On the looks of things, Twitter is doing the right thing like bringing Google’s former manager of search quality operations Santosh Jayaram over to Twitter as its new vice president of operations.

In the works:

• Introducing indexing and crawling capabilities to spider links contained within users tweets
• A reputation ranking system to give weightage/priority according to a Twitter users authority

As an example, Santosh cited examples of the Twitter.com sidebar would containing “trending” hot topics, which already appear in Twitter users web profile pages now.

To be viable as a search engine alternative, not just against the big 3, but also sites like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace which feature their own search engines, Twitter will need to leverage on its immediate nature and use this advantage to provide real-time updates like Twitter API-powered site TwitterFall.

As hot upstart Twitter continues to introduce unique and creative values for its users, we might see the internet users expectations to demand real time updates from search results, with a corresponding change in user behavior.

In a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project report, internet users in the 18-53 year old age bracket (as at 2009) represent a higher proportion of internet users, compared to their numerical percentage in the general population.

“Older boomers” aged 54-63, make up 13% of the general population and are on par, constituing 13% of internet users.

The “Silent generation” aged 64-72, who make up 9% of the general population, amount to 7% of internet users.

The “GI generation” aged 73 and older and are 9% of the population, only represent 4% of internet users.

Likewise, when it comes to media consumption, Twitter users tend to be more savvy with a high proportion reading their newspapers online or on cell phones or smart phones.

Unsurprisingly, internet users who don’t use Twitter are more likely to read print newspapers.

Attempting to demographically target older internet users might have see better efficiency through old guard media, while Twitter is an ideal medium, especially for the 18-53 year old demographic.

Likewise, similar consumption patterns are seen when it comes to accessing blogs and video news.

However, a group of “ambivalent networkers” are emerging from these groups – internet users who are otherwise savvy about using mobile devices and social networks, but conflicted about being connected 24-7.

“Social media fatigue” could be a by-effect of the volume of 1-on-1 communication that social media affords and having blackberry-like continuous communication coming through multiple social networks can be overwhelming. With the possible outcome of some otherwise net-savvy users going “off the grid” and going “social network” cold turkey.

If you’re like me, you might’ve given up on going to sites like MySpace, Facebook or even Twitter as frequently, with the hundreds of pending friend requests or a bursting inbox, creating a stressful, rather than pleasant social experience.

One possible solution: social network-focused meta search engines and more intelligent filtering technologies.

Else, there’s the very possible outcome of social networking devolving into the online equivalent of satellite TV’s “1,000 channels, but nothing to watch” syndrome.

• Promotion by mass media: So suddenly, mainstream media like newspapers, TV news and talk shows are jumping on the twitter bandwagon, making it sound like the best thing since sliced bread. Just like they did with the internet back in the mid 1990s.
• Overemphasis on the technology: So there’s been an overemphasis about the tech aspects of twitter, how you can build a following of 100,000 in a few days/weeks, how you’re able to mass msg them updates.
• Celebrity buzz factor: Now everyone knows that the_real_shaq is well, the real shaq. And that other celebrities have their publicist, manager scraping old interviews and sending tweets out on their behalf, saying that the content is sent in the “spirit” of the celebrity. Authenticity/credibility fail.

But the bigger danger of social media, especially the new wave of twitter’s brand of new social media is that it could potentially be tethering you to your computer instead of freeing you.

Remember the crackberry, er, blackberry?

When blackberry addicts had it with them 24-7 and felt compelled to answer an email the moment it was received? Till now, I know of a number of affiliate managers who keep their blackberry at their bedside and wake up to answer emails the moment they come in.

Me, I’m in the process of cancelling my cellphone to be less accessible.

But here’s why I think twitter might be self-destructive – the design of the system is such that it’s like a 24-hour chatroom, with topics being constantly discussed and possibly buried in a matter of hours.

