Why is @Twitter butchering URL's?

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?

A word about working with YouTube playlists

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

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.

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 @

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

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

[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

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

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.

My Twitter "refollow" policies

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. If you do send me an automatic DM, I may send you a pretty "automatic" unfollow.

Thanks.

Ray

@RayBeckerman

(Here's a shortened URL to this post: http://goo.gl/GRxd2)



@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

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!

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

(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)

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

[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)