My advice to indie musicians about Twitter

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.

12. Never send auto-DM's (automatic direct messages sent when someone follows you).

13. Do not write your bio in the 3rd person.

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]


(A short URL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/4p5a9sf)

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

Updated Sept. 3, 2013

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, 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 RT" button instead of the fake "retweet" button.]

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

If you're using Tweetdeck, Seesmic, UberTwitter, Plume, Janetter, Echofon, Tweetlist, or any of the other 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. Each uses different terminology, sometimes quite peculiar, such as e.g. "quote", "edit and reply", "Edit and RT", "retweet with comment", etc., and many do not allow you to set up classic retweets as your preferred, default method, but do allow you to choose the classic retweet when you're actually doing the retweet. If your app doesn't enable you to do classic retweets, you should consider replacing it with an app that does.

E.g., in Tweetdeck for Chrome, if you want to do a classic or traditional retweet, after you click the retweet icon you get a choice: "Edit and RT" or "Retweet". ALWAYS choose "Edit and RT" even if you have no intention of "editing". And you'll have a traditional, classic retweet [I usually do NOT edit, but know that I must check the "Edit and RT" option to get a true retweet, rather than a pseudo-retweet].

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, you will have to go outside your conversational thread [e.g., on twitter.com, you have to wade through your "interactions" to see which of them are twitter-fake-retweets];
(6) if you retweet people, they will never learn that you did, unless they go through that same investigative process; i.e, except for the commercial accounts which use analytics & care a lot about the number of retweets, 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) in many instances, 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) when the pseudo "retweet" is itself retweeted, whether by rubber stamp retweet or by traditional retweet, you won't be mentioned at all,
(14) if you want to be part of a "hashtag" "trending" event, your pseudo retweets have no impact, since they're not considered separate tweets... only classic retweets will count.

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:

https://twitter.com/sheconsulting/status/487018672616009728
https://twitter.com/polipaca/status/488129181822099456
http://twitter.com/tashamiel/status/12650036800
http://twitter.com/mireyamayor/status/12651573387
http://twitter.com/SherriACP/statuses/12649436005
http://twitter.com/NiniBaseema/statuses/12575093633
https://twitter.com/RayBeckerman/status/488352362277646336
https://twitter.com/grouchomama718/status/488055888629202944
https://twitter.com/johncoxonmedia/status/488450081885261825

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?

My guess is that 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.

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"].

Some people ask "what if the original tweet is too long"? I say that if you really can't shorten it, edit it, or use a "longer tweet" service, 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 Twtmore

* [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://goo.gl/P8IFAi )

The lesson I've learned about URL-shorteners

It goes without saying that when tweeting links, it's a good idea to use URL shorteners, in view of Twitter's 140 character limit.
But if you're ever going to reuse the tweets, you should be very discriminating about which URL-shortening service to use.
I've shortened a lot of links with different URL-shortening services, not concerning myself with the company's pedigree. Big mistake.
A few weeks ago I learned that all of my tux-pla.net links don't work, and just discovered that my is.gd links are often no good either.
So I've been going through the very painstaking work of converting them to goo.gl links (Google's URL-shortening service. I figure if Google goes out of business, then the internet will probably have gone out of business).
I've converted all the tux-pla.net links, but have hundreds and hundreds of is.gd links to go through. Some of the is.gd links work, but most do not, so I have to test each one, and replace the non-working ones.
If you come across one of my is.gd links to a YouTube video which doesn't work, you can try searching for the name and singer in my playlists, find the playlist that has the recording, and go to that video.
And if you ever come to any link that doesn't work, either because the shortened link doesn't work, or because the video has been taken down, deleted, made private, etc.... please tweet me about it so I can update the link.
Thanks

Twitter Basics

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. Use traditional or classic retweets, not the "retweet" button.**.

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 for Chrome.

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

But if you like to keep it simple, you can distill the above rules into 3 simpler rules which are real easy to remember:

1. Share.

2. Share.

3. Share.

* 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.

(Here's a short URL for this post: http://goo.gl/TVLEj5)

Coalition for Queens Presents "Access Code" : learn how to build your own iPhone & iPad apps; no background required

We’re excited to announce the launch of Access Code, our comprehensive and affordable iOS Development course led by an expert practitioner. No previous background required.

We believe that everyone should have an opportunity to learn how to code and begin a career in technology. Our 8-week, 50 hour course will give you the foundations to create your own iPhone and iPad applications. Full scholarships are available.

Learn more and apply today for our Spring Class (starting on May 18th): accesscodenyc.org.

We hope to see you soon,
Jukay, Dave, Frank & Ben
The C4Q team

Share Access Code:

Ways in which Twitter foolishly diminishes interactivity

1. Twitter for some strange reason imposes limits on the number of tweets. Since I'm a high volume tweeter, I'm always bumping up against those limits. If I go over the limit, I wind up in "twitter jail" -- i.e. I can't tweet for an unspecified period of time. So I often have to refrain from responding to people who've tweeted to me directly, or thanking people, or asking people questions, or greeting people, or saying "you're welcome" or "how are you", because doing so would put me "in jail".

