by tweetfindtools.com, when you hit the "retweet" button you automatically get the classic, or traditional, retweet, with the "RT".

If you're using Tweetdeck, Seesmic, UberTwitter, or any of the myriad "clients" and applications which support Twitter and other microblogging platforms, many provide a way to incorporate the "traditional retweet" as your retweet method of choice. (See, e.g., those listed here.) If your app doesn't enable you to do that, ditch it and get an application that does.

What's wrong with the thing Twitter mislabels a "retweet"

(1) You can't insert a comment, start a conversation, or join a conversation;
(2) you can't edit;
(3) instead of showing your avatar, it shows the avatar of the original tweeter, which might be someone your followers don't know or have any relationship with;
(4) it prevents you from seeing multiple versions with different comments from different people;
(5) if someone retweets you, it is difficult for you to learn that they did [if you are using the "new twitter", you have to go to the list of retweets > Your Tweets, retweeted > retweeted post, then hover your cursor in upper right hand corner to get arrow to appear, then click arrow to find out who retweeted; i.e., you would have to conduct an elaborate investigation, one that you will rarely if ever undertake];
(6) if you retweet people, they will never learn that you did, unless they go through that same lengthy investigative process; i.e, they will probably never learn that you retweeted them;
(7) your so called "retweets" either will not show up, or will show up in an inferior way, in Tweetdeck or any other Twitter "clients" or applications, and if they do show up, will not prominently display YOUR icon (they will prominently display only the icon of the author of the original tweet);
(8) a fake retweet has no URL and is therefore not searchable. It has no separate identity. It has no identity in, and will not show up in, any kind of twitter search, such as keyword and hashtag searches. Examples of how this undercuts the value of your twitter experience are too numerous to mention, but a stream come to mind.*
(9) you won't be found when people are looking for people to follow with similar interests;
(10) the identities of intermediate tweeters will never be known;
(11) to the extent your identity is recognized at all by the recipients, they can't reply to you, or retweet you, or DM you, and may not even be able to verify your user name;
(12) it eliminates discussion;
(13) it won't show up in a Tweetmeme listing of tweets;
(14) when the pseudo "retweet" is itself retweeted, whether by rubber stamp retweet or by traditional retweet, you won't be mentioned at all.

In sum, it takes the "social" out of "social media" by [a] eliminating conversation and interaction, [b] insisting on blind rubber stamping, [c] preventing you from letting your friends know you've honored them, [d] preventing you from knowing your friends have honored you, [e] making you invisible, [f] making it harder for you to meet new friends with similar interests, and [g] removing any clear indication of your identity to your existing friends.

One of the primary uses of the traditional retweet is not to 'repeat' something at all, but to start or continue a conversation, with 2, 3, sometimes even 4 or 5 people participating in a single tweet. In this type of classic retweet, you're repeating something in order to preserve the conversational thread. Here are a couple of everyday examples from some good conversationalists, who use traditional "retweets" as conversation:

http://twitter.com/amazing_flora/status/15898025671
http://twitter.com/tashamiel/status/12650036800
http://twitter.com/mireyamayor/status/12651573387
http://twitter.com/SherriACP/statuses/12649436005
http://twitter.com/NiniBaseema/statuses/12575093633

The people who engage in such conversations are the people having the most fun of all on Twitter and are the coolest communicators here.

Twitter's pseudo retweet makes such engagement and interaction impossible.

Twitter's management thinks Twitter is for information only and is not supposed to be "social", and that a retweet is for the purpose of repeating, or rubber stamping, the original tweet.

Why did Twitter do this?

It has to do with appealing to Twitter's "business" customers (read "paying" customers) -- corporations, celebrities, social media professionals, major news media -- who do not themselves retweet but who wish to be retweeted by others, making it easier to quantify their "impressions", and to enhance their visibility at the expense of the rest of us. Twitter thinks it can make more money from its advertising [euphemistically termed "promoted tweets"] by being able to quantify the number of repetitions they receive.

If you fall into the trap, your interactivity with your friends is shattered, and your visibility to your friends is removed.

Even the "paying" customers for whose benefit this was done are being screwed, although they may not realize it. Instead of becoming a part of the Twitter conversation, they're just getting the same type of paid advertising spam they could have bought anywhere else. And if they do get rubber stamped, they're being 'rubber stamped' by the least experienced, least visible, least influential, people on twitter -- since those of us who are knowledgeable are likely to avoid touching the rubber stamp button like the plague.

What about other microblogging sites?

Twitter's competitive edge is, and always has been, the traditional retweet. By abandoning that, it is relinquishing its competitive advantage over other microblogging sites.

Conclusion

This is my advice:

1. Don't use Twitter's so called retweet function.... ever.

2. Use genuine, traditional retweets only.

3. Configure any twitter apps which you may be using to do traditional, rather than 'rubber stamp', retweets. If yours cannot readily be configured to do that, drop it and use one that can. Period. [see "How to set up your twitter apps (or "clients") to do traditional retweets rather than rubber stamp retweets"].

4. Explore other microblogging services.

Some people ask "what if the original tweet is too long"? I say that if you really can't shorten or edit it, then forget it. Why punish your followers by injecting spam into their stream? Your followers are looking for stuff from you, not from strangers. Stuff from strangers, which they didn't ask for and don't recognize, has a name: it's called s.p.a.m. [When people complain that they've been seeing a lot of tweets in their stream from people they don't recognize, that's because of peeps using twitter's rubber stamp button].

The "length" problem should become less and less of a problem, as automatic "elongated tweet" features become more and more available. For example, see Twitlonger and XLTweet

* [a] In the 2010 round of Shorty Awards voting, people were advised that one way to vote was by retweeting. The retweet votes were retrieved through Twitter search with the aid of Twitter hashtags. Apparently none of the votes lodged by the "fake retweet" button were counted, since the tweet had no URL, hence no identity, of its own. It is unclear what votes were or were not counted in the 2011 Shorty Awards. [b] Many tweeters, and many internet twitter applications, use keyword searches in Twitter search to find new people to follow who share similar interests; all use of Twitter's pseudo-retweet is excluded from such searches (Let's say, for example, I am looking to find new people to follow who are interested in indigenous peoples' rights, and use the hashtag #indigenous or the term "indigenous" to locate them. Or let's say I'm asking Mr. Tweet or some other application which helps with "friend finding" to find me people who tweet using the keyword "indigenous". And let's say you're someone who constantly uses twitter's fake retweet technology to send out tweets using the hashtag #indigenous. I will never even learn of your existence, because my search will turn up NONE of your pseudo-retweets. The poor saps who use Twitter's fake retweet are constantly losing opportunities to make new friends who share similar interests.)

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/cKhSh )

The @ShortyAwards "suggesting" who we should nominate? How corrupt is that?

2011-01-09T16:27:00.002-05:00

I cannot believe what I saw when I went over to the "politics" category at the Shorty Awards web site:

At the top of the voting category it has avatars of eight (8) twitter accounts which are not faring well in the voting, and says: "Undecied? [sic] Check out these popular politics accounts you can nominate."

Then it provides a "more" link which leads you to a small number of other accounts that aren't faring too well in the election, either.

Don't they realize how corrupt this is???

It would be like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences suggesting to its members who it should nominate, and who it should vote for, in the Academy Award voting.

This really taints the award process, and suggests something really wrong with the company administering the Shorty Awards.

Can they possibly be that clueless, not to realize that you can't run an election and make suggestions on who to nominate in that election, without demonstrating to the world that your election is rigged?

(A shortened URL for this post: http://is.gd/EiEMt8)

But enough about me. Let's talk about YOU. What do YOU think of me?

2010-12-29T22:27:00.000-05:00

One of the things I can't stand is being followed on Twitter by accounts which have a demonstrated track record of being interested in no one other than themselves.

