Best Twitterers or tweetards?

Ok in no particular order here are some of my favorite twitterers on twitter. Might not be your cup of mescal but I think there is good entertainment value here.

Mama_Cougar* Stuck in suburbia and funny as all shit. I can't always relate but fun to follow.

whitegrlproblem* - similar to above in case you are wondering what to avoid in a girlfriend

FatJesus3* Zach Galifianakis really known recently as the Tard on the Hangover is the funniest fuck.

hipsterrunoff* - Ok if you are feeling old but hip and there are gray pubes popping in up in places you never thought possible this one you might want to ignore.

Nick_Nolte* If drunk had smart phone and tweeted a lot at bars and reported incidents with roosters his posts would be like this. (for the most part but maybe worse)

shitmydadsays* This guy got some sort of deal for making up funny shit from the perspective of cranky old man. Totally infamous but had to include.

What else you go? Make me reco and follow my ass on twitter*. I am my own tweetard brand with small opinions and taste.

Disclaimer: none of these people can be confirmed or denied as actually being real people trying to secure a movie deal but g*d bless them for your entertainment and mine.

The Name Stamp (Japanese Style) Video Contest

Here is another one of videos for the Search For the World's Greatest Salesperson video contest I'm working on right now. All you have to do is sell a red brick. This video cracks me up and really shows Matt Servitto's (FBI agent from the Sopranos) true talent. Follow the shenanigans on twitter.com/Sell_Or_Else. If you think you have sales skills you should enter to win.

The social network access stratrosphere

Are you confused as to what to tools use for what for all these social networks? Why so many widgets and sites to help you manage your life in virtual life? What? I know you thought you already had a handle on life post DOT COM but why not just download another piece of waste (software). It's free to try it kid.

Well you are not alone and quite frankly we predict this wild wild west to continue growing like the crazy weed; as the business verticals (business, sports, entertainment, news, technology, etc) figure out how to get your money. When a clear dominance is re-established and the footing is set we'll all continue to get sucked in like we did with the early days of television and radio. Well ladies and germs we are getting there and the train is moving fast as rapidly as language will permit early adopters and tastemakers to speak and give their opinions. Separating the old business paradigm and connecting life and work in new and innovative ways is what is being created here in this entangled but awesome intraweb.

There are many ways to look at the confounded paths of web trends and analytics. The first is by site traffic which clearly depicts in the graphics how we are using the paths and who has the largest audience but what does it mean to you? The information architects are using the analogy of a crazy train system to define these web trends. Go over there and download the whole map it really is very impressive. Each node with it's own business model. The slice I like the most is the key right below which breaks down all the different social factors that help define success of a trend. Not as straight forward as the concepts are mostly opinion based but the way they did it expresses scale and levels of success. Not monetization necessarily, as that is the end game, but the relationship between all the different properties in the web stratosphere. I tried to get at the issue by thinking of life in terms of the taxonomy of people in my FB notes a few months back and when everybody was posting random photos. Enter social networks to help you organize these ideas and abstract concepts any which way you like to add to the confusion. Everybody would like to tag and categorize stuff but not everybody is good at it.



This key is not everything you need of course but just a understanding of the different types of the intellectual capital that is exchanging at such a phenomenal rate. I'm thinking interactions should work just like a coupon so you can buy something or get something out of the "free" exchange of traffic. You see it happening subtlety on blip.fm where you can give points to users that you can then pay forward or rating videos on youtube. The credit is meaningless of course but what if it weren't? What if that were real money? Would it retain it's value and become virtual spam? Of course it would. The challenge would to figure out how make a smart algorithm to filter a thinly veiled popularity contest or paid linkage. Which is why I like being able to accept friends like on my last.fm itunes playlist or FB account. Not a lot of meaningful interactions happening on last.fm that I can tell. The site is mostly for playlist junkies. Although, I'm sure that is going to change as destination commerce types integrate more with middleware (twitter, tumbler).


As a side bar see the review stalker post that asks the question what if music were free? Which is just one of the verticals that is trying to organize commerce like we have been used to since the invention of buying music not renting for live performances. Basically somebody invented a additional layer just like a new product or brand you can buy at the grocery store.


