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August 24, 2009

Twitter? or is it "Spammer" now?

I consider myself a relatively active, and well informed user of Twitter, and like many, a promoter of such a useful and potentially powerful tool.  As time has passed, and popularity of the service has grown to the point of mainstream adoption, the spam was certainly inevitable.

That time has come, and is unfortunately making Twitter more of a hindrance in my list of daily services to keep up with.  I use many of the social media platforms to converse, obsess, and digress.  Twitter, for a period of time, used to be my number one outlet for speaking my word in written form!  This onslaught of spam has made me rethink my ways, and find alternative services with the same or better potentials of doing what Twitter does best!  Short and simple messages to the masses.  I'm afraid MANY are feeling the same as me.

I know Twitter as a company has many issues on their plate to keep them busy!  These include security vulnerabilities as of late, scalability to handle sudden bursts of traffic, monetization and eventual profitability, and many other problems and growing pains.  I think it is safe to say that they are busy!

Unfortunately spam is one that is being addressed, but not quickly enough!  A silent killer that is killing Twitter's core user retention! One major issue that I have noticed from some personal statistical analysis of traffic coming from links I provide on Twitter is that overall ACTIVE user base is down!  Way Down!

Without going into exact numbers, I will say that "Pre-Oprah" time, when Twitter was the "IT" thing of the moment, my returns and traffic to a particular post/link were very impressive.  I had to be careful, because I was crashing websites ("CrashMob") by Tweeting about them!  Now, with even MORE followers, I am lucky to see about 10% of that previous average traffic clicking a link!  That says one thing to me...  Many have come, checked Twitter out, and are now on to other things.  WHY? One of the major contributing factors is the uncontrollable amount of SPAM that gets to people.  If spam is the majority of your Tweets and Direct Messages that you receive daily, where's the fun or usefulness in that?  Hence, the Twitter Quitters!

Twitter has done a relatively good job at killing some of the most active spamming accounts on the service, but unfortunately those same people will only come back, and stronger with alternative methods of getting their message out.  They've gotta find other ways!

Now to the point of my post!  I have a suggestion! Something that Twitter should take into consideration. An idea to kill this spam issue, in nearly the same way "in-the-cloud" emailing services have done for years now (such as Gmail).

The Fixes?
Feature 1 - Allow people to Filter their messages, with the ability to create a blacklist of words or phrases that they wish to automatically filter out.  As an example: Over the last month, I have had many hundreds of posts from people with the words "I just gave you _____! You should send me a gift back ;)".

This is an automatically generated message created through fun140.com, a website that is slowly killing Twitter's functionality for me, and likely for millions!  Check out my Direct Messages over the last 24 hours.


As you can see in the above image, if I were able to blacklist the phrases "I just gave you", "Mafia family", and "* Followers a Day" then I would not have received Twitter Spam in the last 24 hours!  Period!

Feature 2 - Crowdsource the spam filter!  Enable a "Report Spam" button within each tweet that allows people to report a tweet as spam.  Similar to reporting a user to @spam but more obvious, and as an official tool.  Once a threshold is reached, that particular reported account is suspended, investigated by Twitter, and handled accordingly. As you can see in my cheesy mock up below, it should be added within each tweet where the "Direct Message" and "Delete" items are already located.  I also added the "RT" there since I know it's coming soon!


One of the major reasons people are beginning to shy from Twitter is the spam.  I'm sure a healthy poll could prove that point, unfortunately many of those in the disappointed masses aren't even listening anymore to know of such a poll!

If anyone at Twitter is listening... 

Please, for the success of your service, address this Spam problem quickly!  With every waking day is more people that quit the service in realization that they can find other means of short and quick communication!  Although your service is free, the aggregation and use of content created by the masses is one of your methods of future profitability.  Therefore, your core contributing users ARE your success! Retain us! Without us you are a database of spam bots and inactive accounts with OLD news!  Jump on the problem before the problem spirals out of complete control and you lose that core user!

Hey @Twitter @Ev @Biz ... Please #StopTheSpam  ( http://bit.ly/StopTheSpam )     <-- Tweet it and Pass the word!

I welcome others thoughts and ideas!

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Filed under  //   spam   Spam Filter   StopTheSpam   Twitter   twitter spam  

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August 9, 2009

From "Grid" to "Green"! A Lifelong Journey Begins!

The thought of creating a self sustainable lifestyle whilst having the technology and gadgetry that I take for granted still available has always interested me. The ability to harness the intense Florida sun for food and to create my own electricity, or collecting rain water to conserve and reduce my family's footprint on a very fragile ecosystem may sound like an extreme move for some.  But for my family, going from "The Grid" to "Green" is our inevitable future!