They spout off one tweet after another, with no interaction, no retweeting, no generosity, no dialogue, no concern. [They might thank people for retweeting them, but never think of retweeting someone else].

They are about nothing but promoting themselves or whatever else they are peddling.

Why follow me if you're not interested in me?

Go follow yourself.

People who follow, just to try to get followers, are a Twitter plague.

Twitter lesson I learned from Denise (@dhowell): the awesomeness of retweets

2010-12-03T08:59:00.000-05:00

I first learned about the value of a "retweet"* from something that wasn't technically a retweet at all.

Denise (@dhowell) is a dynamic, really cool lawyer/geek/talk show host/writer from California. She is an "early adopter" of technology, and was heavy into Twitter before I'd ever even heard of it.

She knew me from my blogging and legal work fighting the RIAA (see, e.g. "Recording Industry vs. The People").

When I was new to Twitter, and just starting to try to get a bit more active, she sent me a tweet. It went something like this:

Hello Ray Beckerman (@RayBeckerman) author of Recording Ind v People http://is.gd/1Y6e4 Welcome to Twitter!

Now I looked at this welcome, and thought its format strange indeed. I asked myself:

1. Why would she be using my full name, and not just calling me Ray? I know my last name, and don't need to have it spelled out for me.
2. Why would she be mentioning the name of my blog? I write the blog. I'm quite conversant with it's name, since I gave it its name.
3. Why is she telling me the URL for my blog? I should know the URL by now, I go there multiple times a day.

So I thought about it for awhile, and visited her Twitter profile page, and there it hit me what Denise had been doing.

My network was around 50 people.

Her network was around 3000 people.

She was doing me a favor. She wasn't just greeting me, she was introducing me to her friends, making me available to her entire, wonderful network. Once I'd put 2 and 2 together (I'm a bit slow), I realized what a nice thing she was doing : Denise had introduced me and my blog to all of her friends on Twitter, and at the same time had let them know that I was.... an okay guy in her book.

That was the day I understood the awesome significance of the retweet. It is saying to someone, "I value you and what you have said, and want to share it with all of my Twitter friends".

(Of course it took me another month to figure out how to DO a retweet, but that's a story for another day).

So thank you, Denise (@dhowell), for making me realize the magic of the retweet.

Or should I say:

Thank you, Denise Howell (@dhowell), host of This Week in Law http://twit.tv/twil for teaching me importance of RT's #TWiL

*4/14/10.6:06 PM EST. When I say "retweet" I'm referring to the traditional retweet, not the pseudo-retweet button created by Twitter to enhance advertising & commercial exploitation. To understand the distinction see my post "Twitter tip: don't use Twitter's pseudo "retweet" button"

(Short URL for this article: http://is.gd/4PFbJ)

Firefox add-on by @jonpierce enables Traditional Retweets when using New Twitter ht @Sue_Koch

2010-11-29T12:39:00.005-05:00

As many of you know, after years of twitter users clamoring for Twitter to provide a retweet button, Twitter instead provided a fake rubber stamp "retweet" button, rather than a button that facilitates classic or traditional retweets

I recently learned from @Sue_Koch of a Firefox add-on which provides a "Classic Retweet" button, in addition to Twitter's pseudo-retweet button, when you are using the "New Twitter" interface in Firefox.

It is called "Classic Retweet 1.0" and was developed by Jon Pierce (@jonpierce on Twitter).

It is available at this link:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/241011/

Jon has developed similar add-ons for Chrome and for bookmarklets.

For those people who use Twitter's internet interface, and who prefer the ease of a "button", this is an excellent solution.

I have used the Firefox version and it works perfectly. It provides exactly the type of button Twitter should have provided.

It only works in "New Twitter" rather than the old twitter interface.

And it does not work for tweets which are "protected".

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/iJTHg)

My "Some Friends of Mine" list

2010-10-15T11:50:00.000-04:00

My recommended following/reading list is "Some Friends of Mine". It's broken down into a number of lists because of Twitter's 500-member list size limit.

The one criterion that it is based upon is excellence: peeps I have selected who greatly enhance the Twitter experience.

If you were to follow those lists, you would find a wealth of great material, and meet a lot of cool people:

Some Friends of Mine http://is.gd/bhGeO
Some friends of mine 1 list http://is.gd/bhCgG
some friends of mine 2 list http://is.gd/bhlud
SomeFriendsOfMine 3 list http://bit.ly/djRGs9
somefriendsofmine4 list http://bit.ly/9DICmN
SomeFriendsofMine5 http://is.gd/dtbxK
SomeFriendsofMine6 http://is.gd/eS4B8

Dear @refollow Please go to read-only & do it fast

2010-10-08T19:44:00.001-04:00

I just learned of your being blocked by twitter & the reasons why, and saw your request for suggestions. Here's mine

I have written about the excellent service you provide, and have designated you as my follower management tool of choice.
http://rays20.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-need-for-follower-management.html

My suggestion is to go to a read-only mode and to do it quickly so that your wonderful service will be available again.

You will still be able to provide the filtering and the locking, which are the features that make your service unique and valuable.

I usually don't even use you for the actual unfollowing, because I have no way of discerning if someone might be on lists of mine; once I decide to unfollow someone I remove them from lists as well, but twitter -- for some dumb reason -- doesn't give you that option. So usually when I'm using your service to figure out who to unfollow, I click on the link to the twitter.com interface to see if they are on any lists. Sometimes I unfollow there, sometimes I unfollow back on your page, but it's really not important.

What is important is:

1. the good interface
2. the reasonable amount of time to load
3. the great filters
4. the locking feature

So please, go to read-only format, and do it soon. We need you.

Best regards

Ray

I'll be on the panel at "Monetizing the Band" ... Oct. 12th ... New York Law School #music #musicians

2010-10-08T14:45:00.001-04:00

New York Law School is holding “Monetizing the Band.”

This event will instruct practictioners, law students and other interested parties in the art of making a band a money-making entity. We will be meeting with members of actual working bands, booking agents, artist managers, web 2.0 experts, merchandise professionals, publishing companies, licensing companies and independent record labels.

After the panels, there will be a general networking session.

This event is sponsored by Esq. Bank.

Please rsvp at brian.daitzman@law.nyls.edu

Tuesday, October 12 2010. Check in begins at 6pm. Must RSVP.
@New York Law School for Tuesday, October 12 2010 for the night in room W201 at 185 W. Broadway Campus NY, NY.

Here is the program:

The band panel will begin at 6:30pm

Jonny Dubowsky (Rock & Renew/Jonny Lives!)
Kenyon Philips (Unisex Salon)
Ezra Huleat (Black Taxi)
Erica Quitzow (Young Love Records/Quitzow)
Josh Hoisington (The Stationary Set)
Maya Azucena (Maya Azucena)

Industry Panel 7:30

Adam Shore (The Daily Swarm)
Natalia Nataskin (Agency Group Lawyer)
Jeremy Holgersen (Agency Group)
Justin Shukat (Primary Wave Music)
Peter Shukat (Lawyer)
Mark Weiss (Artist Arena)
David Mazur (Masur Law)
Adrian Perry (Tab the band/ Weil)
Barry Heyman (Heyman Law)
Adam Jordan (Rely Records)
Jake Ottman (EMI)
Veronica Gretton (Independent Manager + Publisher)
Rob Shore (Business Manager)
Ray Beckerman (Lawyer)

Brian Daitzman, JD
http://www.linkedin.com/in/briandaitzman

Dear @Twitter management. Twitter IS a social network. Duh.

2010-10-05T12:23:00.013-04:00

[Update: on 10/16/10 Josh Elman said we can use Twitter however we want to.]

