JC - Technology and Stuff

In the last article I wrote about the approach to getting 16,000 Twitter followers. In this article I’m going to cover some of the more detailed approaches and ‘how to do it’.

Step 5: Twitter maintenance - as I mentioned last time, every day you need to perform Twitter maintenance. So what exactly is Twitter maintenance? Well, simply put it’s unfollowing all the people who haven’t followed you back and following all the people who followed you who you weren’t already following (within limits - see below). Then having done that, it’s adding some more follows. And on it goes. What’s the easiest way to do this? I’ve tried two different methods and they both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Method 1: The first method is the ‘go through your emails’ approach. Hopefully you have turned on email notification for when you get new followers. If you haven’t, go ahead and do this now (it’s under Settings and Notices). Then set up some kind of filter in your email that sends all email from Twitter to a specific folder. This will make it easier for you to process all the emails you’re going to get every day (and it will be a lot!). Every few hours you need to go to your email and open each one and look at its content. The email will be one of two kinds. If it is like below then you are already following the person and there is nothing you need to do to follow them back. If the number of followers they have is less than about 7,000 just delete the email and move on. If the new follow has more than 7,000 follows themselves then keep the email for later processing (discussed later).

If the email you have is similar to the one below then someone has elected to follow you who you are not currently following (see the extra text at the bottom of the email?). If this is the case then click on their Twitter name and you will be taken to their profile page. From here you can click on ‘follow’ and follow them back.

But what about spam people that follow you or people who you followed but shouldn’t have done? Well this is where the information provided in the email is most useful. It contains the number of followers they have and also how many tweets they’ve sent out. Generally speaking if they have sent out less than about 5 tweets they are probably a spammer. Also if they are following 1,000 people and only have 20 follows, look closely at the profile. Most other people are probably genuine. If you get a ‘follow email’ from someone you have followed and they are a spammer or someone you shouldn’t have followed, just click on their Twitter link and ‘unfollow’ them. Simple.

Ok, so what about the emails left in your inbox that had 7,000 or more followers? Well these can become your new ‘seed list’ (But don’t process these until after you’ve unfollowed orphan follows - see below). Click on their profile, click on ‘followers’ and start following some of this user’s followers. The chances are that if they already have 7,000 users then a lot of their followers will also follow you. The guidelines I generally use is if the user has between 7,000 and 10,000 follows then I follow up to 2 pages worth of followers, and if they have more than 10,000 then I follow 3 pages worth. Why? Well I want to try and follow users who are more probably online. The ones at the top of the list are the recent follows. Users with more followers generally grow faster than users with less followers and so there’s more chance that users with more than 10,000 followers have more recently online follows than those with less. You’ll have to find out a method that works for you. Anyway, when you’re done making some new follows, delete the email and move to the next. In this way you should be able to build up a stock of people to follow every day. If that doesn’t give you enough at first (or you need to supplement) then you can simply right click on a user on your feed, open a new browser tab for that user and use the above guideline to follow from your existing stock. If I use this method I discount any user that has less than 1,000 followers and then if they have between 1,000 and 7,000 followers I just follow their first page (20 users). You get the idea.

Method 2: the second method is to not use notification emails from Twitter at all but instead regularly go to your Twitter profile page and click on ‘followers’. There you can see who you are following back.

Simply click on those people who you wish to follow back. Although this may seem like a simpler method than number 1 (it certainly takes less time), it’s not as discerning and as thorough. When you use this method you cannot see how many followers the user has or how many tweets they have sent, you just have to use your own judgment or right click on the user to open up a window to look more closely at them. Also it doesn’t give you any idea of the users who have more than 7,000 followers so you’ll have to use a different method to decide who to follow.

Ok, so you’ve maintained your followers, how about those that you previously decided to follow (from yesterday)? As I mentioned in part one of this article, you’re going to be following 800-1,000 people a day and only 30%-40% are going to be following you back. You need to purge the others. There is no simple way to do this (yes there are programs that claim to do it automatically, but believe me you need to do it manually or else you’ll be unfollowing some people you want to follow even though they don’t follow you back - i.e. some celebrities). You just have to bite the bullet and once a day go to your profile, click on ‘following’ and skip ahead to page 40 or so (or wherever your follows started that you haven’t cleaned up yet). You can tell easily enough, it’ll be the last page where everyone isn’t following you!