That means if you want to:

• tap the buzz
• be part of the flow
• be part of the conversation

It means you need to tether yourself to the medium, you need to essentially be watching the channel during the 8-12 hours that the service is at its peak.

So it’s like watching TV, except that instead of being constrained by the content being broadcast by the television network, you’re at times held hostage to the content being broadcast by other users.

If anything, that’s the dark side of user-generated content.

You could read twitter updates on a delayed basis, that is hours or days after they were first broadcast and use twitter as a proxy RSS reader, however, it’d limit the conversations you’re able to conduct, unless they’re highly targeted in nature.

If social media, especially with the vanguard led by Twitter is to evolve to its next stage, it’ll require:

• More flexible content management
• Higher quality filtering and relevant updates

for users.

What do you think?

Fact: You are naked on the internet, especially with social media.

The fact that most social networks are open systems and have low barriers to communication and sharing of information means that everything you do within the social matrix is transparent and wholly obvious.

A couple of days ago, I got a Twitter public message from: Jodi Joseph Asaiag with the message:

@andrewwee for IP resources, tools and discussions visit http://www.bpcouncil.com – suggestions welcome at editor@bpcouncil.com

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Sounds like a pleasant and helpful message.

I took a look at her twitter stream:

While it’s nice to receive direct message on twitter (perhaps they’d heard of you by reputation or were recommended by someone), it’s not as kosher to receive form messages, especially since I don’t specifically cover intellectual property or “brand protection”.

The feeling of “being special” wore off after I found that the same message had gone out to lots of other people.

Bottomline: it doesn’t hurt to get to know people before sending them a recommendation (reaction: I don’t know you… why should I care about you or your welcome – the classic WIIFM – “What’s In It for Me” question you’ll need to address to be relevant and build your standing in the community).

Participate in a conversation your intended prospect is having and you’re more likely to pique their interest and they’ll naturally want to follow you back, strike up a conversation, etc.

If all you’re doing is blatantly self-promoting on the social networks, you’ll come across as a fairly shallow person – more concerned with selling books, courses and DVDs than having conversations.

If you brought that attitude into the dating scene, you’d be pretty lonely on Friday night, so why bring that same karma into the social network.

On a positive note, it’s encouraging to see Jodi adapt her use of twitter in recent days to be more conversational in nature, with conversations and retweets populating her twitter stream.

Being naked does have its priviledges.

Take a look at the signs of the impending apocalypse, once proud A-Lister bloggerati have taken a hiatus, stopped blogging, or are pummelled over the twitterstream into irrelevance. Is blogging, once the circa 2006 golden boy of mainstream media, now it’s whipping boy?

More importantly, is anyone going to read more than the 140 character limit imposed by micro blogging platforms like Twitter?

Are we destined to become a SMS/text nation?

Gee… I hope not.

But anecdotal evidence shows that bloggers are updating their Blogger and WordPress blogs left often, meanwhile they’ve racked up hundreds, if not thousands of twitter updates within the space of a few month.

From casual observation, the mantra seems to have shifted from “I’m blogging this” to “I’m tweeting this”.

It’s a valid observation too. If you’re busy talk-tweeting for an hour every day, that’s an hour taken away from think and composing your next blog post.

The paradigm shift might be this: From an isolated position of having to plan and write a blog post in isolation and interacting with readers through the blog comments later, it’s shifted to a model of firing a question into the twittersphere and using a combination of @username and direct message responses to have a real time chat – Twitter is kind of like the bastard child of IRC and forum discussions in my opinion.

So yes, Twitter is here to stay (at least till the inter-continental wifi-enabled telepathic communication becomes ubiquitous).

Where does that leave blogging?

I believe blogs and twitters can and will continue to co-exist. There’s only so much that can be said in 140 characters. The modus operandi involves including a URL together with the short, pithy update. And blogs more than adequate fill that space.

If anything, twitter has replaced email marketing as a traffic channelling mechanism, and blog traffic has been picking up.