Recently I pointed out an article in which a Twitter executive [@joshelman] said informally that Twitter is positioning itself more as an information provider than a place to "engage" and "waste time".

Today I came across an article in readwriteweb in which Twitter has formally gone on record as (a) denying that it is a social network, and (b) claiming that it is a content provider.

Twitter is NOT a Social Network, Says Twitter Exec
By Sarah Perez / September 14, 2010 11:32 AM

Kevin Thau [@kevinthau], Twitter's VP for business and corporate development, announced during a presentation at Nokia World 2010 today that everyone's favorite micro-blogging network is not actually a social network.

It's not, you say?

No, says Thau: Twitter is for news. Twitter is for content. Twitter is for information.

Complete article

Ever since its inception, when Twitter said it's a place for people to "update" their "timelines" with their "status", its management has demonstrated that it has no true understanding of what Twitter is.

Their war against traditional retweets has further demonstrated this lack of insight.

Anyone who has followed Twitter's own statements of what Twitter is, has missed the boat.

These recent announcements -- in effect saying that twitter is no more than a collection of RSS news feeds -- demonstrate more of the same.

Why did they make these announcements? I'm guessing that they're striking some lucrative deals with "content providers", and/or advertisers, and think this is a way to get more money out of them.

A better way would be: "know thyself".

(A shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/d7B5jh)

The basics of twitter lists

2010-09-29T11:03:00.011-04:00

Twitter gives you the ability to create up to 20 lists, each having a maximum number of 500 members.

Each list can be "private", in which case only you can see it, or "public", in which case everyone can see it.

You can follow a public list, without following the individual members.

Following a list does not mean the tweets of list members will show up on your "home" page.

It's easy to add people to one or more lists. On twitter.com you just click the lists icon, get the drop down menu of your lists, and check the ones to which you want to add the person. In tweetdeck desktop you just go to user>add to group or list>lists and check off the lists to which you want to add the person.

What's not so easy is maintaining the lists, especially if they are lengthy, as twitter supplies no effective tool for that, and application developers have been slow to create one (See Tools for managing twitter lists). If you wanted to prune a list, or move people from one list to another, you may find it quite time consuming.

There are many uses for the lists. People are evolving new ones all the time.

Most people seem to use them, in one way or another, as a means of managing their reading more efficiently. E.g., in Tweetdeck desktop one can set up a separate column for any list, making it easier to concentrate one's reading on a certain group of peeps at any given moment. Some folks might have a list of high volume tweeters, or a list of favorite tweeters, or a list of conversational tweeters, etc.

It is now even possible to send spam with a list, but if anyone ever did that to me I would unfollow and block them immediately.

(A short URL for this post: http://is.gd/fA9iu)

Why is @twitter monopolizing URL-shortening? how will this affect us?

2010-09-19T13:45:00.010-04:00

I received the following notice by email from Twitter. As I understand it, they're intending to monopolize all URL-shortening used on Twitter by the end of the year.

I have 3 questions. Question number 2 is rhetorical.

1. Am I reading this right?

2. Why are they really doing this?

3. How will it affect us to have no choice on URL-shortening?

Update 2: t.co URL wrapping

In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link. Wrapped links are displayed in a way that is easier to read, with the actual domain and part of the URL showing, so that you know what you are clicking on. When you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service to check if the destination site is known to contain malware, and we then will forward you on to the destination URL. All of that should happen in an instant.

You will start seeing these links on certain accounts that have opted-in to the service; we expect to roll this out to all users by the end of the year. When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL.

What does this mean for me?

* A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title.
* You will start seeing links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened links and lets you know where each link will take you.
* When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time.

Thanks for reading this important update. Come and check what's new at http://twitter.com.

Thanks,
The Twitter Team

A lack of competition always hurts consumers. If we're stuck with Twitter's url-shortening, it seems to me, this can only hurt us.

I wonder if it's legal for Twitter to condition our use of Twitter on our use of its URL-shortening service.

Sounds like an unlawful tie-in, similar to Microsoft's initial attempt to force Windows users to use only Internet Explorer.

It's an attempt by Twitter to leverage its strong position in one market -- a preeminent position in socially interactive microblogging -- into a monopoly position in what is presently a wildly competitive market in which it has no presence at all -- URL shortening.

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/fiwfM)

Why we should use independent apps, rather than rely on Twitter's

2010-09-11T18:39:00.007-04:00

According to this interesting article on BusinessInsider.com, which was pointed out to me by my friend @JustSweetAngel, Twitter is now trying to emulate or acquire the interfaces and applications made by independent developers, and then use them as "official" Twitter applications.

Users would be well advised to steer clear of Twitter's Twitter-only apps and interfaces, for several reasons.

Reason #1: Better to use applications that can support other social media networks

Assuming Twitter could, e.g., do as good a job as Tweetdeck or Seesmic in devising (or ripping off) a user interface (an assumption which is not free from doubt), it would no doubt be an application which supports Twitter only.

Right now, if you are using Tweetdeck, it supports, in addition to Twitter : Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Buzz, Foursquare, and (unofficially) StatusNet (formerly identi.ca), and probably can be configured to support others as well.

Seesmic, too, supports a number of social networks, including the ones mentioned above, plus cadmus, empire avenue, klout, ning, ping, and socialcast.*

No doubt Seesmic, Tweetdeck, and all the others, will be adding support for an almost infinite array of additional social networks, such as the ones mentioned above plus many others such as FriendFeed, Plaxo, Delicious, Blogger, Tumblr, Jaiko, Bebo, Flickr, Typepad, and on and on and on. See, e.g. "TweetDeck Android app will be more than just Twitter"

The trend in social media is clearly to (a) participate in more than one social media site, and (b) to use interfaces and apps which unite -- rather than divide -- your various social media accounts. And new social media networks are being started daily. To tie onesself into an interface or other app which supports only Twitter would be unwise.

Reason #2: Better to use applications that are designed for the user's benefit rather than Twitter's

A second good reason not to use Twitter's apps is Twitter's conflict of interest: Twitter's primary goal is to promote itself, not to provide you with the best software. You should stick with software that was designed to assist you, not software that was designed to force you to help Twitter in its monetization strategy.

For example, in an effort to promote monetization, Twitter has declared war against the traditional retweet, and done whatever it can to promote its "rubber stamp" pseudo-retweet button. After Twitter bought Tweetie, and designated Tweetie 3.0 as the official "Twitter for iPhone", it did away with traditional retweets in Tweetie.

So now, unlike other iPhone apps, which give you a choice, and which can be configured to use traditional retweets only, Twitter for iPhone gives you no choice at all: you must use the fake, or rubber stamp, retweet, or none at all.

You can bet that every other "official" Twitter application will be guided by a similar philosophy: generating dollars for Twitter's paying clients.

So another reason not to rely on Twitter apps is that they are going to be designed not for the convenience of us -- the people -- but for the convenience of Twitter's commercial and celebrity clients.

Stick with applications that are designed for your benefit, not someone else's.

Reason #3: Competition

As you know, consumers benefit from competition. If you have multi-network applications, then, if one network starts screwing you, you can easily "walk", without feeling any pain.

If you want to help Twitter build a monopoly so that you're stuck with them, then by all means use Twitter's "official" applications.

But if you want a choice of social networks, and want to be able to easily switch from one to the other, stay far away from such "official" applications.

Reason #4: Safety

Yet another reason came to mind to me on September 21, 2010, when this hacking incident occurred: "Twitter Mouseover Security Flaw Affecting Thousands of Users [WARNING]". People using twitter directly were affected. Those using independent apps were not.

Reason #5: Being current

Twitter is usually about 3 years or more behind its users and the independent app makers. Each time it announces a "new" feature, it's something it ripped off from the independent app makers, who have provided that feature for years.

