liking music or liking discovery

I think this one is important in many ways. It seems today people like to be the first to know about everything. We want the newest movies, clothes, and to dine at the newest restaurants. But this is most obvious with music.

People just listen to some bands to be the first to like them.

It doesn’t really matter if the music is perfect. All that matters is that you were the first to discover it. The problem with this scenario is with the musicians. They feel this sudden fake love from fans. The band thinks that people love their music but they really just like the bands anonymity.

Take a second and think about the music you listen to. Do you like the music? Why are you listening to the band? Are you trying to go against the grain by listening to them? What do you feel when you listen?

People loved Michael Jackson because his music moved people. Everyone listened to him because of his music, not because he was a nobody.

I want to bring this around to business. Imagine the new artists are companies. How do you bring in customers and keep them. You don’t want a customer to buy your product just because no one else is because when everyone is coming to you everyone will stop coming to you.

To keep customers coming to you, have novelty and great quality (both in service and product). Make something new and slightly different & make it the best it can be. When cooking you do not need many ingredients to make food good. As long as everything is of the best quality & is fresh a few ingredients will be amazing. The same goes for anything else.

Make it novel and perfect!

Do Cats Dust

As you may or may not know my family & I have a dog named Shelby. She is a black lab & we’ve had her for around a year now, I think, maybe two years? Our neighbors just recently found a cat & thought we would be suited to take care of it.

We thought the cat was a girl (& we named it Oreo) but the vet told us he was a guy! Sorry Oreo! (We then changed his name to Tux)

So having both a cat and a dog I’ve seen the differences in their personalities. Shelby is always active. She is playing with toys, bones, & just running around while Tux will take an interest in almost anything. We can entertain Tux with pipe cleaners, shreds of paper, or the classic string.

I think if our pets were people Shelby would be the first female in the NFL, she really is like a bumbling destructive linemen. Whereas Tux would be a renaissance man, observing the world & saving feelings with art.

I feel like Shelby is living to have fun without consequence to what she affects. She runs into chairs & knocks over tables, but Tux will walk around desk toys & contort himself to avoid touching anything. This brings us to the question:

Do cats dust?

That is, as hard as cats try to not affect anything, do they? As Tux walks he doesn’t really know how he is affecting his surroundings. Every little thing we do affects those around us. Even something seemingly insignificant changes the world. Tux is dusting our desk toys as he walks. Even when he doesn’t realize it.

Yes, cats dust, & people affect their surroundings more than they know.

Twitlonger

Doesn’t twitlonger defeat the point of twitter? Twitter is supposed to be brief. And I could try to shorten what I want to say to a tweet (or series of tweets) or I could just expand it into a blog post.

The point is I don’t want to click a link only to read something slightly longer than a tweet.

I think twitlonger missed the mark. I don’t think there is a niche where they have placed themselves. From twitlonger’s site, “People that are interested can click on the link and see the full majesty of your wit and wisdom.” To me wit is short (a tweet) and wisdom is elaborated upon (a blog post). Disagree?

5 People to follow on Twitter

Five funny people to follow on Twitter:


@ starvingafrican

famous tweet: “fucking hungry”

will make you feel terrible about eating that big mac at lunch… or maybe you will just laugh & wallow in your gluttony


@ Helen_Keller

famous tweet: “Vlaaaaaaaarm! Dawp dawp. Heeeemf!”

funny or thought provoking? Helen discovers twitter is faster than sign language.


@ michaeljackson

famous tweet: “This is it. Seriously. No more. Im really gone. I cant tweet anymore.”

How does he do it? Tweeting from the grave?! Wow! That’s cooler than the moonwalk!


@ KimJongil

famous tweet: “im so ronery”

Go be a friend to Kim. He needs you to tell him his pajamas don’t make him look fat.


@ darthvader

famous tweet: “The force is strong in me”

Second most powerful man in the galaxy? Pretty cool!

How to Lose Followers and Alienate Tweeple

Just follow these 5 steps & you will be on your way to having no followers!

1> Tweet every thought that comes to your mind during the day.

I hate homework

This pencil tastes good!

My fingers are purple!

Please tell us everywhere your mind goes, we want to know!

2> Tweet Multiple times about your cat.

Bonka Bonka just bit me!!!!!

Quizi’s keeping me busy! She is just tooooooo cuuuttte!!

Smooshers Fat Cat is eating again!

So what. Just get you cat a twitter. Seriously.

3> Use all caps and many emo hearts

OMG WHAT DID KANYE DO AT THE VMA’S!!!!!!

WTF!!!!! MY PHONE GOT WET!! I <333333’ed>

Yup. All those caps & emo hearts really add to your message.

4> shorten everything

tks 4 da cd ppl! I rolflamo! Srsly.

I hav 2 go! Ttyl.

Everything is just so short. I know that’s the point on twitter but don’t go overboard!

5>merge all words and twitter together

Yeah all my tweeple are meeting for a tweetup at the twark.

If it weren’t for all this twaffic Id be at the twaffle by now.

I’d twait but I don’t want to be a twammer. The twalkers would like it tho.

This one gets irritating fast!

there you go. now get out there and lose some followers!

Twitter App Ideas

After watching the 80-minute video about Google Wave I was inspired to write about how Twitter could be improved.

First I would like to see an app that shows a graphical view of users to easily navigate social circles. I would like to be able to view regions of twitter.