Then page by page, going backwards, unfollow (remove) all those people who aren’t following you (they won’t have a ‘Direct Message’ option). This is very boring and can take up to 20-30 minutes. But when you’re done with both steps above (follows and followers), you’re cleaned up ready for the next day’s work.

Don’t add any new follows (the people with 7,000 followers or more) until you’ve done this maintenance!

Ok, enough for today. Part three of the post will cover your brand, earning money, Direct Messagesand linking Twitter to Facebook or your blog.

Enjoy your tweeting!

People join Twitter for a variety of different reasons and this article is not meant to judge anyone in their use of it. No doubt the way I use Twitter goes against many of the twitterverse but I, like everyone else out there, is free to ‘try their own thing’. Isn’t this what social networking services are all about?

Anyway, let’s get down to business…

Why I wanted to get 16,000 followers - I was a happy Twitter user in the ‘old days’ (at about the turn of the year!) and like many many people out there just had a few friends. But sometimes Twitter gets addictive and after a few months of using the service I wondered what it would be like to chat to a few more people on a regular basis. So I followed a few more people and happily continued using Twitter with about 100 people on my list. It was shortly after this that I started to get Direct Messages (DMs) and tweets from people promising me 16,000 followers in only 90 days if I clicked the attached link. I clicked a few of the links and they were all advertising ‘spam’ and pretty soon I started to get a little annoyed with it all. I actually came close to giving up on Twitter at that point. Well, a few other things happened in my life at about that time too, and so I had a little more opportunity to grow my Social Network on other services like Facebook. I wondered to myself whether it was also worth growing my Twitter network too. What the heck? If other people can grow 16,000 followers, why shouldn’t I be able to? And I was determined to grow my followers without resorting to any artificial methods (no steroids for me!). I was going to do it the hard way. Blood, sweat and tears. All in all it has taken me about 2.5 months to get my 16,000. I could have been more aggressive and done it quicker, but I would have lost the richness of the experience and the twitterverse along the way. So, this is the @jcx27 method of getting 16,000 Twitter followers.

Step 1: Building your brand - First things first. If you really want to build followers (and keep them) you have to work out just what your message is going to be. Furthermore, you have to stick to that message. Change it, or go off topic too often and your followers will leave. After all, there’s plenty of interesting people out there as well as you! My strong recommendation is that BEFORE you start building a follower base you start tweeting and discover where your niche is. Write at least 200-300 tweets before you start actively pursuing new followers. Failure to find your brand and style will lead to failure later!

Step 2: Growing your user base - the first 2,000 - Ok, so you’ve written your 250 tweets, you’ve got maybe 50 followers already and you’re ready to hit the big time! Twitter has some rules about how quickly you can build new followers, especially in the early days (and Twitter defines the early days as following up to 2,000 people). You can, if you are crazy enough, follow 1,000 people on each of the first couple of days and then come to a screaming halt on day three when Twitter tells you it won’t allow you to follow anyone else until the number of people following you has caught up. Hmm. Not the best plan of attack! No, take it slowly; follow two to three hundred people every day. Watch who follows you back, perform maintenance (covered in part two of the post) , tweet some more and start to get in the Twitter groove. Remember this isn’t a race, it’s a way to build a solid social network. Eventually you will reach your 2,000 Twitter follow limit and hopefully the number of people you have following you at that time will be close behind. If it’s not, perform some more maintenance and repeat. After a couple of weeks (possibly) you will have your 2,000 followers! Then it’s time for the next phase.

