twitter fail blog
sharing the good, and exposing the best of the worst on twitter
This isn’t funny
We hate celebrities for lots of reasons, but we really hate them for pushing the US government to pass a bill that will censor the internet. This is serious business. If “Protect IP” passes, twitter would be shut down, because they would be responsible for everything everyone posts. So would YouTube, and Facebook, and Google+ and MySpace, okay, nobody really cares about MySpace any more, but still… All sharing sites could be shut down, so that Hollywood can protect their already over-inflated pocketbooks. In fact, any site that they think isn’t doing enough to insure they make enough money (read: even more money than they are worth) could be hit with lawsuits.
If you haven’t heard about this yet, watch this video.
Think we’re kidding? Look at the list of special interest groups behind this bill: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/money
If you haven’t contacted your Congressional Representative about this, please do so now. If you don’t, life on the internet will never be the same.
Fool me once
It doesn’t hurt to go through the list of people you’re following every now and then, to see who is still worth it, and who is wasting your attention. We’re reminded of this policy when we notice that people we initially followed because we thought they might be interesting, turn into social media douche-canoes.
Example of social media douche-canoe activity: Filling their timeline with ads. Sometimes, you don’t realize they’re doing it, until you innocently click a link to what you think might be an interesting story, and you get directed to somewhere completely different.
Like this:
Every one of the short urls in this timeline goes a product he’s selling. After clicking on one, we remembered why we like the “short url preview” feature. It saves a lot of aggravation – hover over a short url, and it shows you the real destination. We won’t fall for that trick again. (Disclaimer: We don’t know him. He may be a nice guy, but we really hate bait and switch tactics. That’s not very social.)
And, another thing: The words “internet marketer,” “social media marketer,” and other such terms make us cringe. They’re titles often latched onto by people who are selling you a system to make you look more popular on social media, or automate your online marketing, which they guarantee will get you first page ranking for any keywords you want, or some other “make money by giving me yours” program that usually has an affiliate program attached so that other people will do their marketing for them.
Here’s the news: Social media works by making connections, and having conversations with others. Automate your social media, and you miss the whole point. And, nobody can guarantee you first page ranking for any keyword you want. Correct that.. they can guarantee anything, they just can’t deliver. (Read what Google says about such guarantees: Scroll down to: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”
We’re going to take the advice of @jackassletters and lighten our load. We’re going to look through our list and see who isn’t really social anymore. Following fewer people, and having fewer followers will help us keep the “social” in our twitter social media experience.
How to drive someone crazy in only 3 clicks
1. Post an interesting link: “3 Twitter Tools to Boost your Small Business Marketing”
Click #1
2. Make sure it links to TweetMeme (or Digg, or StumbleUpon, or Facebook, or anywhere else), and NOT the actual story. A cool thing they do on TweetMeme, btw? The short url in your post is NOT a live link. People love that. Why bother? They can click the title.
Click #2
3. The link on TweetMeme should take them another page that reviews the story you referenced, NOT the actual story. This page should give people the impression that “3 Twitter Tools to Boost your Small Business Marketing” is coming up next.
Click #3
4. The story this series of clicks ends up on should NOT be the exact story referenced in items #1, #2, or #3. As in this case: “3 Twitter Tools for Small Business Ecommerce Sites.” So you can act all surprised and say, “What? You don’t have an e-commerce site? You’re just looking for ’3 Twitter Tools to Boost your Small Business Marketing’?” Ha! Fooled you!” What a laugh!
This happens all the time on twitter. People post a link to their Digg page, or TweetMeme, or their blog, none of which have the actual story and it is driving us all batty. Please for the love of all that’s holy STOP DOING THAT!!
When you post to twitter from another social media tool, we get stuck going to that page before we can move on. And in the name of whatever random diety you swear by, please don’t link to a review of the story, or an introduction of the story, or anything but the damn story!!
This public service announcement has been brought to you by the pissed off twitter users of the world.
Thank you, and good night.
Both sides of the fence
There are many reasons we don’t follow celebrities. We can’t understand celebrity-worship. We find most celebrities to be shallow, self-centered, and generally not the sharpest tack in the bunch. Just because someone can carry a tune, or dance provocatively on stage, people will follow them like lost puppies. Celebrities take advantage of that undeserved worship and use those fans to push their personal agendas.
@LadyGaga had some former members of the military as her dates for the VMA’s. We’ll let her tell you about it:
Turns out she was using them as props to talk about her cause: Repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Or so it seems.
The home page of her website asks visitors to “Join Lady Gaga in repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell!’” as if it is within her power to repeal the law herself. She hasn’t been elected to public office yet, so this may be a little over her head.
In her quest to do her civic duty, she’s called some Senators.
Proving that even elected officials can be star-struck, Senator Gillibrand tweeted her, making sure to put a dot before the username so others could she she was part of the in-crowd.
And then, Gaga inadvertently changed her tune, and asked her little monsters to fight against the abolishment of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
They blindly followed her command, and thousands have signed the petition so far. Some even created twitter accounts just for the purpose of doing so. The cynic in us wonders how many duplicate, triplicate, etc., accounts were set up so each monster could sign multiple times. (Not that an online petition carries any real weight, btw.)
Every time the petition is signed, another plea goes out to the twitterverse to support @ladygaga and fight against the abolishment of the ‘DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL’ law. Many of her fans, not knowing the story, will join her fight, and tell their friends to also help keep the law alive.
Once this circulates to the 100th monkey (or monster), Gaga’s initial message will be lost completely as the retweets from the petition fill the twitter streams of fans and non-fans alike, and she will become the voice of intolerance.
This is why we think celebrities should keep their nose out of politics. They aren’t smart enough to use their power responsibly, and no matter how well-intentioned, they can do more harm than good.
UPDATE 09/23/10: Despite Harry Reid’s promise to BFF Gaga that there would be discussion and a repeal of DADT, he voted against the discussion, after first trying to add amendments that have nothing to do with DADT, and everything to do with his re-election campaign. Gaga’s misguided fans evidently didn’t catch that piece of news, and signatures on the petition against abolishment of DADT continue.
Click the image above to see where the count is today.
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