Not to mention having made a couple hundred more blog friends through the enabling technology of Twitter.

Believe or not, 140 character tweets will likely sit side-by-side with 400 word blog posts for some time to come.

In the meantime, new bloggers are still purchasing copies of Chris Pearson’s Thesis WordPress template and streaming into my Secret Blog Weapon program.

So all’s well on the blogging front.

So in recent weeks, there’s been a spate of discussion about “Twitter Snobs” – twitter users who don’t follow many people back. Maybe following 200 people and have 20,000 follow them.

Todd Friesen AKA Oilman was analysing how he could get into SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin’s twitter cliche. Rand  follows 11 twitter uses and has about 5,200 followers.

Likewise, other bloggers have been pontificating why it’s bad to be a twitter snob and how you should fix it (follow more of them back, make friends, etc). See the references here, here and here.

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So where do I stand?

I follow 217 users and have 1,374 followers. Or about a 15% follower rate.

Which is closer to about 12-13%, since I have a number of fake twitter profiles among my followers.

Here is where I think it’s good to be a snob – I read every update each of the people I’m following

As my twitter profile page says “If I follow you, I read every update”

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It’s just like the traffic generation game, although quality (raw numbers) is good, I still focus on quality (lead generation/traffic quality) over quantity any day of the week (or month).

Assuming you’re in this business to do more than just generate eyeballs and plan to convert or monetize them, I’d say quality is darn important.

And there’s a difference between a snob (someone who’s selective and realistic about who they follow) versus someone who is just out to be a “faux twitter rockstar”, gathering a following of 100,000 and just seeing everyone as just another number.

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There’s a difference between being a participatory and non-participatory member of twitter.

You participate when you use DMs (direct messages), @user (to reply to a specific person, while everyone can read your twitter stream) and selectively RT (retweet) and broadcast/syndicate quality content.

As the folks at Bruce Clay note: you could go the Guy Kawasaki route and use twitter as a broadcast medium – funnelling traffic to your own site (in this case Alltop) and not responding to replies or messages, that’s your perogrative.

It shortchanges the social media channel in my opinion and relegates Twitter to being in the position of just a digital signboard in the middle of the virtual deserts, when it could be used as a channel of online conversation.

And ultimately, the best customers are the ones who feel they are appreciated.

So I’ll keep my twitter snob hat on my head, until it isn’t working for me anymore.

Oh yes, and you can join my followers at http://twitter.com/andrewwee.

Have the forces of blackhole SEO spread beyond the reaches of Wikipedia and eBay to dig it’s claws into Twitter, as Sugarrae has asserted?

Though Rae mentioned the issue last September, SEO specialist Todd Malicoat AKA Stuntdubl tweeted about it yesterday, together with some choice thoughts:

i mean – do you really believe that twitter links are passing NO credibility, NO juice, NO nothing…?? just like wikipedia ….riiiiiiight.

maybe implement a sandbox for new users
certain threshhold until they are trusted enough to get into a non-robots.txt directory

why not utilize robots.txt solution…instead of nofollow?
i guess nofollow in general just gets me riled up and pissed off

What would happen if twitter got rid of the nofollow on all links? How would it affect the web?

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So why’re we revisiting this issue?

Blackhole SEO is where an inherently social site like eBay or Twitter decides to shut it’s doors and stick “nofollow” tags to outgoing links. So in SEO speak, you won’t get any “link juice” or benefit to your Google PageRank from the PR you’ve built at the site.

Taking a survey, Twitter profile pages (the page that is twitter.com/[your username]) does garner pagerank over time.

A rough survey with either the Google toolbar or the search status firefox plugin yields:

Google PageRank (PR) 4

• Ian Fernando
• Miles Baker

PR 5

• Zac Johnson
• Oilman
• Shawn Collins
• Joel Comm
• Wil Reynolds
• Andrew Wee (me)
• Todd Malicoat
• Reg Saddler AKA Zaibatsu

PR 6

• Darren Rowse AKA ProBlogger
• Michael Gray AKA Graywolf
• Sam Harrelson
• Guy Kawasaki
• Jim Kukral

PR 7

• Chris Brogan
• Barack Obama

PR 8

• Twitter Home page

How do these profile pages build up PR?