Step 3: The middle years 2,000 - 10,000 - there are thousands and thousands of Twitterers out there that have between 2,000 and 10,000 followers. You need to know this up front going into this phase of your growth. Competition is tough. Unfollows are common. Some days can be depressing! Your target is to grow your followers by somewhere between 250 and 400 a day. Sounds easy? Try again! Getting 250 to 400 followers every day AND KEEPING THEM is hard work. It means you’re going to have to follow somewhere between 800 and a 1,000 people every day in the hope that 30% to 40% of them follow you back. This is where previous efforts spent on brand definition come into play. If you have been tweeting regularly every day and you have 50 or so close twitter followers that interact with you regularly then you stand more chance of success during this phase of growth. Remember, just because you have 2,000 followers (or even 7,000 followers) doesn’t mean people are just going to seek you out and follow you automatically. And there are still Twitter limits to watch out for too. If who you are following gets more than about 10% ahead of your followers count then Twitter will stop you adding more until they even up a little. Also if you try to follow too many people in one day (probably due to the previous) then Twitter will also stop you following for a time. You will find you need to be on Twitter for a lot of the day and slowly add people for this phase to be most effective. And that’s a lot more hard work! Still, eventually you will reach your goal of 10,000 followers and you will be ready to move on to running a mature Twitter account.

Step 4: Maturity and nurturing your followers - When you finally reach 10,000 followers you are overcome with emotion! There’s something about hitting that magic number. I mean, how many other people out there have 10,000 followers you ask yourself? (Quite a lot actually. Probably about 20,000 or so!). Still, you consider yourself one of the elite now. You tweet regularly, you reply to lots of people, you try to remember to retweet other’s good posts and you generally feel on top of your game. But, and here’s the kicker, you’ve still got another 6,000 followers to go. And it’s getting a bit old this routine, isn’t it? It’s a lot of work. Every day you have to add followers, remove people who don’t follow you back ,send out a fistful of tweets, interact with friends, and stay on brand topic. It’s getting a bit like a job! Well, guess what? It IS a job. Welcome to social networking my friend! The funny thing is remember at the beginning when I spoke about those DMs that promised 16,000 followers in 90 days? All those people will never ever get 16,000 followers (and if you look at most of them they actually have less than 1,000 followers). The reason is quite simple. They don’t want the hard work of interacting with their followers. They don’t actually want a social network. They want the easy life. If you have now reached 10,000 followers you know this is not an easy life! Anyway, back to the plot. Once you’re through the 10,000 mark you can be a little more aggressive, if you want, about follow numbers every day. You should also start noticing a bigger number of people that start following you too without you instigating the follow. Numbers talk! You still need to do your maintenance and you still need to keep tweeting though. The other thing that’s easy to forget is that as you are growing followers, a lot of the newbies don’t know much about you. Sure, your first 2,000 loyal followers know all about you. But the last 2,000? They’re probably just those who started following you in the past week! They know nothing about you. You need to spend time introducing yourself to them, letting them know what you do, how you do it. This is how you nurture your followers. Your core followers will forgive you and your new followers will be grateful. Remember, it’s a tough world out there and you don’t want to start losing follows at this stage of the game! Ok, fast forward. Somewhere between 60 and 90 days after you started, if you have followed all the advice, you finally reach your 16,000 followers. HOORAY!!! Life stops? No, life goes on. What’s next? 20,000? 30,000? Only you know the answer to that. For me, I’m undecided. When I first decided to get to my 16,000 it was a challenge. Now it’s a way of life. I love my little twitterverse. I love their conversation and observations. It’s become a two-way relationship.

In part two of this post I will discuss the topics of maintaining, adding and purging followers; What, how and when to post; earning money on Twitter; Direct Messages; Linking Twitter to Facebook and blogs; and a few other hints and tips.

Until then, keep tweeting…

A couple of months ago I started to notice that my Twitter inbox was getting full with DMs (direct messages) from people promising me “16,000 followers in only 90 days”. It actually got to me after a while and made me a little annoyed. Especially as most of these people only had a hundred or so followers at the time.

So after a couple of weeks of living with this I decided I’d run my own “Twitter Experiment” and see if I could get my own 16,000 followers without spamming, resorting to traffic sites, paying anybody, or anything else ‘dubious’. I wanted to build my own 16,000 followers using legitimate means.

At the time I had about 200 followers and now, nearly two months later, I have amassed over 12,000 and only need another 4,000 to reach my goal. Along the way, I have found my Twitter niche and made some wonderful friends. It’s difficult to keep up with everyone, but I always make sure I answer all that send me a personal DM or a @reply.