While these ideas are being exchanged and traffic is being counted by the man (google & yahoo). They are the deciders as to what gets counted for your point of entry in a search. I'm seeing regular advertising running so fast to get intertwined and in front and become a part of the audience building and point of entry process it's scary. This must scare google a little bit being that twitter recently passed on a very large offer. What is curious is that for a lot of start-ups there are no blatant adverts yet mainly because they they have the luxury to be in their audience building mode 44 Million goes a long way. Although 1 Billion sounds good. Think of how many hamburger have been sold?

Which brings up a issue with so many people asking you to take action. Do you really care? How do you measure that effectively? You would think they should know what you like and why shouldn't they? They know people need to work and shop to eat and if the marketeers are not there making noise nobody is going to visit their store. But the question becomes how is having a tumblr account going to help me help them? Ok it is yet another aggravation to figure out but that is half the fun but lets think. What is your in point? What is in "it" for you?


Music to help you understand social Media:
The Thieving Magpie - From Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange
How to skin a cat - Husker Du
Me & You, Remembering - fIREHOSE
Lost in the Supermarket - The Clash
Drug I need - Poster Children

Today on Facebook I am still ignoring the following requests

2 friend requests - don't know you

1 group invitation - to Eat Murry Hill. I have no clue what this is

2 zombie invitations - Why do i want to live have my head chopped off

1 ninja invitation - Does this make a better person

1 cause invitation - damn lefties except this one is to support local music

3 werewolves invitations - teenage werewolves are wasting away on the interweb

1 hi five friend invitation -

1 superpoke invitation -

2 vampires invitations - why do we want to outlive our loved ones?

1 acounter invitation - sounds sexy

1 what's hot request - mary louise parker is on the list

1 live it up! request - I am a stick in the mud

1 name analyzer invitation - enemy. Goliath

1 likeness unrated invitation - there is a rated version?

1 my music invitation -

What is a social network graph?

The six degrees of separation are beginning to converge rather quickly. The current format of Social networks and advertising networks are trying to glean your click through and figure out what the CPA(cost per acquisition) comes out to, which is currently semi-silo'd. Meaning we live in distinct valleys of information that is ripe for the rooting of advertising stream billions. These silos are beginning to change how we connect with the advent of widgets and aps. Web 2.0 is already old news for most of us living in 2007 realtime intraweb. The next level, as discussed by Tim Berners Lee is this third level after (1) the internet phase and (2) the storage of web documents what is being called a social graph for web users to take back control. This current phenomenon, what is loosely being defined as what links relationships between people and/or documents -- "the things documents are about" and how they relate to people who give it meaning. It is easy to agree that nothing is free. E.G. Ads make the world go around. You accepted it on TV and we will accept in our future consumption of video content and any means of social entertainment (err, except for nasty interruptions of our 1-1 phone connections). The hypothesis is that users will demand DVR for web where YOU as the user gets to sort best of social connections and who pays to connect to you. I don't like Nike but will let Puma talk to send me stuff if i had to choose. Although, Wikinomics book says that "relationships are the one thing you cannot commoditize", and yes people harrumphed when gmail scanned your email for things you might like but we were quick to forget and then blindly import our email without flinching to suck their friends into facebook or linkedin, etc and invite them to join the fun. Who the hell reads the fine-print anyway when you sign-up Anyway? Most recently Plaxo Pulse allows you to suck in your favorite social network stuff (flickr, blogger feeds, facebook) and expanding their ap library everyday. The discussion now on the table in the blogosphere is to a create social network media API, as was done with the adopted J2EE standards, to get everybody in tune with the governance rules for usage of these social connections (remember all the info we put in our web docs? remember?). Read Write Web's post does a great job of explaining the concepts around the social graph and their implications with a lot of quality feedback and concerns around who controls the information pipe and goes in deeper with issues surrounding life online. There are some really cool visual looks into these vertical social connections. Graphs can be churned out of almost any kind of one to many mathematical relationship, like data from 9/11 terrorist networks to the Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Networks and everything in between, to have that A-HA moment visit Visual Complexity project dissections set for various social network queries. So the next time you fill out yet another profile be aware that your info is not your own.