Wednesday Twitter Headlines: Golden Ratio?, Ted Kennedy, No Teen Twitter for Privacy?

Twitter's Golden Ratio

The Washington Post has an article called Twitter's Golden Ratio in which they begin:

If you're new to Twitter, life is easy. A notification comes in that someone is following you, and you probably follow them back. After all, you're going to want some tweets in your stream. After a couple dozen of those, you may start using more discretion, looking over the person's profile and their most recent tweets. But that gets old quickly as well, and inevitably you turn to using the secret ratio that nearly everyone knows (whether they realize it or not) to determine who is worth following back: "Followers" versus "following".

It's cute and endearing from the point of someone who actually manages their follower list. They may have nailed one item or two, but if you've read my post on 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You Back on Twitter, it's a moot point.

There are at least 10 (and probably 20-30) reasons why any one person will not follow another on Twitter if they are deliberately trying to increase the value of what they see daily on their stream. And a golden ratio is not a be-all, end-all of any sort.

It is nice to see the mainstream media taking notice - and a shot at understanding - for those of us in it every day.


Ted Kennedy

Whatever your politics, we lost an amazing statesman early this morning. Check out this article to see some of the comments.

Sorry, but they're also novices and apparently no one thought to use a hashtag.

R.I.P. Ted Kennedy. You will be missed.


Teens Shunning Twitter

This article from PC World talks about how teens would rather text than tweet. That can make sense. Until you see this bit:

So why aren’t the kids down with Twitter? Perhaps because they don’t want the authority figures in their lives — parents, teachers, and other downers — knowing what they’re up to. Texting, by comparison, is an inherently private conversation between friends. It’s the wireless equivalent of passing notes.

First problem: no one's been "down" with much since '03.

Second problem: Accepting the "they don't want authority figures in their lives" argument completely side-steps any of these so-called "private" teens' complete embracing of Facebook.

Facebook updates and comments are an enormous, thorough view of what those teens are doing. No Twitter? So? They're pushing more of their lives via updates and comments and photos and tagging photos via Facebook with less effort and software or interfaces than they'd be able to with Twitter.

To say they're eschewing Twitter because they're into privacy is a fanciful, ignorant romp into social media. NYT may not know better, but I'd expect PC World to have a better finger on the pulse of what the hell's going on in social media.


You turn! What do you think about these stories? Does the Washington Post have a finger on the pulse of Twitter behavior? Is Tweeting TK's death okay? Does the NYT or PC World have any idea about what's going on in social media?

As always, comments appreciated.

Twitter: Down, Showers, Babies, and the 360

More Twitter News!

Down Again
Twitter was down again for about 30 minutes today. Bad Twitter. Bad.

Seriously, why Twitter? Why the DDOS? Iran? China? Nasty.


Golden [Meteor] Showers
Woohoo! Showers!

The Newbury Astronomical Society in the United Kingdom held a "Twitter Meteorwatch" party with thousands of stargazers from around the world Tweeting live pictures of the celebrated annual meteor shower.

Even geeks can appear normal once a year.

Tweeting Babies
Wife of Twitter CEO tweets birth.

I mean, well, yeah, what else would you do during the birthing of your child?

Seriously.

I'd probably have done the same thing. If I was a woman. And having a baby. And married to the guy that invented Twitter.

Being none of those things, I have no words.


XBox360 & Twitter?
XBox 360 is looking at including Twitter into the set based on some news on the new upgrade.

Just a rumor at this point, but how would you feel if Twitter showed up as an option in your Xbox360 experience? I don't know that it would integrate very well. I play games occasionally and know there's a keyboard component you can purchase for the controller, but - how exactly would that work?

What are your thoughts?

Episode V: Facebook Strikes Back or "Yes, I'm Human"

It was a long day. I was clearing the plate before the sun went down and suddenly realized that I'd promised to set up a Facebook group for an organization of which I am a member. Not so difficult. But I'd done the basic account setup for clients so often, I guess I went into autopilot. And I opened a new account instead of starting a group. And after I set it up I changed the contact email to my main email - which happens to be the same email as my Facebook account. There is no check or verification for that circumstance.

I quickly realized what I did and - just as quickly - saw that my account, vanity URL and all, were gone. Disappeared.

I've been contacting Facebook help for 2 weeks now by various means. To no avail.

For a while I had hope: eric.marschall vanity URL is not available and the old EJM Designs Limited business page was still there. But it's been too long.

Oddly (or not so oddly because of the time I spend on the internet), I actually uncovered an older Facebook account that I'd opened a couple years ago and have fully converted it to my needs in the anticipation that Facebook will fail on this one, at least in time (which is now).

So you can find and connect to my new facebook page at www.facebook.com/eric.j.marschall. The new EJM Designs Limited Facebook page can be found at this place. Become a fan!

I'm posting all this information because I'm good at what I do, but I'm also human. I can goof. And I don't have other-worldly powers to fix those goofs. But I do admit it and I do fix them and I get the job done. It may take me a couple of days to get my profile up to par, but my dedication will get it done in just a couple days.

As always, I'd love comments, but especially on this post: join me on Facebook and become a fan of the EJM Designs Limited site. Have a great day!