Anyway, I just wanted to write this brief post to let you all know what I’ve been doing recently. My intention is that in about 2 weeks time, when I expect to hit the 16,000, I will write a long detailed post about ‘how I did it’. Hopefully it will be of interest and help anyone who wants to legitimately create a large Twitter following.

If you’re one of my follows, thank you. If you’re not, please follow me at: @jcx27

Later…

There are an amazing number of different websites that can enhance your daily Twitter experience. In this blog post I am going to mention a number of them so that you can decide if any will be useful to you. In the end it’s your choice, your Twitter experience and the way we each use Twitter is a little different from everyone else. Still, here goes:

1/ TwitterCounter - Want to know how many new follows you are averaging each day? Want to see the trends of how you’ve picked up new follows? Then TwitterCounter gives you this and several other things besides. I’ve been using TwitterCounter since February and although I wasn’t really using Twitter that much at the time, as I’ve started to expand my Twitterverse, TwitterCounter has really helped me stay on track and let me see just how my progress has been.

2/ TweetValue - Want to know how much your Twitter Id is worth? Well TweetValue will give you a number. Of course, it’s only some kind of made up number, but it’s a number nonetheless and you can watch that number grow in value as you spend more time gathering follows and posting new tweets. I have slowly built by value up from $150 or so to $3500. Of course, it’s still a long way from the top of the TweetValue league table!

3/ TweetGrid - Are you looking for real-time results on certain topics? Want to watch some trending topics on Twitter? If so, then TweetGrid is the product for you. At TweetGrid you can choose how you want your screen laid out - in a 1×1, 1×2, 2×1, 2×2, etc. grid and in each section of the grid you can track a different topic. You can even tweet direct from TweetGrid if you want. Overall it’s a great little tool to use on certain occasions and highly recommended.

4/ TweetLater - There comes a time when you know you’re going to be out for a while but you still want to send out some tweets to the twitterverse. This is where TweetLater comes in use. This website allows you to set up an account and create delayed tweets among other things. Just this morning I used it to schedule about 6 tweets that went out in the background while I got on with other tasks. Of course the product does a lot more than this. It can send out recurring tweets, store draft tweets, and there’s even a paid professional version available that gives you even greater control. So, another product I really like.

5/ Twitoaster - Want to know how interactive you are in the Twitter world? Just how many people do you engage in on a daily basis? Well, Twitoaster will give you these answers and rank you along with the rest of the Twitter world too.

6/ Tweetdeck - I’ve written about Tweetdeck before (here and here), but basically if you’re looking for a Twitter client that is better than twitter.com (and let’s face it, anything is!), then Tweetdeck is the product for you. It really let’s you take control of your twitter follows and sort them into groups and allows to engage with them in a number of different ways. Simply put, if you don’t have it already - get it!

7/ RevTwt - Lastly, just in case you would like to earn a few dollars from Twitter, there is a way you can advertise. I say ‘a few dollars’ because you’re not going to get rich on this, but it is a genuine site and it does pay genuine money! Just make sure you follow their Terms of Service and all will be OK. RevTwt accepts advertisement from sponsors and you post up to four advertisements per day to your Twitter account. When you do so, you earn ‘click’ money. If you have a larger number of follows you can also post advertisements that pay a fixed fee, but you can generally only post one of these kind of advertisements once a day. Like I say, you’re not going to get rich, but it will pay your hosting fees and maybe get you a beer or two!

So, there you have it. A few tools to help you do a little more with Twitter. Did I forget anything else that you use? If so, drop me a comment and I will investigate that as well.

Have fun Tweeps!

Back in late October of last year I wrote about two websites (A & B) that tried to help you out when you were looking for a place to meet halfway between your address and someone else’s. The two products were Meetways and MeetInBetweenUs. At the time of my last blog posting, both sites failed to find a suitable meeting place for me. I thought it was time to revisit the sites and see if there had been any improvements.