* The references to specific networks are as of September 11, 2010. I'm not going to keep updating these lists, because I expect scores, even hundreds, to be added in time, and I expect most application makers to be working on applications that support multiple social networks. I.e., the number of applications, and the number of social networks they will be supporting, is basically infinite.

(Here is a short URL to this post: http://is.gd/bszxe )

It's official. @twitter does think we're lemmings!

2010-08-13T17:18:00.014-04:00

I can't believe my eyes.

On the heels of inflicting a "suggestions to you" promotion in the sidebar telling us who we should follow, our friends at Twitter have come up with a new annoyance which is at least as annoying, and even more insulting:

When you visit someone's profile page, Twitter now forces you to see a pop-up list of hyperlinks to other people who follow this person.

I.e., since I am a lemming, it would be of great interest to me to know who else is following this person so that I can:

(a) be "in" with the "in" crowd;
(b) be just like my friends;
(c) "trend";
(d) be a real "follower"; or
(e) all of the above.

Gag me with a spoon.

Fortunately, our ever vigilant, multi-talented, friend Beth Sheresh, known on Twitter as @kitchenmage, has provided us with the means with which to block this abomination, too.

And if you would like to block the "you both follow" popup Twitter has added to the right sidebar, as well, @kitchenmage has an app for that, too.

Who thinks these things up?

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/egybP)

Twitter's tweet button

2010-08-12T11:54:00.010-04:00

Twitter has come up with a "tweet button" which it describes here (i.e. a button for blogs and web sites with which to share an article on twitter).

Here's an example:

This is about 3 or 4 years late, and in my view not a big deal.

It's much better to use the various multi-site "sharing" buttons, so people can share an article with other social media networks as well; all of them include Twitter. E.g., on my blogs I use a "share" button supplied by "AddThis" (See bottom of this post). It accesses almost 300 different social media networks, including Twitter of course.

I've often used the ShareThis buttons, which seem to work just like AddThis, and give you multiple social networks through which to share the article. Also I've noticed that Google's blogger.com has started offering a sharing bar, with several sharing options, including Twitter.

Twitter's button sends you to Twitter only.

Why bother with it? If you want to have something like that on your blog or web site, why not use, instead, the "share" buttons offered by addthis, ShareThis, or blogger.com, or similar products.

Why did Twitter come up with it? I'm guessing they decided it was a good way to try to steer traffic to Twitter and away from other social networking sites. (Also I have it on good authority from @kitchenmage that twitter is using it as another vehicle to promoting lemming-like behavior by suggesting "who to follow".)

The button offers us nothing, except the opportunity to help Twitter build a monopoly and defeat competition.

PS If you know of other products similar to, and as good as, "addthis" and "sharethis", please let me know in the comments section, so I can add them to this post. Personally, I can't see why anyone wouldn't use "addthis". It works fine. If it gives you access to 286 social networking sites, why use a button that only gives access to 6 or 7, or 4 or 5, or -- as in the case of Twitter's button -- only 1? Thanks.

(Short url for this post: http://is.gd/eeELB)

How to block Twitter's suggested users on home page, thanks to @kitchenmage

2010-08-07T16:40:00.006-04:00

Thanks to @jaycbee, @tweetsmarter, and @kim for bringing to my attention this extremely neat article, written by our ever vigilant, multi-talented, friend Beth Sheresh, known on Twitter as @kitchenmage, who apparently -- when she is not blogging -- is coding:

Removing Twitter's Recommended User to Follow "Feature"

Do you hate those recommendations from twitter as much as I do? Rhetorical question, I know. It seems to be the new thing to hate - and with good reason this time. It just recommended I follow someone who blocked me when I wrote Cook's Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knife Roll. Last straw, much?

I decided there must be a way to kill the suckers. You know what? There is a reason they call me Application Goddess. Done in 12 minutes. Take that, twitter.

Complete article

Beth has also devised additional filters to block the (a) 'other people who follow this person' list here and the "you both follow" popup here [although my latter filter has stopped working in Firefox, due to some apparent 'workaround' by Twitter].

(Short url for this post: http://bit.ly/a2hvux)
(Short url for kitchenmage's article: http://j.mp/b5Epdg)

Nice interview of me by @JessicaNorthey of Finger Candy Media

2010-07-30T10:05:00.003-04:00

Social media maven, indie music promoter, and all around great lady, @JessicaNorthey, has posted an interview of me on the Finger Candy Media website:

Law+Twitter+Music+Nature+Friendship= @RayBeckerman

Meet Ray Beckerman, to quote his own Twitter Bio: “Law, social justice, nature, human & animal rights, arts, ecology, indie music & film”

If you are on Twitter and you pay attention to who really connects with others, gives back and actually makes the community/ecosystem better, then you are no doubt aware of Ray Beckerman! If you haven’t heard of him, he is an ambassador of what Social Media is all about.....

Complete article

How to set up HootSuite so it uses Traditonal Retweets rather than Twitter's pseudo-retweets

2010-06-24T12:43:00.005-04:00

Hootsuite recently updated its software to try and trick people into using Twitter's fake retweets instead of real retweets.

Now I'm not a fan of Hootsuite, and wasn't even before this dirty trick, but for those of you gluttons for punishment who insist on continuing to use Hootsuite, here's how to set it up to reject the dirty trick:

1. Click on the stupid owl in the upper left hand part of your screen.

2. Go to Settings>Preferences

3. Unclick "Use Twitter Web retweets"

4. Save preferences.

You'll then be doing regular, genuine, traditional retweets.

(Here's a shortened URL for this post: http://is.gd/iCKFe)

How to set up Twittelator to do traditional retweets

2010-06-23T17:14:00.003-04:00

In settings>retweets you'll be given 3 "retweet options":

Editable
Auto
Ask

Select "Editable" & save & you're all set.

(Shortened URL for this post: http://is.gd/iCKhB)

Advice: if you add a bunch of new people through Mr. Tweet, don't tweet about it

2010-06-19T14:56:00.000-04:00

When someone follows me, and I have to decide whether to refollow them, the first thing I look at is their avatar and bio, primarily for the purpose of eliminating people. I will almost never follow someone based on their avatar and bio; I will only eliminate them from consideration based on those.

The second thing I look at, and the key to whether or not I will follow back, is the person's tweet stream, because that and that alone can inform me as to what kind of experience it will be to follow that person.

If the stream consists of page after page of tweets which say "@username I just followed you using @X 's chats with you through @MrTweet" .... I am not going to follow you back, because I will have received no information at all as to what kind of tweeter you are, other than that you are insensitive to the problem of generating spam.

So either, you should...

1. Only add a few people at a time using Mr. Tweet, or

2. Resist the temptation to tweet about it.

(Shortened URL for this post: http://is.gd/cNMGE)

Is it just me, or is it annoying when tweeps........

2010-06-10T16:53:00.001-04:00

1. comment on tweets of yours without retweeting or even referencing the underlying tweet?

2. copy you on tweets for no apparent reason?

3. ask you to tweet stuff for them, even if they they've never done that for you, and even though it's not the kind of thing you normally tweet about?

4. tweet you just to start an argument with you?

I can't stand any of that. Here's the way I look at it:

Sending a comment, without retweeting the actual tweet upon which you are commenting, is IMHO an annoying practice. If you like it, retweet it. If you want to comment, add your comment to the retweet, but DON'T omit to retweet at least some of the underlying tweet. If you have a comment that's too long to add to the retweet, retweet first, and then comment.

If you reference me in a tweet it is going to take up space in my "mentions" stream, and I'm going to have to read it.... so make sure you have a reason for mentioning my name. If you're going to repeatedly comment on my tweets without retweeting them, I consider that a form of spam.