It’s unlikely that many twitter users would link build to their user profile, especially since Twitter resides on a public network (ie you don’t own this piece of virtual turf). So it’s likely that these could be links might have resulted from links pointing to your profile page from other twitter users’ profiles, or high authority blogs including blogroll or blog post links to your twitter profile, etc.

If the weight of inbound links is high enough, your twitter profile will earn pagerank. If that’s the case, labelling all outgoing links from your twitter page with the “nofollow” basically tells Google (whom “nofollow” most clearly influences) that the content you’re pointing at does not merit much weight/authority/value…

So given that a PR 5 backlink or 2-way link would be beneficial, the “nofollow” tag may put a downer on twitter users perception of their value to the community, especially since the “blackhole” structure favors twitters own efforts to increase its pagerank.

Granted, there may be some logic in preventing spammers from sqeezing twitter for link juice, but a blanket “nofollow” on links within tweets and on the user profile page (use “view source” to verify the nofollow flag), puts a dampener on things.

As Todd mentions, this blanket approach could be remedied by either a temporary sandbox/holding area for new accounts, or handled via a robots.txt file.

If sites like Squidoo can be effectively managed, and pass link juice to external sites, couldn’t twitter do the same with a little additional intelligence?

If users are spending 1-2 hours each day on your site, why this continued distrust of sites that users are linking to?

If users pointing to poor quality content is an issue, couldn’t the whiz kids at Twitter use some suitable metric to filter the social scammers out?

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Followup post: “DoFollow or NoFollow: The I Can Has Backlink Dilemma“

Background: I’m an active Twitter user and have been using what I would consider the best Twitter client, TweetDeck, for a couple of months.

Sure it’s had some weird idiosyncrasies like having to shut it down so I could run more bandwidth-intensive applications or MMPOGs on my system, but on the whole, it’s been a pleasant experience (read my earlier review)

I may or may not be the typical Tweetdeck user – here’re my usage habits:

• My computers are on 24-7. I run mainly Windows XP operating systems (a combination of Professional and Home editions). I reboot when virtual memory drops “dangerously low” or I get a BSOD (blue screen of death).
• I follow about 200+ Twitter users, some of whom tweet as many as 50 times a day or more.
• I live in a GMT+8 timezone (which is 13 hours ahead of EST now. My night is your day. I’m snoozing while you’re working)

As a result, it’s not uncommon to wake up to 500+ tweets during the 6 hours I’m sleeping.

Particularly today, my machine crawled to a grinding crawl, and pulling up the Windows Task Manager (hit alt-ctrl-delete to see this):

Coming in at #1, TweetDeck with a pretty monstrous 334 MB of memory usage (followed by Firefox where I had about 30 tabs open).

And a screenshot a few minutes later:

So I’ve had to shut TweetDeck down, as almost every other application was pretty unusable.

Dave Davis AKA RedFly mentioned that TweetDeck’s memory leak issue had been Dugg (the orig post has since been removed) though I found another blog post mentioning the leak.

There’s speculation that the Adobe AIR runtime is responsible for the memory leak. Others are saying TweetDeck is the culprit.

With some probing, I saw mentions on the TweetDeck posterous/wall/blog or on TweetDeck founder/developer Iain Dodsworth’s twitter stream.

In response to a user’s complaint that TweetDeck had swallowed 1.4 GB of ram, Iain responded: “yep will fix ASAP – in meantime just restart app to release memory and go back to starting memory usage amount”

Iain has also mentioned incremental upgrades are on the way with a major release scheduled soon. Hopefully, Iain will kill the memory problem dead.