Firstly I have to say that I live on the ‘Eastside’ of Seattle, in Redmond, WA. Seattle is a city that is surrounded by water and lakes and if you live on the Eastside like I do then to get to the ‘westside’ you usually have to cross a bridge, or make a long detour around a lake. That’s why I decided it would be an interesting test of these two websites. I mean any piece of software can work out a halfway point if there’s no water in between; but if there is? What then? Last time, both pieces of software decided the halfway point between the two addresses I used was actually in the middle of Lake Washington. Not such a good place to meet. Consequently, the coffee shops it suggested were definitely not easily accessible to one of the two addresses.

So, it’s now May 1st, a full 5 months since my last review. What has changed? I’ll start with two screenshots of the suggested answers provided by both websites.

As you can see, there is a clear winner! One of the sites has clearly updated its logic and the other - hasn’t. So, which is which? Well, the first graphic is from Meetways, and I can therefore wholeheartedly endorse the efforts they’ve gone to to improve their software. Now lakes are no longer a concern! As for MeetInBetweenUs, still some work to do I’m afraid people!

Furthermore, Meetways also gives directions for all results from both addresses and links to reviews of the establishments. They’ve taken a great idea and turned it into a simple, easy to use, well thought out and time-saving product.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Postscript: On a sadder note, I received a couple of comments to my original blog post from someone claiming to work for Meetways. The comments are shown below:

If you work for Meetways and you are reading this blog post and the above individual really does work for Meetways then you might like to have a word with him about his great marketing technique and representation of your company. If he does not work for you, then I apologize. Enjoy the weekend…

With the advent of lots of wide-screen monitors, vertical real estate is now at a premium. This is especially true in your Internet browser. Well, yesterday I discovered a Firefox add-on that I am just simply loving. The name of that add-on? Tree Style Tab. It’s a fairly innocuous sounding add-on name, but it does just what it says. It replaces the tab bar along the top of your browser with one that runs down the side. I mean, now that I use a wide-screen monitor I can afford to give up a little of my horizontal real estate after all. And when I have umpteen tabs open (as I quite often do), I can actually see and read which one is which. Amazing! What’s more, if I open up another tab as a result of a link in a tab already open, it indents the tab so I can easily see it. That’s where the ‘tree’ part of the name comes from.

Use of it takes a little getting used to, so please stick with it. What I mean by that is that to close a tab, you automatically go to your tab bar - which isn’t there anymore! You have to re-train yourself to go to the sidebar and delete it from there instead.

You can have the sidebar condensed down to just ‘favicons’ if you want to, and then you’re hardly using any real estate at all. Pretty good! So now I’m not worried about having 15 tabs open at the same time - I can actually see what they are named and ones that were ’spawned’ from others are grouped logically too.

Lastly there is also a complete ‘options’ tab set available so that you can configure it just the way you want it, although I have to say, the default settings work just fine for me.

So, if you have a wide-screen monitor and don’t mind giving up a little bit of horizontal real estate, give Tree Style Tabs a try.

I have got a little annoyed recently by all the automatic Direct Messages (DMs) I am getting when I add followers to Twitter that promise me untold wealth and happiness. Actually, it’s not so much the untold wealth and happiness, it’s more like the ‘add 16,000 followers in 90 days’. Sending me to some URL that promises me 1,000s of unknown people to add to my Twitter followers count and also puts money in someone’s pocket is totally against the principles of Twitter.

My stats for ’spam’ Twitterers are really quite alarming. I thought I’d share with you some of the numbers I’ve experienced (The following numbers were correct as of 4/12/2009):

Number of Followers: 1590
Number of automated DMs: 325 (20% of follows)
Number of Spam ‘16000′ DMs: 40 (12.5% of autos)

Of course I have lots of other spam DMs, but these are not the subject of this blog post. Following is my list of the ‘16000 members’ as I like to call them. What I’d really like to do is put them all together in one room and let them add each other. Then they’d all be happy! Anyway, here’s the list:

