Imagine my surprise when I received the following email message today:

Hi, Turnip of Power.
Turnip of Power (d4lilr) is now following your tweets on Twitter.”

I did a doubletake.  So I’m following myself?  Checking the account of this person showed that they had already been suspended.   In that short time they had managed to follow 13 people.  Hopefully nobody was insulted by this imposter thinking it was me. 

Scorned lover?  Vengeful blogger?  Noob spammer? Who would do such a thing?  A little Googling of the name d4lilr showed I wasn’t the only victim.

Why am I being followed by kadiprescott (d4lilr)? Some dude has a spam acct w/ my name? Greaaaat. …

_____________________________________________________________

xezabelx: LOL @d4lilr is spamming using my name. Kudos.

No common thread I see between me and the other two people being impersonated. One was some innocent 19 year old girl from Singapore, not even a blogger.

My best guess: Seems to be some sort of random annoying twitter bot. Steals a name, follows your friends, then spams them. Stay on your toes, my tweety little friends.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit This Post Stumble This Post

I just got another of those dreaded automated direct messages thanking me for following them on twitter.  I didn’t recall adding this person.  In fact, I hadn’t  added anyone in over 3 months unless I personally knew them.  Could someone have found a way to force me to follow them though some back door?  Not likely.  Someone thinking “better late than never to thank me?”   Lame, but likely.  Thanks for lighting the fire under my rump to remove you and 800 more twitter jerks.

Going through my 1200+ follower list one by one, I removed anyone who mostly had:

• Marketing tweets.
• Retweeted crappy URL’s
• Tweeted some scam or ebook
• Didn’t normally tweet in English

That was good for removing about 300 of the worst offenders.  Next up I went to Friend or Follow, a website that shows who is not following you back.  Unlike most twitter app sites, you do not have to enter your twitter password.  (never do that, please) Removing 300 of these jerks who had once followed me was very enlightening.  Some I considered contacts had stopped following me.  So sad!  I’d like to think they stopped following me because they too cleaned up their list of followers.  Right? Down to following only 650 .

I reopened tweetdeck and something very interesting was taking place.  I actually recognized the people tweeting in my “All Friends” column.  In the past I had hid this crap to focus on keywords or groups.  No longer!  But I wasn’t finished yet.

Who are these twitter whores?  It was then I noticed some people did nothing but tweet all day.   95% of the noise on twitter was being made by 5% of the users.  You know the type, following/followers 80k+ people.   Since I don’t give a damn about famous people, chances were pretty slim one of these “twitter whores” was ever going to converse in an intelligent manner with me.  So if you had 30K+ followers, and I didn’t have a very good reason for following you (like knowing who the hell you are.  ie. Barack Obama) then you were removed.  Knowing most of these people got their 80,000 followers by paying some service makes removing them satisfying.  Think about how much time it takes to read, how many emails would fill up your inbox, or actually communicating with 1% of your followers would take if you had that many followers.  Yuck. Thank you again “Friend or Follow” for making this so easy through your sorting options!

Even small time twitter pro’s suck.  If every post you make has to have hashtags, then you can screw off.  #spammer, #twitter_jackass, #index_me_I’m_a_douche

Unfollowing is fun!  As the list got smaller, I started to read the recent tweets and profiles of those I followed.  Many had their own social networking site or web design business.  Other’s actually had a sense of humor in 140 characters or less.   How come I never saw them on twitter then?  Because all the spammers drowned them out, but no longer.  I’m down to following 340 people.  If only I could shed pounds as fast as I lose this twitter dead weight

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit This Post Stumble This Post

Google Wave is the latest communication tool from search engine giant Google.  Think of Wave as a combination instant messenger and discussion forum.   Right from launch the application interface has a familiar feel.  There is an inbox, a list of contacts, and an area containing “waves”.  A “wave” is a discussion on a topic, hence the application name.  If you can use an email or blog editor, you can use Google Wave without any further instruction.

Setup: Currently you have to be invited to participate in the beta program.  All testers are given a limited number of invites to hand out.  I received mine from Ben Barden, developer of the Injader Content Management System and co-founder of the CMF Ads advertising network.  You click a link in the invitation email, sign in using your Google log in, and the application is downloaded and installed in your browser as an add-on.  In my case I used IE8 as my browser.  When I am logged in and access the Wave website, a Google Chrome frame is launched in the web browser and I am set to go.  Running windows Vista with IE8 I had no setup issues at all.

Getting Started: You can create your own wave or be added to one already in progress.  All members can see the entire history of the conversation.  Google provides some sample waves offering well produced video tips.  Drag and drop users or groups of users into any wave to add them to the discussion.  Add polls, maps, or other media into your waves.  Waves will update in real time as members add to the discussion.