2. Again because I'm a high volume tweeter, I try to space my tweets out when possible. I use socialoomph.com as my tool for doing that. However, whenever I have "@" in my tweet, Twitter often rejects it as an "unsolicited mention". Which means that I can't use my spacing tool for tweets which (a) respond to someone, or (b) mention someone, or (c) retweet someone. So the people whom I would have liked to mention, often the authors or publishers of the blog post or article in question, will never know.

3. The twitter retweet button is another anti-conversation impediment. If anyone retweets me with that, I usually never find out about it.

Twitter is shooting itself in the foot with these things.

Twitter should listen to its users.

Oh and how exactly does it help Twitter to (a) limit the number of tweets I tweet, (b) prevent me from mentioning other twitter accounts when my tweets come from socialoomph.com, and (c) prevent me from knowing who's retweeted me? Answer: it doesn't.

(Short URL for this post: http://goo.gl/HmnpQ)

My @YouTube channel isn't completely lost, it's just harder to find

First published 5/14/12

Previously I had a YouTube "channel" that was fun. I added YouTube videos I liked to 'favorites' and/or 'playlists'. After you clicked through and played a song, you were still on my channel. In 9 months my channel had more than a million views.

On March 7, 2012, YouTube ruined its channel system.

Now if you click on a 'playlist' link it's hard to find my channel, and if you click on a 'favorites' link you can't detect my channel at all.

So I'm slowly converting all of my 'favorites' links to 'playlist' links, but for now here's how to find my channel:

-when you play a song with one of my 'playlist' links you'll see, at the top of the video player, the name of the playlist, and my name; if you want to leave the playlist and look in the other playlists, click on my name and you'll come to my channel; there you'll see a list of 20 playlists; some of my lists are listed on the front page, to see the rest you have to click "view all"

-when you click on a 'favorites' link, there's no reference to my channel at all, so the only way is to go to http://www.youtube.com/raybeckerman, where the playlists are listed [some are on that front page, for the rest you have to click "view all"].

Sorry.

I hope YouTube realizes how dumb they were to do this.

If any of you know some easier way to work around these barriers, please shoot me a comment. Thanks.
Update 12/18/12 I've also learned that with the new YouTube interface, if you're using a mobile device, or an iPad, many of my links will just take you to my playlists, but won't take you to the actual song. Sorry about that.

(Shortened URL for this post: http://goo.gl/HSJsm )

More insanity: Twitter's blocking tweets as "unsolicited mentions"

Originally published 2/23/12

It has always been my practice to try to credit authors of tweets by using their @twittername so that (a) I am informing my friends as to where on twitter these sources can be found, and (b) I am letting the authors know that I thought well enough of their material to tweet it.

Similarly, when I tweet songs, if the performer is on twitter, I add in or substitute the performer's twitter name, again to let them know I liked their material and to let my friends know where the performer can be found on twitter.

I just learned today that ALMOST ALL of my tweets that are in my feeds are being blocked by twitter as "unsolicited mentions".... i.e. because I wasn't "solicited" by the author or singer, therefore I'm wrong to credit them under their twitter name.

This is insanity, and highly anti-conversation, anti-sharing, and anti-social.

Meanwhile, it now creates probably hundreds of hours of work for me to edit the several thousand music tweets I've prepared, and to go through and edit the hundreds of feeds I monitor.

And from now on, you won't be able to tell from my tweets whether or not the author or singer is on Twitter, or what their user name is, and the authors and singers won't know that I tweeted their material.

So if you're someone whose blog posts or performances I tweeted, and you think I've gone silent... I haven't. I'm going to try to substitute #username for @username, but those won't be showing up among your 'mentions'.

I don't know what to say except !?&%#?!




 

Twitter etiquette for commenting on tweets & blog posts

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, dialogue, and community.

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, or use a long tweet tool  like twitlonger.

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

If you retweet, it's not even necessary to add a comment; the act of retweeting is a powerful comment in and of itself. It says: "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 people's time.

If you're going to take the time to comment on a tweet, 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.

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.

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

If you want to also comment on Twitter, great; but do that in addition to, not instead of, commenting on the blog post itself.

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

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

Searching for tweets? Try Google

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.

And if you're wondering why they're not showing up on Alta Vista or Yahoo ... I guess those search engines didn't cough up the dough Google coughed up (or maybe Twitter gave Google the exclusive).

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

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)

My advice to new Empire Avenue players

1. Upload an avatar, preferably a photo, and connect your blogs and social media accounts, such as twitter, facebook, youtube, flicker, fousquare, facebook page, linkedin, etc.