Direct Messages Sent Only to You
1. dazmolybiz Thanks for the Follow! Learn how to get 16000 Followers in days on Autopilot http://bit.ly/17kNolabout 10 hours ago
2. WeCreateWealth Thanks for the follow! Would you like to know How to Get 16,000 Followers in 90 & Make Money doing it? http://bit.ly/U0Qseabout 10 hours ago
3. scvanderver Thanks for the Follow! Would you like to know how to Get 16,000 Followers in 90 days & Make Money doing it? http://bit.ly/TgZabout 12 hours ago
4. SwiftTweet Thanks for the follow! Like to know how to get 1000s more targeted Twitter followers and make money at the same time? http://bit.ly/uUghabout 12 hours ago
5. NEOTraining Thanks for the follow. I’m adding 100 new follows per day for FREE. See How http://bit.ly/ng3labout 13 hours ago
6. Vittoriagallowd Thanks for the follow Would like to know How to Get 16000 Followers in 90 Days & Make Money Doing It http://bit.ly/87Foxabout 13 hours ago
7. Andrew_Perry Question, Are You 100% Happy With Your Twitter Education? Look… http://bit.ly/19GW71about 14 hours ago
8. JacquelynBurns I am grateful that you are flwg me.I appreciate the chance to connect w/you.about 14 hours ago
9. 1CarLight Thanks for the following! Interested in growing your Twitter following, on auto pilot? Click here: http://bit.ly/3l0zqvabout 16 hours ago
10. CurtisLilly Thanks for the following! Like to have hundreds more followers every morning when you get up? Then click here: http://bit.ly/130goYabout 16 hours ago
11. forextrading4 Thanks for the follow! All’s well that ends well http://tinyurl.com/dkcfd8about 17 hours ago
12. clubuwin Welcome, If you love Poker try our FREE online games at ClubUwin.com. http://www.clubuwin.comabout 17 hours ago
13. MailingStuff Your £200 a day system http://tinyurl.com/3system free gift for following, increase your follows offer this ;)about 17 hours ago
14. automatetraffic Thanks for the follow How Do You Get 16,000 Followers in 90 Days and make money doing it: http://bit.ly/UF6p9about 19 hours ago
15. webfusion5 Thanks for the follow! Need more followers? Learn how to get more the easy way –> http://bit.ly/yWUiqabout 19 hours ago
16. bookwormgeek Thanks for the follow! Should you need more followers, please visit the link. http://bit.ly/dXuUV http://bit.ly/dXuUVabout 18 hours ago
17. Josephcanhelp Thanks for the follow! Would you like to know how to get 16,000 Followers & make money doing it? http://bitly.com/2Eweabout 18 hours ago
18. automatetraffic Thanks for the follow How Do You Get 16,000 Followers in 90 Days and make money doing it: http://bit.ly/UF6p9about 19 hours ago
19. webfusion5 Thanks for the follow! Need more followers? Learn how to get more the easy way –> http://bit.ly/yWUiqabout 19 hours ago
20. globalman37 Thanks for the Follow! Would you like to know how to Get 16,000 Followers in 90 days & Make Money doing it? http://bit.ly/Pzfp1about 22 hours ago
21. thenewdigital Thanks for follow me. I can help you to Grow your Twitter Group to 16,000 in 90 day http://bitly.com/9LLNZ5:00 PM Apr 10th
22. AmandaHopk Thank You Do you Like to Know How To Get 16k Fallowers in 90 days & Make Money doing it ? http://bit.ly/k2jt85:41 PM Apr 9th
23. _santaclaus Thanks for the follow!Would U like 2know how 2get 16000 followers in 90 days & Make Money Doing it? http://bit.ly/4AWMFS5:21 AM Apr 9th
24. rdille Thanks for the follow!Would you liketo know how toget 16,000 follows in 90days & make money doing it?http://bit.ly/u1bYm4:19 AM Apr 9th
25. ReferralSuccess Want to know how to get 16,000 followers in 90 days and make money doing it? http://bit.ly/CRTCH1:39 AM Apr 9th
26. weblantis Thanks for following me! Get your free Twitter Pack here: http://wednesdaygift.com/tw… - Stay Tuned! Reimund12:43 AM Apr 9th
27. david_morris John, thanks for following me. Looking for more “followers”? You will love my FREE gift! http://www.twitteringfortra…2:31 AM Apr 8th
28. wellnessgeek Thanks for the follow! I got sucked into paying $27 for this, but it was worth the education. http://bit.ly/xhMZm10:15 PM Apr 7th
29. celebritygosser thanks 4 following me do you want to make money with your links? http://linkbee.com/297275:53 PM Apr 7th
30. brazilnut2009 “Thanks for the follow! Like to know how to get 16,000 followers in 90 & Make Money doing it? http://bit.ly/184LK2:52 PM Apr 5th
31. oneDivineSPIRIT Thx 4 the follow! Would U like to know How to Get 16,000 Followers in 90 days & Make Money doing it? http://bit.ly/4YXIP1:56 PM Apr 5th
32. Thesportsgeek Thanks for the follow! Want to know How to Get 16,000 Followers in 90 days & Make Money doing it?http://bit.ly/lMktF8:00 AM Apr 5th
33. fjmusic09 Thanks for the follow! Like to know how to get 16,000 followers in 90 & Make Money? http://bit.ly/10Bs542:12 AM Apr 5th
34. euneakme Thank you for following would you like 16000 followers in 90 days and make money doing it http://bit.ly/d6HE rs in 902:13 PM Apr 4th
35. ArfanChaudhry Add me on FB as well http://itwit.in/RBV/ + Learn how to increase Twitter Followers http://itwit.in/AAX/3:52 AM Apr 3rd
36. ezfreedom Thanks for the follow! Please RT this link.. http://tinyurl.com/cskj4b your followers will Thank You!5:35 PM Mar 31st
37. robertbland Thanks 4 Follow!Would You Like To Know How To Get 16,000Followers In 90 days&Make Money Doing It?http://bit.ly/17Zb712:27 AM Mar 26th
38. dsmpublishing Thx 4 the follow! FREE EBook find out how I gained 17,000+ followers in 10wks http://tinyurl.com/caxzr9 +much more!3:51 PM Mar 16th
39. CLdominator thx 4 Following me ive sum cool things that will help U on yr marketing journey, stay tuned http://bit.ly/hIuxl9:40 AM Feb 22nd
40. BizProfitsUSA Awesome! Thanks for the follow. Looking for multiple streams of income in time of recession? http://tinyurl.com/5pvesg11:39 AM Feb 20th

