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Twitter’s tag line is simple. It’s three words, and it completely defines the entire purpose of Twitter Social Media. For those who don’t know, Twitter’s tag line is “Join the Conversation.” The platform will fail if you don’t join a conversation. Let’s start with one of my pet peeves (aside from people who back into parking spaces): not replying to an @reply.

I’m not talking about Mentions: “I’m at SBUX 173 with @zackkitzmiller.” I’m talking about not replying to “Hey, @zackkitzmiller, wanna get a coffee?” Not replying to an @reply is the internet equivalent to giving the cold shoulder to someone talking to you at the bar. It’s rude, it’s annoying, and worst of all, it ruins the atmosphere of the place you’re in.

Despite what the “media” says, Twitter is not a place to broadcast your meaningless nothings, even though it is (if you can follow that). Because of @replies, I’ve met some really great people, and, as a SIDE EFFECT, built my business.

Think about it this way. If you and I went to coffee, and I treated that gathering like some of you tweet twitter, it would go like this:

Me: Man, I really love the Starbucks, don’t you?
You: Yeah, it’s fantastic. What’s your favorite drink?

Me: I think I’m gonna grab a scone while I’m here. 

You: Uhh … Ok, are you gonna respond to me?

Me: I’m totally searching Digg while I’m here. Isn’t WiFi awesome?

You: All right, well … I’m gonna get going … Have a good day

Me: I can’t believe how cold it is in here.

Bottom Line: Read other people’s tweets, too, and respond when necessary.

The next trend that just absolutely blows my mind is (intentional?) mis-hashtagging. I see this all the time. “Walking down town in NYC. I’ve never been here #rockford.”

Hashtags are much like tagging anything else in your life—for example, pictures. If I took a picture of my new daughter, I would probably assign the following tags: family, fiona, firsts, crib, 1-year-old. I probably wouldn’t add the “remember-911” tag, because it doesn’t make any damn sense.

When I’m searching my photoset for pictures I took at Ground Zero, why would I want a picture of my newborn daughter? I wouldn’t. So why do I want to find a link to the Balloon Boy when I search for #rockford? I F*CKING WOULDN’T. Because it doesn’t make sense.

Now, there are times when tagging something can be a little funny, or playful, and that’s fine too. You can convey a lot of meaning. “I don’t understand why people would back into a parking space #justsayin”. This is playful, and most of the regulars understand what that means, and the voice I’m trying to use.
Bottom Line: Don’t hashtag things when it doesn’t make any damn sense.

And Finally … Social Media Gurus.

People who CLAIM they are “experts” in social media. Good Lord, being a social media guru is a lot like being a beer drinking guru at college, or being a bird and a worm eating guru. These people are usually chasing money, not their passions, and fill your twitter stream with spam, TONS on bit.ly links, (because they don’t know how much better tr.im is, or how to roll your own), rarely reply to @replies, and have thousands and thousands and thousands of followers.

Most 13 year old kids are social media experts, and usually better than people who claim to be one. They have billions of YouTube views (because they’re actually MAKING content, not just linking to it) and tons of friends (because they reply when asked a question), and they are famous, because they have built a fan base.
Social Media Experts don’t do this. They follow bajillions of people on twitter, get an 8% return on that, and use a bot to unfollow the rest, to bring their ratio back down. Then aggregate useless nothings.

update: fixed the conversation lines.

I was unsure about the accuracy of SpyMasters claimed gain of 8% in income if you turn on notifications, so I did a little testing.. Looks like I was right.