It would be reminiscent the “map of the Internet”, complete with profile pictures at the nodes. And to make navigation of this web easier, word clouds could be superimposed over groups to identify the “neighborhood” you are viewing.

This would take a lot of computing power to do but it would be so easy to find people in your circle and in your area of interest.

Second I would like to see how many of my followers are getting tweets directly to their phones. This would help me see how many people really like what I am saying.

It could be used as another measurement to see the involvement of followers.

To make it accurate people without their phone numbers on Twitter would have to be excluded from, or accounted for, in this measurement.

What would you improve on Twitter?

Ad Saturated Society

Problem:

Our society is now saturated with ads. It is hard to go anywhere without seeing at least 10 ads. While walking to class on campus I pass people handing out fliers, booths for clubs, graffiti ads, posters, banners flown from planes, sidewalk chalk messages, and many more ads. I recently opened a Facebook page & there were 3 popups, 3 ads in the side bar and another at the top of the page! Youtube has ads above the description boxes and multiple ads at the bottom of the videos. I even have the option to advertise on this blog! We see so many ads we have become numb to them.

Solution?

At some point this will have to stop. I really liked Wikipedia’s move to ad-free forever. Relying on charity is a great way to keep customers happy but also keep the business going (link here-> http://bit.ly/2jpHBp ). I also recently came across guerilla marketing, where advertisers place ads in creative, unexpected places. I think this will narrow down ads to only the most creative (guerilla markering -> http://bit.ly/446JSE ). I also liked Sprite’s ad campaign where they threw a party back in 2006 (short article here-> http://bit.ly/1nhzND ) This is a great way to get people interested in a product, and imbed the product into a culture group. The downside is that a party can be expensive, especially if you want celebrities there.

I don’t know how advertising will be fixed, but it needs to be. I think Internet companies need to acknowledge that there are other alternatives to advertising (charity, gathering information about what is popular) and companies need to be more creative with their advertising campaigns.

More Followers Does Not Guarantee Twitter Success

The Subject

I just recently came across this twitter user and had to write about it, @***** has 30,000 followers. Yeah thirty thousand. But she is following 28,000. (so she followed her way to "fame". She is not an actress or a famous blogger, or a politician. Her description says she is a funny poet/mother. I cannot find much of her humor on her website, or on what she calls her “blog”, which is her twitter profile.

The Problem

So what? Big deal she is trying to put herself out there why am I trying to tear her down? Because of the relationship she has with her followers. There is no way she has the time or speed to follow 28,000 users. And likewise, her followers cannot pay attention to her because they are doing the same thing. Following for fame (you like it? Catchy right?). I looked at the page views of her twitpics and the bitly links she made (I know, I’m a great stalker!) and in both cases the links were clicked less that twenty times! Yeah. Out of 30,000 people 20 found time to check out the material she posted on twitter. 0.066% of her followers care to see what she has to post.

The Solution

So the moral is that it’s better to make real connections on social networks, than to worry about the numbers. And don’t follow for fame. Instead start conversations with your twitter friends and get to know them.

how to get BIG on twitter

“how to get BIG on twitter” is the new “how to lose weight”. Different people saying the same thing:

Eat Less!

Tweet More!

Follow this work out!

Follow a lot of people!

Only do cardio!

Uhhhh… well, theres not a really twitter analogy for that one. Only tweet???

You get my point. So I have decided to make my own list of twitter do’s and dont’s.

DO:

Follow a reasonable amount of people

Tweet some each day (2-3) but not too much (20+).

Add a pic & bio about yourself

Mix up the material. Add some pics, vids, and links

Advertize your @username

DON'T

Spam people

Give out your password to third parties who spam

Follow creepy people

Meet twitter folk in abandoned warehouses on the docks

Tweet about your cat. (just make your cat a twitter account)

Really you will have to learn most of this on your own. These are more like guidelines. In fact most of the biggest Twitterers (is that a word? Word doesn’t know it. But Word also doesn’t know facebook) are not famous for twitter but for something else. So make some videos, write some music, or start a blog!

Tourism: America's Future Job

With the recent economic crisis the value of the dollar has slipped. Our interest rates are very low (good for American businesses and home owners but unattractive to foreign investors) and the rest of the world doesn't trust us anymore. Other countries are dumping the dollar from their reserves and replacing it with other (in their opinion safer) currencies like the euro. Furthermore, politicians know how to fix the market but refuse to do so because it will cause some financial pain before the market gets better, making them look bad. (all politicians do it, don't worry). So how does this relate to tourism?

Well has anyone noticed the price of european goods recently? I wanted to buy the european car magazine, Evo, the other day but it cost $10 (but only 5 euros). So with a slipping dollar and politicians unwilling to sacrifice their popularity to fix the problem, foreign goods will cost even more. It will become very expensive for Americans to travel abroad like we have been doing, but on the flip side Europeans will be coming here because it will be cheap for them.

So my advice is to move to the coast, make some awesome souvenirs, make some money & enjoy a Pina Colada on the beach!

I just moved here from Facebook and Twitter. I've had great success with finding good ppl on the interwebs & im looking forward to meeting more. Ive recently gotten deeper into social media & marketing (even thought my major is biomedical engineering). I like to talk about social trends and big picture stuff. (my personality profile is intj, so big pic stuff). I am in college, i like tennis, table tennis, sunglasses, and tv. Now im watching the office, parks and rec, the middle, community, white collar, lie to me, and modern family. Im not entirely sure where this blog will go but im anxious to find out!