Please feel free to follow any of these Twitterers that will guide you to untold and easy access to 16000 followers (or not)! And of course I say ‘or not’ because these are also the people that only have a few followers on Twitter but promise a lot. Hmmmm. Something for nothing, now where have I heard that before?

Anyway, I dislike these people so much that I am willing to recommend ANYONE who also ‘doesn’t want 16000 followers in 90 days’ to @MrTweet. Just send me an @reply to my twitter account at @jcx27. Together we can try and clear Twitter of the spammers and keep it the communication tool it was meant to be…

What with one thing and another I’ve had a bit of time to get to know both Facebook and Twitter extremely well over the past few weeks. I think it’s about time I wrote an unbiased opinion on the two, purely from the point of view of how I use them.

I’ve come to the opinion that Facebook is more about games and photos and scattered status updates. Sure it has groups and fan pages and you can use it to contact other friends, but it’s mostly a one-way pleasure / communication vehicle. That is not to say I want to give up my Facebook. No, I like my Facebook. I like my Facebook friends. It’s just that I don’t get most of my social interactions via Facebook (except maybe the odd argument conversation with someone).

Twitter, on the other hand, is purely about social interaction and conversation. I hardly ever see a photo of someone’s kids, or a note that they are just like Arnie from Terminator. I don’t even get sea creatures or good karma from fellow tweeps. No, what I get is the thoughts and discoveries of these people, 140 characters at a time. When I watch all the conversations flash past on Tweetdeck, I try and keep up with those that interest me. I send a few notes to ‘Joe in Australia’ or ‘Connie in Cleveland’ and they return the favor and we laugh together. If I need information on a good coffee shop in Seattle (yeah, right!), hundreds of fellow tweeps will give me their opinion. What’s more, everyone is posting links to the Internet; constantly. There is a plethora of wonderful information for my consumption on an hourly basis. How did I ever get work done before Twitter?

Twitter is HOT, very HOT. If you want to connect with like-minded people and you have 57 hours a day to spare then Twitter is for you. It’s addictive. It’s informative. It’s fun. And, you know what, it’s actually really frickin’ useful. I have improved myself and learned so many things during my brief sojourn with Twitter.