Today I got several tweets from someone apparently commenting on tweets of mine, but giving me no clue as to what they were referring to.

And I got several tweets in which someone else used my name to imply I'd tweeted something which I've never said, and never would say.

I am going to start blocking people who continue doing stuff like this.

Seems that @Twitter has finally reverted. Safe to use RT again.

2010-05-23T13:39:00.005-04:00

Several days ago, on approximately May 18th, Twitter made a change to its searches. It began excluding from the search results of any searches initiated (a) by hashtag, or (b) from the homepage search box, any tweets which began with "RT" or which included "RT" anywhere in the body of the tweet.

Many of us complained, and even started a petition.

Several days later it indicated that it was dropping the filter.

The problem disappeared immediately, but then quickly resurfaced and has persisted for several days.

I tested today, however, and the system finally seems to have reverted to the way it was before, which is that traditional retweets containing the term "RT" are now no longer being shunned.

(Here is a shortened url for this post: http://is.gd/cm246)

Uh oh. @Twitter search continues to filter out retweets! #TR

2010-05-20T17:02:00.006-04:00

I've re-tested it, and Twitter has not stopped its pernicious new practice of filtering the RT's out of searches from (a) hashtags and (b) homepage searchbox.

Better go back to using "TR" or "R" or "V" or "Via" etc, until we know what's going on. #TR

My initial report on the subject: "Has @Twitter Declared War on Traditional Retweets?" #TR

Twitter's false statement that it was stopping the practice: "Twitter removes the "RT" filter! #TR"

(Shortened URL for this post: )

Twitter removes the "RT" filter! #TR

2010-05-20T10:04:00.005-04:00

Thank you to @low78 for bringing this article from Brad McCarty (@BradTNW) of The Next Web to my attention:

Twitter responds to missing RT’s saga.

Posted by Brad McCarty

We’ve been watching this episode since yesterday. Some Twitter users were noticing that anything with RT in it wasn’t being seen in certain search functions. The community as a whole went into an uproar.

It seems that Twitter heard that message loud and clear......

Complete article

(Here's a shortened URL for this blog post: http://twurl.nl/bc7l7p )

Petition against @twitter 's filtering traditional retweets out of searches #TR

2010-05-19T12:56:00.002-04:00

If you're opposed to Twitter's new tactic of filtering traditional retweets which contain the term "RT" out of

1. hashtag searches, and

2. searches in homepage search box

here's a petition you can sign to demand that Twitter stop:

http://twitition.com/2sri3

(Here's a shortened URL for this post: http://is.gd/cgk7I)

Well, @Twitter is filtering "RT's" out of hashtag searches.This won't work I believe--> #TR

2010-05-19T10:00:00.003-04:00

As it turns out Twitter's ban of traditional retweets, and of tweets carrying an "RT" designation extends not only to homepage search box searches, but also to hashtag searches, making hashtag searches much less valuable, and in some cases next to worthless.

Has @Twitter Declared War on Traditional Retweets? #TR

2010-05-18T13:33:00.035-04:00

Update 5/20/10 5:06 pm. I just tested it and Twitter has gone right back to what it was doing before.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: On 5/20/10 I discovered that Twitter heard our voices, and removed the "RT" filter from searches. So we are back to normal.

*********
(Thanks to my friends @lissnup and @dominiquerdr for bringing this issue to my attention:)

We have previously discussed the problem with Twitter's "retweet" button, which has almost none of the properties of the traditional retweet ("Twitter tip: don't use Twitter's pseudo "retweet" button"), and discussed why it is preferable to use the traditional retweet (i.e. those usually signified by beginning them with "RT @Username").

It now appears that Twitter has silently begun a war against traditional retweets, with the first step being to filter them out of search.*

ANY TWEET WHICH HAS AN "RT" ANYWHERE IN THE BODY OF THE TWEET WILL BE FILTERED OUT OF

(a) SEARCHES INITIATED THROUGH THE SEARCH BOX ON THE HOME PAGE, AND
(b) SEARCHES INITIATED BY CLICKING ON A HASHTAG

I find this pathetic, and outrageous.

Twitter going to war with its own users.

And doing it in a sneaky, silent, back-door way.

If you use "R" instead of "RT" it will show up okay. So do that, or use some way other than starting your tweet with "RT", to signify your traditional retweet, such as "TR" for "traditional retweet", or "V" for "via". But whatever you do, don't use the term "RT", and edit the "RT"'s which may appear in the body of the tweet. (If you're tweeting about Iran, you should use "V" because the term "TR" is widely in use already, to denote "translated" tweets).

I'm going to use "TR".... to signify that I'm doing a traditional retweet despite their attempt to stamp it out.

And don't forget: if you're retweeting something that already has an "RT" anywhere in its body, you're going to have to edit the "RT"'s, changing them to "R" or "V" or "TR" or anything other than RT.

What a lame organization Twitter is.

*At the moment they appear to be filtered out of (a) homepage search box searches and (b) hashtag searches, but not out of searches through http://search.twitter.com. I ran a test of the same search, at the same time, by the home page method and the search.twitter.com method: Here's how they came out.

Update 5/18/10 10:19 PM. @Charles of Twitter was asked this question by @Twitter_Tips:
Quick question about changes to Twitter search. Are they intentional, temporary or...? Example: http://j.mp/ceDRbe
and gave this answer:
The results in integrated search simply include 'exclude:retweets' automatically. Search.twitter does not do this.
Most significantly Charles was not asked "when was this implemented?" or "why was this implemented?".
I have asked Charles those questions. I can't wait until I get his response. I doubt very much I will get a response.

Update 5/19 1:01 PM. If you're opposed to what Twitter has done and would like to sign a petition against it: http://twitition.com/2sri3

Update 5/19 3:21 PM. I received these responses so far from Charles:

RTs are usually a lot of noise in search results. Excluding them makes the results cleaner and (in most cases) better. http://twitter.com/Charles/status/14310576955
We are constantly improving our algorithms and search quality. We will definitely take your concerns to heart for the future.http://twitter.com/Charles/status/14310649295

I've given him my list of five questions:

Dear @Charles I have 5 questions about Twitter's filtering out traditional retweets from search #TR http://bit.ly/b4QNke http://twitter.com/RayBeckerman/status/14311463285
1. When was this implemented?
2. Why was it implemented?
3. Why were the customers not consulted?
4. Is this the end, or just the beginning, of trying to distinguish traditional retweets from tweets?
5. Why was it not announced?

I'll let you know if the questions are ever answered.

Commentary & discussion:

The Next Web
networkers-in-the-city.com (French)
Shoq Value
OWNI (French)
Search Engine Land
webketing.fr

(Here is a short URL to this post: http://is.gd/ceSKJ)

How to configure UberTwitter for traditional retweets

2010-04-15T19:40:00.001-04:00

If you use UberTwitter on your Blackberry, it's easy to configure it so that it will always do the traditional retweets:

Go to "Options", "How to Retweet", and select "Original".

Save. And you're all set.

What is twitter spam? My little survey.

2010-04-06T09:35:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure I have an answer to this, and I'm wondering what other people feel.

To me it seems that the following are "spammy" conduct on Twitter:

1. "Following" people not because you are interested in them, but because you are trying to increase your number of "followers".

2. Addressing unsolicited tweets to people you don't know because you want them to retweet something or to visit some site.

3. Sending unsolicited DM's to people you don't know because you want them to retweet something, or to visit some site.

I would appreciate your opinions as to whether you agree with the above, or whether there are other things you would consider spam.

(A short URL for this post: http://is.gd/bh6Iy )

My newest advice to Twitter newbies: disregard Twitter's home page

2010-04-01T11:13:00.027-04:00

Twitter's new home page suggests that people new to Twitter start off by following a bunch of "celebrities" and "businesses".

