jaycdunn | blog

I was going to write about how Follow Friday is not worth the time, but I suppose if you add even one high quality tweep per week, that’s a good thing.  I have gotten several great new followers from #FF lately.  I try not to spend too many hours on it though.  Sometimes I’ll follow people who retweeted a list that I’m on.  If they don’t follow me back by Monday, I unfollow.  Either they went really hard that weekend, or they think it’s all about them.

I also find it odd when people follow me and then unfollow me.  I’m sure I simply tweet too much for some people, and others may not share my interests or views.  Some people use Twitter in different ways.  In my opinion, Twitter is what it is.  If you try to make it into what you want it to be, you’re not “getting” it.

Another reason people follow and then unfollow is because they use services that start you out following a ton of people.  Suggestion, don’t use those services.  If you’re considering following somebody, go to their home page or do a search on from:username to see what they’re tweeting.  That way they don’t waste time following and unfollowing you when you followed them first, then changed your mind.

Let’s see, what else… I find it’s best to just do a few #FF tweets per week.  It takes more time to catch up with #FF recommendations than it does to fire off numerous lists of your tweeps.  I’ve even got some tweeps who think it’s Follow Friday every day, or at least 4-5 days a week.  This is… mildly annoying, but if they’re cool people I have no problem with it.

Seems like I had another thought but can’t find it right now.  Time for a preview.  Ah, whatever!  I’ll just post this now and if I think of more I’ll add to it later.  It’s not like hundreds of people are reading this anyway.  I encourage reader comments.  That way I know I’m not just blogging to myself :)

I think the minimum height on these Twitter Profile widgets is 100 pixels.  I tried to make it 70 pixels so you’d only see one tweet at a time, but it didn’t work.  Okay, time to do something else….  twee ya later!

Twitter spammers are all over #FF now, commonly known as Follow Friday.  Today I got as many spammer re-tweets of my #FF recommendations as I did legit RT’s.  Then I see a tweet by one of my followers, saying that they’re enjoying the serenity of FriendFeed.  Hmm?  Maybe I should check it out again.

So I browse over to FriendFeed, reset password, Spla-Dow!… I’m in.  (No, that’s not my password).  Then I realize that I have no friends… on the service called FriendFeed.  I reckon that’s because it takes time to build friendships, even on the internet, and 95% of my online time is spent doing that on Twitter.

I realize that I’d rather spend my time battling spammers on Twitter than establishing myself on a whole ‘nother social network.  I mean… Facebook is a no-brainer, but where does it end?  I know it’s recommended to have a presence on Linkedin too.  So far I’ve found time to sign up, and that’s about it.

Time is the issue here.  How much time am I willing to spend fighting the spammers?  Will it get to the point that it takes the fun out of Twitter?  If that happens, I guess I’ll have to reevaluate.  I figure if we don’t block spammers every day, it could soon get to that point.  So the time to fight the “Spam Wars” is now!

That’s why I’m gonna keep blocking spammers on Twitter.  I’ll try whatever new “Spam Busters” deal that comes out, while hoping the computer elves at Twitter (in hyperspace no less!) figure out a way to rid our beloved #140 platform of these canned, pink, pork evildoers.  Who is with me?

Last week when Twitter was under assault by a Distributed Denial of Service attack, someone commented that the search results on their Twitter page were not being served by Twitter, but by real time search engine OneRiot.  Now apparently the search is being served directly by Twitter again.

My theory, and I’m only guessing, is that they redirected the search to OneRiot at some point last week, I have no idea for how long.  That would greatly reduce data traffic, giving the hyperspacial machine elves at Twitter some breathing room to deal with the DDoS attack.

I think it’s good to see this level of cooperation between Twiiter and it’s third party developers.  It’s also a damn smart idea if they did do this.  Interesting huh?

* Turns out I was wrong about this.  Somebody saw OneRiot search results in their TwitterBar Firefox add-on and thought that OneRiot was serving the search for Twitter. *

Wow I guess it is really easy to set up a Tumblr account.  Does is take OpenID?  I’m gonna start using that with sites that accept it.  Too many different passwords to manage.

Just wanted to set this up real quick since garyvaynerchuk (@garyvee) just recommended tumblr.  Also I know Kris Colvin (@KrisColvin) of WeHeart and Twitterface is a big fan of Tumblr.

So far I like it.  Using one of the recent themes, “fuckyeahsilkscreen” lol ;)  Might be a little too simplistic, but I’ll go with it for now.  Cheers!