I still think TweetDeck is still the best fraking Twitter app out there, especially if you’re following more than 50 twitter users. The memory leak issue should be addressed soon.

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Update: If you leave TweetDeck on 24-7, it looks like you can keep a maximum of 500 backlogged/unread tweets, so there is a buffer for 500 tweets. As new ones come on, the old ones fall off your viewable page.

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Follow me on twitter.

If you are a Twitter user, you might want to take a close look at TweetDeck, especially with their recent feature upgrade.

Having gone through a couple of other Twitter clients (they essentially bring Twitter updates to your desktop via the API and provide additional functions) like Twhirl, I will be using TweetDeck for a long time.

For starters, with the recent v0.21.5b upgrade, the client includes the option of a 4th column, you’re also able to perform a search within TweetDeck and setup groups and follow friends more easily.

Unless you’re a strict stickler to talking to 1 person at a time, the multi-threaded approach to managing conversations makes Twitter more managable, especially once you’ve breached the “100 people you are talking” to mark.

Here’s one use of the search function: Being able to search by username or keyword and looking at the progression of the topic:

Take note that these functions are not groundbreaking or new, you could already follow these searches by opening up multiple windows and heading over to search.twitter.com and typing in keywords or usernames.

But what is useful is how TweetDeck makes these functions more accessible through icons, rather than bookmarked or type-in URLs.

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Additionally as you build up a group of followers, you can sort them using the groups function.

Sam Harrelson has got about 4 groups set up now, and this is a good way to keep work and family separate (although your boss will still read your “had too much to drink, gonna call in sick” tweets in your public timeline.

To the veteran Twitter user, these changes aren’t as much revolutionary as they make Twitter less of a pain in the butt to use.

For neophyte Twitter users, the simplication process can smoothen the learning curve.

I just wonder if Twitter users increasingly move towards client programs to access updates, rather than visit the site, does this change from a presence-based model (the idea of visit a “website” to get your site) to a “pulled content” model signal a change in the winds?

If you’d like to follow me on Twitter, you can follow me at: http://twitter.com/andrewwee

And how he raised $1 million and the Million Dollar Home Page generated buzz all over the internet and was mentioned in the newspapers and TV?

It was a novel, funny and creative way to “make money online”.

Then another guys comes up with another page, selling pixels at $1 a pop, hoping to replicate the same results. I don’t know the outcome, but I have a feeling he or she failed.

Then some clever codes came up with software that let you sell pixels on a page. It sold initially for hundreds of dollars and you can probably get free versions now. The poor saps who bought it for $297, probably ended up making $50.

What’s the moral of the story? You need to be first, be the first to bring a product to the market, even if it might be somewhat flawed.

The other side of the coin is that people have short attention spans and have 15 second “soundbyte” attention. Rehash something and it’s bound to be an epic fail.

Likewise, on the Twitter micro-blogging platform/social network, a trend has emerged where Twitter users hold contests where they stipulate that you need to follow them and re-tweet (essentially repeat their message, or in less nice language, spam their contest) all over the twitterverse.

In exchange, you get to win (depending on the generosity of the twitter user) a $10 ebook, a $50 blog template, or if you’re lucky an Apple iPhone 3G (very rare).

It was funny and interesting to see this happen the first time, with the novelty again sucking in the early adopters.

Now that Joe Schmoe twitter user is jumping on the bandwagon, my Twitter feed (AKA Twitter updates) is being polluted by the likes of marketers who should know better and who can very well afford these trinkets, who’re rebroadcasting these messages.

If you identify yourself as a whitehat (ethical) social marketer, you’re certainly wandering into “spammer space” if you keep participating in every contest. Please, have a consideration for the 10, 100 or 1,000 people who are following you, we don’t need to spend 5 seconds of our life reading that message.

5 seconds x 1,000 followers = 5,000 man-seconds wasted = 1.4 collective hours.