This is the exact opposite of what a person new to Twitter should be doing in order to have a meaningful experience.

Hysterically, Twitter has set up a collection of "top tweeps" which are non-interactive accounts, some of which hardly tweet at all... and a "top tweets" account which purports to assemble, algorithmically, a feed of the "most interesting" tweets, and which does in fact assemble a mindless stream of boring drivel.

The whole idea is ludicrous. If you and I don't know each other, and I were to say to you here is a list of the "top tweets" why on earth would you believe me? How do you know what I like is what you would like? Answer: you don't. So why would you believe an "algorithm"? And the whole idea of just reading a feed, with tweets directed to no one, is mind numbing.

And if I were to tell you I had a list of the accounts which are the "top tweeps", and I had a financial interest in pimping them, why on earth would you accept my recommendations? Answer: you wouldn't.

It seems as though Twitter's "algorithm" has been set to "sleep inducing" mode (since the people who make these decisions appear to be asleep at the wheel, it's an understandable error).

What is awesome about Twitter's lists of "top tweeps" and "top tweets" is that Twitter seems to have assembled, with the help of its "algorithm", an almost perfect collection of total stiffs, and of meaningless babble, well crafted to prove the argument of Twitter's detractors that Twitter is a useless exercise. I could not have formulated lists better calculated to discourage people from using Twitter were I trying to do so.

Another piece of foolishness is Twitter's home page's reference to "trending topics". Why should you -- the Twitter user -- care about what is "trending"? You are an individual; you have your own interests; what matters is what's of interest to you, not what's of interest to the masses. Are you a human or a lemming? If a lemming, and you run to the trending topics, you'll probably just wind up in a sea of spam. (I've been told that if you click into the trending topics, you're likely to run into a sea of spam; I've never done it and probably never will, so I can't speak from personal experience.)

My advice is to (1) ignore everything Twitter says about itself, (2) take advice only from people who are already having enjoyable and meaningful Twitter experiences, and (3) take the advice previously outlined in my article : "A little basic advice for new or inactive peeps", on how to have a meaningful Twitter experience.

It appears more and more that Twitter is just interested in serving us up on a silver platter as a meal for its paying customers. Along with its implementation of targeted "lists", persistent refusal to implement the user-created retweet, its attempt to replace the traditional retweets with standardized anti-conversation rubber stamp pseudo-retweets, the hyping of "suggested" accounts to follow who are paying - or likely to become paying - customers or sponsors of Twitter, and the announced advertising 'platforms' [injecting paid ads into our Twitter stream from accounts we don't follow + littering search results with paid ads], this new home page with its hype of celebrities and businesses seems to be but another step towards (a) commercializing, and ultimately (b) destroying, Twitter. See, e.g., its new "Twitter 101" which -- instead of teaching basics to people so that they can get more out of Twitter -- advises businesses on how to make money with Twitter by exploiting ... us.

Twitter is trying more and more to become like the 1990's era Web 1.0 ... or actually more like 1950's era network television, perhaps. The people who make decisions like this at Twitter ought to go "update" their "timeline". I guess they're too busy "following" the "top tweets" and "top tweeps" and the "Friends and industry peers you know. Celebrities you watch. Businesses you frequent. Find them all on Twitter."

Why not just launch an online version of People magazine? Or has that been done already?

(Short URL for this post: http://bit.ly/d2XgEW )
(Short URL for "A little basic advice....." post: http://bit.ly/dgDrho )

How to use new Tweetdeck to do TRADITIONAL retweets

2009-11-30T15:27:00.016-05:00

The new edition of Tweetdeck -- Version 32.0 -- enables you to do traditional retweets.

There are two ways:

(a) making it a permanent setting, or

(b) choosing each time.

Since there is NEVER a time when you should use the new pseudo-retweet (See my prior aricle, "Advice: don't use Twitter's so called "retweet"!", short URL=http://is.gd/4YRfB), I strongly recommend that you choose traditional retweets as your permanent setting.

HOW TO MAKE TRADITIONAL RETWEETS YOUR PERMANENT SETTING:

1. Go to "Settings" "Twitter".

2. Set first line to read "Retweet button should Edit before sending (Old style Retweet)"

3. Save.

(PS There's another way to do the above. The first time you're prompted to choose between the 2 kinds of RT's, click "Remember my choice" before selecting old style Retweet. In future, you won't be prompted; Tweetdeck will assume you're doing traditional RT's)

IF YOU CHOOSE TO DO IT ON A TWEET-BY-TWEET BASIS

1. In "Settings" "Twitter" first line should read: "Retweet button should Always ask me"

2. Each time you want to retweet something, click retweet.

3. You will be given a choice between "Retweet Now" and "Edit then Retweet". Even if you do not plan to edit or comment, choose "Edit then Retweet" Your retweet will be a traditional retweet. [If you choose "Retweet Now" you will wind up in Twitter's "black hole" created by its fake retweet button. ]

I think it is a bit misleading to use the term "Edit then Retweet", since it implies that you should use that button only if you are planning to edit. But I'm glad Tweetdeck 32.0 supports traditional retweeting.

Thank you, Tweetdeck.

[Update 3/12/10 2:35 PM: For those of you using Seesmic Desktop as your interface, the way to do traditional retweets is to click on the "more" button instead of the fake "retweet" button, and select "quote". It's a pain, but at least there's a way to do it. -R.B.]

(Short URL for this article: http://is.gd/58afM )

Advice: don't use Twitter's so called "retweet"! #TR

2009-11-19T10:23:00.060-05:00

My advice to all Twitter users is that you should not use what Twitter calls a "retweet".

Just pass it on by.

The true retweet is something Twitter's customers invented, and which Twitter stupidly never formalized. The true "retweet" is the life blood of Twitter, and what has set it apart from other similar "microblogging" services. [See my blog post awesomeness of retweets : http://is.gd/4PFbJ ]

Here's how to do a true retweet it if you're accessing Twitter on the internet:

1. Copy and paste the message and name of person sending it to you.

2. Precede it by "RT @" [i.e. you type "RT", then a space, then a @. It's important that the @ and the name NOT have a space between them].

How true retweets work in Twitter "clients" -- i.e. applications.

If you're using Tweetdeck, Seesmic, or any of the myriad "clients" and applications which support Twitter and other microblogging platforms, they almost all provide "retweet" buttons which simply automate the above 2 steps.

If the makers of these programs are smart -- and they certainly appear to be -- they will preserve the true retweet function, even as they are forced to add Twitter's bastardized version.* Also they will quickly start supporting more and more other social media sites, in addition to Twitter (such as FriendFeed, StatusNet (identi.ca), LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, etc).

What's wrong with the thing Twitter mislabels a "retweet"

I don't have time to list all of the many things wrong with it; every day there are new, excellent articles coming out describing the stupidity of the product, and every day I learn of some new defective aspect of it.

My chief objections are:
(1) you can't insert a comment or start a conversation;
(2) you can't edit;
(3) instead of showing your avatar, it shows the avatar of the original tweeter, which might be someone the recipient doesn't know or have any relationship with;
(4) it prevents you from seeing multiple versions with different comments from different people;
(5) if someone retweets you, you will never know that they did, unless you go to the internet interface of Twitter, go to your home page, go to the Retweets column, and scroll through unsortable page after page of entries;
(6) if you retweet someone, they may never learn that you did, unless they go through the same process on their internet interface home page that you have to go through to find out if you've been retweeted;
(7) your so called "retweets" won't show up in Tweetdeck or any other Twitter "clients" or applications*;
(8) to the extent your identity is recognized at all in Tweetdeck, the recipient can't reply to you, or retweet you, or DM you, and may not even be able to verify your user name which appears in hazy type at the bottom of the tweet;
(9) it prevents conversation.