Twitter is better than email. Want to know something? Just ask a question. People will respond. Want to ask a celebrity something? Just do it. Sometimes even they respond. That’s something you can’t do with email. Most celebrities are human too. And, let’s face it, if they only have to write 140 characters to you, it’s no big deal. They can manage that. Twitter is bringing the world together, 140 characters at a time. I know, that’s a bold statement, but I really think it can do it. For once there’s something that has no boundaries. Use a PC, use a phone, just send your tweet out.

Another thing I’ve found is that if you’re an interesting kind of person then people will follow you. Slowly, one by one, you’ll grow your network. I’ve been growing my network organically and it’s really starting to snowball a little now. My followers are growing by over 100 a day and increasing exponentially. Yes, there are some people that have created artificial numbers, and some that abuse the system, but others use it like it’s supposed to be used. I hope I am one of those people.

One of the side effects of growing your followers is that as you gain more and keep on twittering, more and more people take notice of what you’re writing and more and more people start to follow you. So it goes on. It sounds a little like Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), but you’re not selling anything. Of course there are some people out there who do use Twitter for MLM, and that’s up to them.

So, is Twitter hotter than Facebook? A resounding ‘YES’ on that one. Some people argue the two services are growing more and more similar every day, but I don’t see it that way at all. Facebook cannot emulate what Twitter does and Twitter deosn’t need all those photos and games. I love Twitter just the way it is.

Back in September last year I blogged about a Firefox add-on called ‘Read It Later‘. Since that time I’ve come to rely on it and it’s proved itself one of the most valuable Firefox add-ons on the market.

As is my wont, I have surfed the Internet and saved lots of pages I have come across, to process later. My current list is about 70 bookmarks long and the oldest one dates back 200 days. I have made several of them permanent and have deleted countless others along the way as I’ve finished with them. Overall I have to say I really like the service and because I also use FoxMarks (which synchronizes bookmarks across PCs), if I switch to my laptop for the evening I still have all my ‘Read It Later’ bookmarks for use.

However, recently my bookmarks have gotten a little out of control. I used to have only about 30 ‘Read It Later’ bookmarks, and they were always processed quite quickly. Like I said, it’s now 70 and I also have 143 ’starred’ RSS articles that I need to do something with. Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh! It’s time to do a spring clean on my bookmarks and saved RSS articles. I think I’m going to create a Microsoft Notes notebook and cut out the interesting pieces of the articles and ’stick’ them into it. At least that way I can then get rid of all the non-ordered bookmarks that contain something I know I want to make a note of or remember for later. Then, you never know, I may even Evernote it all for later lookup (Note to self: write article on Evernote at some later date!). It’s going to be a long couple of weeks. I’ll report back on progress and any hint and tips for others.

Is your PC suffering from slowness Problems? Does your PC take two minutes to wake up from screensaver? Are you running Windows Vista? Do you have SQL Server loaded?

If you answered ‘yes’ to all of these questions then SQL server is your problem. Deleting it off the face of the earth is your solution.

For the past few months my PC has taken ridiculous amounts of time to come back from screensaver to a normal window where I can actually do something. All I could hear was disk thrashing, but there didn’t seem to be excessive CPU usage. I thought at first I had some kind of virus, so I checked everything - at least three times. But I found nothing. It has really bugged me over the past few months. I even considered turning off the screensaver. In the end I started monitoring my processes really closely and I noticed from time to time that my hard drive thrashed around a lot and a SQL Server process seemed to be active. Now, I admit I have SQL Server loaded, but I have never used the thing. It came with a version of Visual Basic I downloaded from the Microsoft site and has been hanging out on my hard drive for a while.

Anyway in the end I decided to nuke SQL Server (a long winded process in itself) and that has cured my problem. Now my PC zaps back into life when I come out of screensaver mode. All is well in the plastic box.

So, if you are suffering similar problems to me and you have SQL Server loaded - nuke it for your own peace of mind!

Links:
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-432): Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Implementation and Maintenance (PRO-Certification)
Microsoft SQL Server Developer Edition 2005 CD/DVD