Ok, so now that you get what it does, what is it good for? 

Pros: 

1. It keeps a record of who said what.  Instead of piecing together conversations from a scattered history or playing email tag, you can now read the entire discussion of a topic in one place.
2. Unlike most instant messaging, you don’t have to be online at the same time to hold a conversation. 
3. A simple interface with familiar editing tools make this an application you can jump right in and use.
4. Similar to a private forum, without having to visit multiple web sites to join multiple conversations.  No administrative server headaches or spam to deal with either.
5. Reasonably private.  You decide who to add to the discussion. Only those added can take part. 
6. Allows developers to create extensions.  I’ll certainly add a spell checker once available.
7. Launching Google Wave is as simple as visiting a URL you can save in your browser Favorites.

Cons:

1. Waves can’t be edited once posted.  Easy to look like an idiot if you have fat fingers and don’t usually proofread your instant messaging chat.  No built in spell checker.
2. Once you add someone, they can only remove themselves from the Wave.  You can’t remove them.  How embarrassing if you are discussing an upcoming party and say “Whatever you do, don’t invite Stan”.  Days later someone adds Stan to the wave and he can now read what you said earlier.
3. Members must have a Google account of some sort, either email or an adsense account to participate.
4. It’s just one more application to install and check daily.  I already have email, twitter, forums, RSS, Yahoo and Google messenger, MSN, and whatever social networking applications are out there.
5. There is nothing to remind you to check in, so if you don’t use it often, you might not notice a wave has updated.

Now for Ben Barden’s Google Wave likes and dislikes, taken from one of the first waves I created to discuss the application itself. 

Good:

1. Add people to an ongoing Wave
2. Remove yourself from a Wave (try doing that with Reply to All)
3. Collaborative editing (e.g. for documents and guidelines)
4. Splitting a Wave into a new Wave (great for long, off-topic convos)

 Bad:

1. No email integration
2. Yet another app to check for new messages
3. The scrollbars
4. It’s very cramped on a small screen
5. It’s a bit sluggish on a not-overly-high-spec PC
6. Too many people use it just for chatting
7. Watching what people type, as they type it

What are your opinions on the new Google Wave?  What situation is it best for: workplace, social situations, online collaboration, blog promotion, marketing?  If you’d like me to throw you an invite, request an invitation and I will send one to the email you used to comment.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit This Post Stumble This Post

It was with mixed emotions that I woke up today to learn that Entrecard was sold.  Sometimes a leader is SO bad you begin to enjoy their nonsense.  Graham Langdon was Kim Jung Il with an asshat, running his online version of North Korea into the ground.  The following is the main announcement from the Entrecard blog.

“It is with great excitement that I announce Entrecard.com, Inc. has been Acquired by ZipRunner Inc.

ZipRunner has the resources, vision, and dedication to Entrecard that will allow it to grow in pursuit of the vision I laid out nearly two years ago.

Moving forward, my relationship to Entrecard will be that of an advisor, and I will help the good folks at ZipRunner take the whole project to the next level.”

Great, so the grand leader is “staying on as an advisor”. If I could have given Ziprunner one bit of advice, it would have been to lose the cancer known as Graham. Other than alienating people left and right, what expertise does Graham possibly bring to the table? “Dude, if you ever find yourself late at night in a drunken threesome with enraged sealions, take my advice, drop the acai bowl, but hold onto the cell phone! Believe me, I’ve been there”.  If you want , NAY, crave additional Graham mockery, then head on over to yet another soon to fail blog started by Graham: http://ontrapranore.com/.

Now, what does this mean for the bloggers who still use Entrecard? Well, Ziprunner certainly didn’t buy it to cavort around techcrunch parties as “Mr. Web Asshat 2.0″ bogarting every joint he can get his hands on. They bought it to turn a profit. Bottom line is they bought a list of bloggers. Names, emails, home addresses, social security numbers, and all.

Who is Ziprunner? 

2168 S ATLANTIC BLVD #232  Belongs to Powweb.  Hmm, now the great turnip wheels begin to spin.  Remember Entrecard’s original investor, Andrew Te?  Entrecard has already received a $112,000 investment from them.  So either Graham sold EC to the original investor, or he simply lost control of the company because he couldn’t sell EC for enough to repay the 112k.   I guess the way Graham said it sounds so much better than “I f cked up and the investor took Entrecard because I didn’t meet my obligations”.  Some sort of deal probably was struck as part of the original venture capital agreement, hence the “staying on as advisor” nonsense.  Buy-out or not.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit This Post Stumble This Post