I.e., it takes the "social" out of "social media". It eliminates conversation and interaction, insists on blind rubber stamping, prevents you from letting your friend know you've honored them, and prevents you from knowing your friends have honored you. And it removes any clear indication of your identity to your own friends. Idiocy.

One of the primary uses of the traditional retweet is not as a simple "retweet" at all, but to start or continue a conversation, with 2, 3, sometimes even 4 or 5 people participating in a single tweet. Twitter management -- consorting as it does with the moneyed interests and "social media experts" who never get to enjoy such conversations -- appear to be oblivious to their very existence. Here are a couple of examples from some wonderful conversationalists who use "retweets" as conversation:

http://twitter.com/amazingflora/status/12620627869
http://twitter.com/tashamiel/status/12650036800
http://twitter.com/mireyamayor/status/12651573387
http://twitter.com/SherriACP/statuses/12649436005
http://twitter.com/NiniBaseema/statuses/12575093633

Can't you tell that the people who engage in such conversations are having the most fun of all on Twitter? They are absolutely the coolest communicators here.

Twitter's management doesn't get it. They're too important for that. They think a retweet is for the purpose of repeating some genius's isolated statement spoken in a vacuum to a vacuum, to be broadcast into an abyss.

People who tweet without these lively conversations are, to me, the saddest thing on Twitter. Twitter's pseudo retweet discourages -- actually makes impossible -- such interaction.

Why did Twitter do this?

I'm guessing it had to do with helping the "paying" customers -- celebrities, social media professionals, corporations, major news media -- who never retweet anyone, but are frequently retweeted by others. Their visibility will be enhanced, and Twitter's ability to sell us to them as "faces" and "impressions" will be enhanced. Meanwhile our interactivity with our friends is shattered, and our visibility to our friends is removed.

Even the "paying" customers -- for whose benefit this was done -- are being screwed. The Twitter they're paying for isn't the one they bought into.

What about other microblogging sites?

Since Twitter has basically given up its competitive edge by ruining the retweet, I recommend exploring the many other microblogging services, such as StatusNet (identi.ca), friendfeed, etc. I personally am looking closely at friendfeed and StatusNet (identi.ca) at the moment.

Right now we can probably do what I mentioned for the internet interfaces in most of those microblogging services as well. [E.g. FriendFeed has a "share" function. If you click that, it copies and pastes the post. Then at the beginning put in "RT @username", and you'll have a traditional retweet. Now if FF is smart they'll add a button which inserts "RT @username" automatically, and then you'll have a 1-step retweet like Tweetdeck, & most other applications, provide.]

Most likely some of those services will be smart enough to recognize Twitter's huge misstep, and will quickly implement formal "retweets" of their own, retweets which will embody the attributes of the true retweet rather than Twitter's joke version. [Note: Twitter, like all companies which are poorly managed and then try to make up for their business mistakes by resort to litigation, will no doubt try to force their competitors to use terms other than "retweet", probably claiming some trademark although Twitter itself has never even used the term until now. So just be on the lookout for the other microblogging services to use some alternative terminology for it.]

Also the desktop applications makers will no doubt be supporting more of the other microblogging services as well, and will be adding retweet buttons for all of them.

Conclusion

This is my advice:

1. Don't use Twitter's so called retweet function.... ever. (Unless you want to disappear into a black hole, in which case it would be easier to just stop "microblogging" altogether).

2. Use genuine retweets only.

3. Explore other microblogging services, and do traditional retweeting in them. If those sites or applications develop traditional retweet capabilities, then use them.

4. Use the hashtag #saveretweets when tweeting about this subject, and let Twitter management know that they should have spoken to their customers before ruining something.... just so they'll have a better understanding of how things work in the business world when they report for their next jobs, after Twitter has gone out of business.

* Update 2:07 PM ET, 12/26/09. In Tweetdeck vers. 32.*, the "new retweets" do show up in stream with 2 half sized avatars, 1 of the original tweeter, 1 of the last retweeter, and in latest verions have RT'g person's name in small hazy type at bottom of tweet. The avatar of the last retweeter and the name are for show only, however. You can't do anything with them other than squint at them. If you click them, you get no information about the retweeter, and you can't use them for RT'g, replying, DM'g, adding to a list, or anything else.

More importantly, Tweetdeck vers. 32.* has made it easy for you to configure it so that your retweets will by default be traditional, real retweets.

* Update 9:11 AM ET, 2/5/10. The recent Shorty Awards voting demonstrates the problem. Apparently votes lodged by the "fake retweet" button weren't counted, since the tweet had no identity -- URL -- of its own.

*Update 5:18 PM ET, 3/12/10. Seesmic desktop's "retweets" are the bad kind. But you can do a traditional retweet by going through a few extra clicks: click "more" then click "quote" and you'll be able to do a traditional retweet. Unlike Tweetdeck, Seesmic is not yet offering a means of configuring it to default to traditional -- rather than bastardized -- retweets, so you'll have to go through this exercise each time.

Update 9:43 PM ET, 4/7/10. One of Twitter's most successful accounts, shitmydaysays, just joinedr StatusNet (identi.ca)

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/4YRfB )

Help wanted: 13,000th Follower

2009-11-14T12:48:00.005-05:00

Salary: none

Benefit: Opportunity to make nice new friends from all over the world

Generosity of spirit is required.

Intelligence and humor are preferred, since I am weak in both of those departments, but are not essential.

No right-wingers, bullies, corporatists, dictators, arguers, or other meanies need apply.

(Short URL to this post: http://is.gd/4UWmF )

How to make a twitter list

2009-11-07T14:47:00.008-05:00

Take all the people you know on Twitter.

Divide them up into those you like and those you don't really care about.

Take the ones you like, and then divide them up into categories and characteristics.

Then put each into a pigeonhole.

Then take all those in a particular pigeonhole, and make them into a list.

This will take a lot of time, and will reduce each person you know into a handy set of characteristics instead of a human being.

(You may wonder why this is valuable. If so, that's because you're not in the marketing or advertising industry. If that's the case... off you go, into my "Non-advertising & Non-marketing" list.)

(Short URL to this post: http://is.gd/4PLoY)

My invaluable advice to marketers about Twitter lists

2009-11-03T14:38:00.017-05:00

Marketers are intensely interested in #twitterlists; so I will give them my valuable guidance on the subject.

Coolest list to be on: http://twitter.com/Shelley_Rae/my-bitches

Least cool list to be on: http://twitter.com/badwebsites/owememoney

List of least value to marketers: http://twitter.com/Guajataka/raybeckerman

List with highest percentage of losers: http://twitter.com/catawu/asshats

You may see a lot of other "important" articles giving you "lists" of ways to make money from Twitter lists, telling you which lists are the "cool" ones, and other similar advice. Just ignore them. What do they know?

No need to thank me. Don't even mention it. I love sharing my legendary knowledge of how to make money.

[Update 11/9/09 12:51 PM BREAKING: I just discovered an important new list which is at least tied with @Shelley_Rae 's "My Bitches" list in coolness.... @DeliaChristina 's all important "Dudes Who Don't Annoy Me" list. This list includes not only myself, but also our distinguished President @BarackObama. Since it is quite rare to find someone whom I do not annoy, and since this list includes me, I will have to consider it the coolest Twitter list, that is unless and until I become an honorary member of the "My Bitches" list. ~R.B.]

(Short URL to this post: http://is.gd/4Melu )

Who is the "guru" of Twitter? for me it's @BuzzEdition

2009-10-28T11:37:00.005-04:00

Admittedly there is no such thing as a single guru of Twitter; there are lots of people with lots of different ways of doing things.

But if I were looking for a "guru", I'd bypass anyone who calls him or her self a "guru" or maven or expert, or anything like that.