The journey of removing our household as much as possible from "the Grid" of modern day society's wasteful conveniences comes with some difficult and costly changes, but the benefits should also be considered.  Not only does it save money in the long term, make us feel like we are making a positive impact on the earth, but also potentially prepares us for cataclysmic events.  Here on the Central Coast of Florida, we do get hurricanes which could very easily remove us from availability of simple modern day's conveniences.

Maybe I'm just a hippie in a 32 year old body!  Or maybe Zombies or Rogue Robots with development of self realization will become reality.  It could happen... Right!? I almost forgot! I'm not building a fortress, just a self sustainable lifestyle (as much as possible)! Whatever the benefits, I see too many to sit back and watch things change without doing what I can to help.  So our Journey begins!

This journey has begun and I intend to share it with the world!  Using social media, photos, video, blogs, and whatever other means necessary to show and share my ideas, failures, and progressions. Together we can harness new ideas and learn from one another!  This particular "column" of my blog will now be a featured category for easy viewing, and therefore the "home base" for this "From Grid to Green" journey.  It is not expected to be a quick success, or even approach any sort of conclusion over some long term goal of 2 years!  This is a lifestyle!  A journey that will continue forever!

A Quick Teaser!
To give you a little bit of a teaser about the start, today I have researched, drawn plans, and purchased all supplies for a rain water retention system that I plan on using to water my plants and a future garden automatically with an electronic scheduled zonal watering system.  In the future I also plan on using this same supply of water to function our most often used toilet. Toilets are one of the most inefficient, and wasteful items for water in most of the world's households. This first phase of the hydro system will be 4 industrial strength white plastic 55-gallon barrels (220 Gallons total) that are fed minor-filtered water from a new PVC gutter system that I have already begun installation of.
I will post much more about this beginning endeavor in extreme detail over the next few days and weeks!  Stay tuned!

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Filed under  //   From Grid to Green   Going Green   Self Sustainable Lifestyle  

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August 3, 2009

Social Media Platforms - Change is Inevitable!

In early 2000's, the craze of Blogging and self publishing opened the world to a huge potential of social connections and sharing of community and experiences.  Later, MySpace took over the Social Media scene with an absolute tidal rush of growth in the mid 2000's.  After MySpace came Facebook with improved user experience and functionality, but unfortunately it seems like almost TOO MUCH functionality.  The next big thing was Twitter, taking things in the opposite direction.  Simplicity to the point of near-extreme limitations.  

Among the tech news and social media buffs has been the buzz of wonder, asking what would be the next "big thing" to fill a gap in the world of Social Media and Networking space.  The downfall to all of the above mentioned platforms is that they either allow too much flexibility to the point of confusion, or too little to the point of near uselessness.  Not to say that Twitter is necessarily useless, or Facebook is overly confusing... but for some it may be.

This is where Posterous seems to fit nicely amidst an ever-growing ethos of Social Media platforms that hope to be the be-all end-all service for your future social media endeavors.  Not only is the service very simple to navigate, network, and socialize. Posterous most importantly makes it very simple to post content without limitations as well as share that content among all the other networks without their limitations.  I think this is the sweet spot where most other networks have fallen a bit short.  

To give you an example. I started a blog where I wanted to post information about technology, gadgets, social media, web developments, and other typical context of geekery.  I have a full time job, and do a lot of other things that keep me busy.  I am by no means a professional writer, nor do I want to be!  I only wish to express things I have discovered with slight detail, or explanation without having to write a 20 page report on a subject.  As my blog grew in popularity, posts were usually long-winded and sometimes more than they needed to be. Then came Twitter which really slowed down my blogging momentum, because of it's ability to post those same thoughts that would have been blog posts, into short micro posts!  "Great!  A Time Saver!"  At first it seems great, but over time you begin to realize that 140 characters just doesn't cut it when you have a little more to say about a subject.  On the contrary, sometimes it seems like blogs are almost expected to express newspaper article sized posts.  

With previous platforms, you are left in limbo of whether you should make your thoughts truncate into 140 characters, or take the risk of skimping on detail within a blog post with high expectations of detail among your subscribers.  THAT is where Posterous will find its sweet spot niche for me!

Sofar I am impressed of what I am seeing of Posterous.  Hopefully it will not evolve into another over-featured stuffed duck.  I'll be the first to kick it to the curb along with the Twitter Bird!

Now if I could just figure out the correct pronunciation for "Posterous"!

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Filed under  //   Evolution   Facebook   FriendFeed   Posterous   Social Media   The Next Big Thing   Twitter  

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August 3, 2009

My Primordial Posterous Post Prevails!

I've heard slight buzz brewing about the webbernets of this Posterous Phenom and figured I would check it out!  Will this take the place of Twitter and Conventional Blogs due to it's simplicity in nature, yet open potential for longer posts (over 140 characters)?  We'll see!

Posterous is now on my "Hot List" for sure! 

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