If you keep this up, I might just put a hit out on Craigslist on you.

PS: I like twitter, it’s fun (most of the time). I promise not to participate in silly contests (unless I’m offered an indecent proposal). And I’ll sometimes say clever, or even funny stuff.

-> Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/andrewwee

• Seeing what friends and business contacts are up to.
• Communicating either publicity or privately (via direct messages)
• Tunneling through to someone on their iPhone or other device, set to receive tweets
• Concise and to-the-point communication because everyone is limited to 140 characters

As a “micro blogging” platform, Twitter has gained sufficient critical mass that enough people are on it (like MySpace was in 2006 and Facebook was in 2008) to make it a viable and useful platform. (Sadly, other platforms like LinkedIn and Plurk have not achieved sufficient critical mass to be considered ubiquitous at this point).

Despite the benefits of Twitter, inevitably some marketers are going to be flexing their e-peen by sending frequent tweets about how they’re hit 5,000 followers, 20,000 followers or are in the top 50 on the top Twitter groupies list.

In my opinion, talking about the size of your community in a bragging fashion is disrespectful to the people who are following you. In a very real sense, you ARE reducing them to a mere number – one of 50,000 nameless faces who have chosen to take their time to read your potentially useful content.

Instead, why not spend time getting to know your community/followers.

Instead of going on an ego trip, can you say you know most of your followers?

On another note, twitter is not your platform to send a string of product launch announcements or to send your affiliate links out to some hapless n00b who happened to follow you.

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Now that we’ve defined the “ego” type posts, what falls into the non-ego/useful content basket? For me they fall into 4 categories:

• Informational: Some useful stuff that your audience is interested in, whether it’s marketing their products more effectively, tips on losing weight, or improving their relationship with their partner.
• Entertainment: Something to break the monotony of working in real life or on the net. A link to a funny youtube video or clever banter (like between @Oilman and @MrsOilman – I met Oilman AKA Todd Friesen at the Affiliate Summit, at the same time, Mrs Oilman seems really cool)
• Community/Relationship building: What’s the point in having people follow you, if you’re not talking to them or getting to know them?
• A combination of two or more of the above

One of the reasons why I’ve done more communication with people who’re interested in reading my blog over social networks like Facebook and Twitter, compared to using email marketing, is that the conversation is more real-time and dynamic in nature. (It doesn’t hurt that conversion rates are several magnitudes higher too).

If you’re not already using twitter, whether it’s to get feedback or to start a conversation (having a goal or outcome helps…), then perhaps it’s time that you should.

And as for the follower benchmarks you’re hitting, please paste it in your excel spreadsheet and time/date stamp it if it makes you happy, that’s one bit of information the twitterverse can do without.

Also, check out this recent post on enhancing your twittering efforts from a guest TechCrunch post by Digg founder and Twitter investor Kevin Rose.

Like this post? Follow me on Twitter.

One of the potential pitfalls about Twitter is to make a snap judgement that the more followers you have, the better position you’re in. While this might be true in some cases, I think twitter followers are just like any other type of online traffic – quality massively outweighs quantity any day of the week.

That’s one of the reasons why the new Twitter tools which leverage on the Twitter API can provide a picture about the twitter users following you. This can be an instrumental tool if you’re building a community and/or establishing your brand purely through the web.

The API-based tools can help you go below the surface to dig out details about your followers.

MrTweet is a recently launched tool which lets you identify:

• Influencers in your network: people who have pull
• My followers I am not following (you probably want to follow some of these people back)

In addition the tool provides useful metadata such as:

• The number of tweets published each day
• and a key attribute “Reciprocity: Usually follows back” or it’s variant “Frequently replies to non-follows”

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t follow everyone who follows me because I do my best to read every tweet that appears in my update. That’s the whole point of social networking, isn’t it?

I am not sure that someone who follows 6,000 other users is going to read every update. That could take more than 24 hours a day. In my books, there is an element of “social networking dishonesty” if you’re following people whom you have no real interest in.