Especially is this so in the world of "social media", where nobody really knows what they're doing, it's all moving so fast. Twitter always has been, and still is, about 12 steps behind its customers.

If I were looking for a "guru", I would look among the modest, the humble, the self-deprecating folks, who would never call themselves a guru, and who recognize the enormity of it all, and their own limitations as human beings, and who quietly go about doing their thing in their way.

There I would find the person I consider the true "guru" of Twitter.... Susan Elaine, @BuzzEdition.

(She will probably kill me for having written this, but what the heck. I like to live dangerously.)

Susan teaches by example that what Twitter is about is the same thing life is about: caring about other people.

We've all seen Twitter users who prattle on, and are all about themselves. Those people just don't get out of the Twitter experience what it truly has to offer.

I don't know much about Susan's personal life, but I know from being her friend on Twitter that she has a real powerful maternal instinct: she just cares about other people.

Twitter for me is about treasuring and cherishing and enjoying what is special in others, and sharing the treasures with your other friends.

On Twitter as in life, as you sow, so shall you reap; as you give, so shall you receive.

No one on Twitter better exemplifies that than Susan.

That is why she has so many friends here, who would do anything for her.

Thank you, Susan, for being my "guru".

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/5qgVg)

Bush probably would have lost 2004 election if we'd had Twitter then

2009-10-13T10:29:00.010-04:00

We have recently been joined on Twitter by my wonderful friend Susan Truitt -- @Susan_Truitt -- from Ohio.

Susan was one of the great leaders of the resistance to the Ohio 2004 election fraud. I first met her in person on January 6, 2005, the day on which Congress met in joint session to debate the seating of the sham Ohio electors, a day which also represented the culmination of the historic Freedom Winter Bus Ride from Columbus, OH, to Washington, DC (See music video "Get Up on the Bus" by hip hop artist Wil B, who I believe coined the phrase "the political power of hip hop").

Susan's being here inspires me to imagine how Twitter would have changed things, had it been in existence on election day 2004.

During the 2004 presidential election hundreds of thousands of Ohioans, mostly black people, college students, and people who lived in poorer areas, were disenfranchised, by a panoply of vile tactics too numerous to itemize here. (My blog Ohio Election Fraud enumerates many of them, and provides links to books and dvd's for further study.)

The then Secretary of State of Ohio, Republican Kenneth Blackwell, whose sworn duty it was to uphold the integrity of the elections, was also the head of the Bush reelection efforts, and did everything he could to dishonor his oath of office in order to get Bush reelected.

In the months leading up to the election he engaged in numerous shenanigans, such as rejecting voter registrations not printed on a certain thickness of paper, illegally removing people from the voter rolls, refusing to respond to requests for polling place information from voters, refusing to confirm registrations, wholesale changing of polling place locations without lawful notice to the voters, and deliberate stockpiling of voting machines to ensure that poor areas, black areas, and college and university areas would be grossly underserved for processing of the inordinately complex ballot he and his cronies had cooked up that year. He had likewise "overlooked" things like distribution of leaflets giving incorrect polling place information, and gangs of Republican thugs planning to swoop down on the polling places in those same areas.

A large number of people, like attorney Susan Truitt, served on election day as poll watchers.

From the moment the polls opened, until long after they were supposed to have closed, innumerable horrors were visited upon the good people of Ohio.

Had these occurred in New York or Los Angeles there would have been rioting in the streets.

Because it happened in the sedate, understated, polite State of Ohio, such rioting did not occur.

And had the good people of New York or Los Angeles learned that the outcome of their presidential election had been determined by such fraud, there would have been rioting in the streets. That's where the "media" came in, to make sure that LA and New York and Detroit and Chicago and Philadelphia and places like that never found out.

The corporate media took it as their mission to ensure that word did NOT get out. And they deliberately falsely reported to the world that everything had gone smoothly in Ohio with a few "minor glitches" which the people of Ohio took "in good stride". As everyone who was in Ohio that day, or who read and watched local media in Ohio, knew, nothing could have been further from the truth.

The mainstream media "hatchetmen" reported fully on the election fraud which had happened in the Ukraine that year, but stealthily and concertedly maintained 'radio silence' about the even worse fraud that had occurred in the United States.

Although most people in Ohio were aware of the total sham the election had been there, the vast majority of people outside of Ohio have never had a clue.

If Susan, and others like her, had been armed with a smart phone and twitter, I submit.... the outcome would have been very different.

In Youngstown, Ohio, in Mahoning County, for example, the internet email joke of touch screen voting machines where a voter would press "Kerry" and wind up having voted "Bush", wound up coming true.

Starting at 6 AM, voters using touchscreen voting machines who attempted to vote for "Kerry" had their votes automatically switched to "Bush".

It was first reported at about 6:05 AM, and it continued to be reported throughout the day, until late at night. I.e. the machines that were doing this were never taken out of service or repaired, they were allowed to continue "fixing" the election all day long.

Had voters been equipped with flip videos or smart phones, they could have documented the touchscreen debauchery, as well as other violations.

Had poll watchers had a smart phone with twitter, and possibly flip videos or even ordinary digital cameras, they would have been able to take pictures and videotape interviews with the cheated voters, and could have immediately tweeted them. By 6:10 AM the entire world would have known what was happening in Ohio, and #Ohio would have been the trending topic on Twitter throughout the day.

It would have been politically impossible for Kerry to have conceded at 10 in the morning the day after the election, because the entire world would have known of the massive fraud.

I think citizen journalism has now arrived.

The days of the mainstream media suppressing the truth are ending.

And Twitter is one of the things we have to thank for that.

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/4PNE0)

Twitter offline due to denial of service attack

2009-08-06T11:56:00.001-04:00

According to this report on Slashdot, Twitter's outage was the result of a denial of service attack.

Twitter knows nothing about Spam

2009-07-26T10:18:00.000-04:00

Twitter is clueless. It doesn't know what "spam" is.

In order to prevent 'spam' in its tweets, it adopted a secret policy of 'filtering' accounts which tweet the same URL more than once within a certain secret time period. It never told people about this policy, so we couldn't have tried to comply with it.

Because I was passionate about keeping people up to date on the protests by indigenous people in Peru over the Peruvian government's attempt to destroy the rainforest, and had a collection of links on the subject which I was updating and reused, I was 'filtered out'.

For a month and a half a search for my account name "raybeckerman" would reveal none of my tweets, and a search for my name in "Find People" would not reveal the "raybeckerman" account.

To this day, I remain "filtered out".

Meanwhile, the whole 'solution' Twitter offered was ridiculous and unnecessary. Twitter accounts do not receive any tweets that are unsolicited. The only people who are burdened with reading my tweets are people who VOLUNTARILY follow me. Any of them who feel that they don't want to receive my tweets, just UNFOLLOW me.

Problem solved.

So Twitter created a solution to a non-problem.

Meanwhile it has a very very real spam problem which is making it more and more painful to be a Twitter member. The one thing Twitter members do receive unsolicited is "followers".

There is a major problem with the huge number of fake accounts. Out of every 10 accounts which follow me, probably 75% are spam accounts. So it has become a hugely time consuming task for the "real people" on Twitter to figure out which "followers" they wish to "refollow".

And Twitter doesn't have a clue what to do with this very real problem, which is the real threat to Twitter at this time.

Ray's 2.0

2009-07-26T09:37:00.000-04:00

Web 1.0 was where corporations thought the internet was another dandy platform for telling us what they wanted us to know.

Web 2.0 was where we showed them that the internet is about us, not them, and that if they want to stay around, they'd better sit back, shut up, and listen.

Web 2.0, like Rock and Roll, is here to stay.

This blog will be about my thoughts on social media. With emphasis on the "social".