Notifications On. 
All safehouses - Tieste
Full Health, Full Energy

148.2K --  9:00a Difference of 0.0K
149.6  --  9:05  Difference of 1.4
153.0  --  9:10  Difference of 3.4
156.5  --  9:15  Difference of 3.5
159.4  --  9:20  Difference of 2.9
163.0  --  9:25  Difference of 3.6
166.3  --  9:30  Difference of 3.3
169.6  --  9:35  Difference of 3.3
171.4  --  9:40  Difference of 1.8
173.6  --  9:45  Difference of 2.2
174.1  --  9:50  Difference of 0.5
178.1  --  9:55  Difference of 4.0
180.3  -- 10:00  Difference of 2.2

32.1K/hr
Number of Periods: 12/hr
Average Increase per Period (5min): 2.675K

Notifications Off. 
All safehouses - Tieste
Full Health, Full Energy

186.1K -- 10:10a Difference of 0.0K
189.2  -- 10:15  Difference of 3.1
192.9  -- 10:20  Difference of 3.7
195.4  -- 10:25  Difference of 2.5
198.5  -- 10:30  Difference of 3.1
200.8  -- 10:35  Difference of 2.3
203.9  -- 10:40  Difference of 3.1
207.0  -- 10:45  Difference of 3.1
210.1  -- 10:50  Difference of 3.1
212.6  -- 10:55  Difference of 2.5
215.4  -- 11:00  Difference of 2.8
218.5  -- 11:05  Difference of 3.1
222.6  -- 11:10  Difference of 4.1

36.5K/hr
Number of Periods: 12/hr
Average Increase per Period (5min): 3.04K

Notes: It seems a certain percentage of Liquid Asset Gain goes towards rebuilding 

Health/Energy
Notes: No Tasks or Tactics were preformed during these tests.


ALMOST 12% LESS RETURN With notifications ON.

I’m warm.. So when deciding whether or not to open the window, this is what happened:

am i alone:
    if yes: open the window
if i'm not alone:
    is the other person warm?
        if yes: open the window
        if no:
            am i wearing a swearshirt?
                if yes: take it off
                if no: does he have a sweatshirt to put on:
                      if yes: open window and have him put on shirt
                      if no: i stay warm 

On Saturday April 11th around 4pm I downloaded and installed LimeWire on my Acer Aspire One. Around 4:30pm I downloaded one Kayne West video that was 39kb. After trying to open the video in Windows Media Player (version 11, fully up to date), Internet Explorer (version 8, fully up to date) launched, auto-downloaded “codec.exe” and asked once if I would like to run “Codec.exe.” I agreed, and rebooted. Everything looked normal except for the fact I couldn’t visit www.eset.com, www.avast.com, or any other virus removal site.

I rebooted into safe mode, and checked msconfig. I saw _one_ entry for “oweigndhsels.dll.” Then NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM send a shutdown command, and the system halted. When Windows booted back into normal mode I saw 6 entries in msconfig for randomly named dlls. When I launched Firefox, a bunch of extensions installed. After browsing yahoo.com for a short time. IE pop-ups began to flood my screen. One pop-up told me that I was infected with 392 Virus and Malware, and I could clean it for free by downloading their software. I promptly agreed.

After a few reboots (Windows kept not loading), I got the kick ass Anti-Virus 2009 Pop Ups all over the place. I decided I was infected enough to start removals.

First I ran Malware Bytes Anti-Malware and this is what I got.

Malware Bytes Log:

Adware.BHO
Hijack.Userinit
Malware.Trace
Rouge.Agent
Rouge.Installer
Rouge.Multiple
Rouge.Registry.Defender
Rouge.RegistryDefender
Rouge.RegistryDefender5
Rouge.SpyProtector
Rouge.SystemProtector
Rouge.VirusRemove
Rouge.VirusRemover
Rouge.VirurRemover2009
Rootkit.Agent
Trojan.Agent
Trojan.Downloader
Trojan.FakeAlert
Trojan.Hiloti
Trojan.Vundo.H
Trojan.Vundo.V
Worm.Archive
Worm.P2P

Now I’ll run MalwareBytes again, and see if anything is left.

MalwareBytes came back clean, I’ll run ComboFix to make sure that we’re all kosher, and see what happens. ComboFix’s log came back with a few items of interest that MalwareBytes’ missed. It did not clean them, so I’m running SUPERAntiSpyware. So far it hasn’t come back with anything, but I’ll post if it does.

Alright, SUPERAntiSpyware didn’t come back with anything, but Avira did. I’m running a couple other scans to see if I find anything else.