It may or may not factor into MrTweet’s ranking algorithmn, although I found that the following:follower ratio is usually. Someone who is following 82 twitter users, has 1,803 followers (with a ratio of 21.98) like copywriter Marlon Sanders tends to be a genuine twitter, compared to someone who is merely gaming the system.

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Is social networking vulnerable to “social engineers” or “black hat social marketers” gaming the system? For sure, but analytics tools will help you suss out the smart marketers from the rest of the pack. From there it’s building the bridge to forging a real life relationship that is going to pay the big dividends.

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Competitive intelligence tip: MrTweet functions on an open system, no passwords or logins are required. This means that you could type: http://mrtweet.net/report/(twitter username) and gain insight into how effectively personalities or marketers are using the system.

So with micro-blogging platform Twitter providing API (application programming interface) access to developers, it was only a matter of time before a slew of twitter “stats” and “analytics” services made their way onto the market.

Do they really mean anything?

Is it statistically significant?

There’s still a big question mark in that area.

What has happened though is that these services have turned out to be great linkbait, and they seem pretty viral too, with various twitter users announcing/bragging about their “Twitter Elite” status (even if you are the top Twitter dawg in your village of 500….)

The Twittersphere has been abuzz with various users announcing their “Twitter Elite” status.

Are you a member of the elite? Check out the twitter grader and find out.

The service seems simple and harmless enough. Enter your twitter username and hit the “grade” button.

If you’re lucky, it might show something like rank #3,207 out of 548,986 users and you can write some report about “How to dominate the Twitter Elite rankings” and sell it for $10 (Ok, I am kidding here).

You can also click for more detail and see how you stack up in your geographical region:

Here’s what I would not do.

I would not make a blog post about how great you are just because some service ranked you as #1.

I would not twitter about how you outrank your friends and colleagues.

I would not get some notion that you’re some type of social media expert, just because you got a high ranking.

Instead, the twitter rankings are a good way to find out other people who’re actively twittering in your area, or in your niche and following them to see if they’re worth networking with.

The score (out of a total possible 100 points) is calculated based on:

• The number of followers you have
• The power of this network of followers
• The pace of your updates
• The completeness of your profile
• …a few others

Which sounds pretty vague.

It also may not discount out the people who have 3,000 followers, but are following 4,500 others.

Maybe the follower:followee ratio should factor into the ranking alogrithmn, or count for more if it hasn’t already.

Till the ranking is refined, it’s just another fun little toy to play with.

But what happens when friends send you these messages?

Granted, it won’t be as overt as a “Hi, I’m Natasha, I would like to chat with you

Talk to me now at: [Adult friend finder affiliate link]”

But still, some of the things that rankle my haunches include:

• Talking about how amazing you are or how great you are (Go talk to your bathroom mirror if you feel the need to share).
• Talking about how you’ve been in the industry for 10 years or 15 years (Unfortunately, it was more like you experienced the same day over and over again since day 1 and haven’t learnt a thing).
• Endlessly promoting some product and include affiliate links in your twitter messages (We’re pretty savvy marketers and seeing a redirect URL and a bunch of cookies being placed in our browser fires off a couple of warning bells).
• Talking down and treating your audience like kids, assuming they’re going to believe everything you say.
• Failing to provide any value to your followers/listeners/fans.

In my opinion, there’s nothing terrifically new about the web 2.0 or social traffic sites – the same rules apply, it’s all about building the relationship with the person you’re talking to.

Just because you can use the power of twitter to send marketing messages out to 2,000 followers doesn’t mean you should do so at every opportunity.

Likewise, following 4,000 people and having 500 follow you back does not make you a “social marketing expert” either. On the contrary, it tends to smack of desperation.

Technology is a double-edged sword. Tools like Qwitter let you see when someone who has just followed you, decides to quit 24 hours later when you don’t follow them back. This is like the pickup artist who heads into a bar and uses a string of one-liners, gets no love and leaves at the end of the night empty-handed.