2. In the beginning you will have very few eaves, so invest them carefully. Buy back from people who've bought your shares, and sell shares of anybody who hasn't bought your shares, or who's sold your shares.

3. If you value interactivity, don't buy shares in people who've had no "Empire Avenue actions this week".

4. If you care about your E. A. "earnings" and how much you generate in "dividends", be interactive both on E. A. and on your connected social media accounts.

5. Empire Avenue is the worst possible thing for an internet addict because it punishes you for doing the healthy thing -- unplugging. Your price and dividends will take big hits whenever you go on vacation, take off for a weekend, take off for a few days because you're busy at work, etc.

6. The best way I've found to view, and to keep track of, your EA portfolio is the website http://empireave.net. You can review and work with your portfolio online, or you can download your portfolio and play with it as an excel worksheet.

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

Secret negotiations to regulate the internet ~ @EFF

This week in Dallas, trade representatives are secretly negotiating new regulations for the Internet – including intellectual property provisions that could choke off online speech. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement may be even worse than ACTA; it could tie the hands of democratically-elected legislators and create new, international standards for intellectual property enforcement. Worst of all, Internet users and free expression advocates like EFF aren’t allowed in the room and are forbidden from seeing the negotiated text. Click here to join EFF in demanding a Congressional hearing so lawmakers can learn what’s in the TPP and hear from all affected stakeholders, not just deep-pocketed industry representatives. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk claims they have made “extraordinary efforts” to include public stakeholders in negotiations, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Like ACTA, negotiations have actively excluded civil society and the public, while welcoming private industry representatives with open arms. EFF’s International IP Director Gwen Hinze traveled to Dallas to demand transparency, but she wasn’t allowed to see the draft text or be present for the negotiations. Here's how Gwen described the tactics the USTR is using to shut Internet users out from the negotiations: Unlike previous negotiation rounds, there will be no official forum for stakeholders to present their views to the assembled TPP country negotiators. Instead, stakeholders are being asked to register their interest in sponsoring a table to provide negotiators who might so happen to stroll past with information on particular topics. The public should be front and center in these negotiations, not relegated to a table outside. Join EFF in calling on Congress for more transparency in TPP. Negotiators can't just shut out the public and their elected representatives. Act now Defending your digital rights,

Maira Sutton International Team Electronic Frontier Foundation Please donate to EFF to support our work.

Now twitter is blocking my tweets as 'duplicates' even though I never tweeted them before in this account

I use SocialOomph.com to increase my efficiency on Twitter in several ways. One thing I use it for is to review the material in my feed reader accounts.

I have 2 twitter accounts (@raysfh & @raystlh) which I've been using as feed readers, to help me monitor the hundreds of feeds I review . I look through those posts, and pick a relatively small number of them -- maybe 10% or so -- to tweet in my real twitter account, @raybeckerman

Now twitter is blocking all of my @raybeckerman tweets as duplicates which I obtained from my feeds.

Which means I'm going to have to spend many hours reconfiguring each of approximately 300 feeds.

I really don't know whether I can afford to spend that kind of time.

Every day Twitter comes up with a new way to destroy everything I'm trying to do.

My 3 basic rules for playing the Empire Avenue game

1. I will buy, and hold, at least as many shares of yours, as you have of mine.

2. If you don't buy any of mine, I will sell all of yours.

3. If you sell mine, I will sell yours.

Exception: I may also sell all of your shares if you (a) become totally inactive or (b) hold less than 6 of my shares (If I sell your shares for inactivity, but you later get back in the game, give me a shout so I'll know to buy your shares back).

*******************

Other policies:

The number of shares I initially buy (above the amount you buy in me) depends on various factors, especially (a) your stock price compared to mine, and (b) how many eaves I have on hand.

The number of shares I continue to hold (above the amount you hold in me) depends on various factors, especially whether you keep on buying my shares; I will never knowingly sell any shares of someone who's made recent purchases of my shares.

My "watch list" is a temporary list of "recent arrivals" who I think really "get" the Empire Avenue game, and whose shares I will probably want to buy more of, once the "recent arrival' 200-share limit is lifted.

My "recommended buys list" is a short, rotating list of some of the people I know who (1) are enthusiastic reciprocal buyers (2) have decent dividends (3) are considerate, pleasant Empire Avenue citizens AND (4) have a reasonably promising chart pattern at the moment. I keep the list short, and rotate it constantly, to keep it fresh.

(Unfortunately, when Empire Avenue changed its interface a few months ago, it destroyed our ability to view these "public" lists, and stopped showing our recommendations on the splash screen which popped up after purchases; but I am continuing to maintain the lists in the hope that EA will make them relevant again :)

(Short URL for this post: http://is.gd/mDpO85)

List management on Twitter

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.

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. h/t Liss (@lissnup)

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)

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.

(Here's a short URL for this post: http://bit.ly/djc7hL )

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

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.

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)