If you want to be in the internet marketing game for the long term, it’s important to play the game with a long term focus and a long term plan in mind.

Some of the principles that have helped me include:

• Focus on the quality, not the quantity of relationship: It’s much better to have 1 staunch ally than 100 casual followers. So quit bragging about how you have 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 fans. How many of them do you know, and what do you know about them? Being a mere “friend collector” is even more superficial online, compared to it’s offline equivalent.
• Being invited and being part of the in-group: Do you feel that you know the person well enough to call them a friend? I think trust has to be earned. Even though social networks are open and you can find my accounts using the search engine, that does not give you license to ping me as I’m working on a campaign to give me a hot new offer, or beg me to try out your new product or service. “Permission Marketing” by Seth Godin is a good book which addresses this topic, failing which a copy of “Miss Manners Guide to Good Social Etiquette” wouldn’t hurt either. You wouldn’t come up to a group in a party and butt in with an off-topic, irrelevant question, so why abuse the internet in a similar fashion?
• Build the relationship: Relationships progress – from strangers to casual contacts to friends to buddies. You can’t leapfrog from strangers to friends or buddies in one fell swoop, unless you have some serious moxie. Developing a sense of EQ or emotional quotient and taking time to build rapport with someone shows sincerity and does more to build the relationship than anything else. But if you’re hellbent on trying to get a sale out of the whole superficial exchange, then there’s not much anyone can do for you.

In a nutshell, being a “bad” social marketer has a lot to do with coming across as being rude and seeing someone as a customer, rather than a human being. If you aren’t able to pick up the lessons to step up to responsible marketing over web 2.0 or web 3.0, you won’t be able to get a passing grade anytime soon.

In the “chatterspace” of micro-blogging platforms like twitter, it’s not uncommon to see posts like “Feeling hungry. Going to get a burger” or “Just picked a bunch of lint from my belly button. Yuck!”. The question is, does this help or hurt your brand?

Mike alluded platforms like Twitter to the reality show “Big Brother” where “voting is done by people at home, people at home typically vote out all those who don’t say much, don’t swear, don’t take enemies etc. Those type of people typically end up being the first to leave”

As the current situation stands, the rabble rousers sometimes do end up with the most number of twitter followers by virtue of the “freakshow factor”.

Being able to garner a following because you’re excellent at stirring up controversy may bring the crowds, but are you much better than merely winning the title of the “Rodney Dangerfield of Microblogging” together with its accompanying “I can’t get no respect” title?

Additionally, Mike adds that most Twitter users see the channel as entertainment, rather than a bona fide communication tool, he goes on to say “if you compare this to Twitter, people want to follow those that will create controversy, swear, say stupid things, post a crazy video here and there, much more than they want to follow professionals who are going to post nothing but quality content”.

So how do you account for the fact that the most popular National Geographic program has 1% of the ratings of a Big Brother? It has to do with the audience profile and the program format.

Survivor: Gabon

Take the winners of the Survivor reality show, they’re usually quiet, fly-under-the-radar, non-controversial, diplomatic individuals. This probably wouldn’t fly in either Big Brother or Twitter. Being subtle or quiet doesn’t work the excitement factor.

Donald Trump’s The Apprentice

If you’re hoping to pick up business lessons from reality TV (hopefully it’s supplement other forms of learning!), Donald Trump’s The Apprentice model is a close analogy to business life. In Apprentice, in order to win you need to be a hustler. You need to lead by example, avoid acquiring enemies and win the respect of both your team members and your boss.

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Microblogging now has a lot of similarities with blogging when it first became popular, with bloggers initially writing about what they had for lunch or how much they spent on a shopping trip (some still do this).

But as the medium evolves, I’m sure like blogging, we can expect to see the content on microblogging platforms get more sophisticated.