Dive into the archives.
- Surprise!!! Social Media (and Life) Is NOT A Competition
Spend a few minutes browsing through recent headlines about social media and you will most likely be left with the impression that all of the networks are in a fierce competition with each other. Facebook is the king, with more paticipants than any other. Twitter recently boasted that its users are posting an average of 50 million updates a day. Google Buzz burst onto the scene and the pundits immediately pitted it against the others in comparisons and contrasts. The list goes on and on, with countless also-rans and quickly-developed newcomers waiting in the wings, all hoping to compete for your membership and usage.
Zoom in and take a closer look within the individual social networks and you will witness users clamoring for significant increases in followers and friends, regularly checking numbers and trying a myriad of techniques to grow their counts to what those who are paying attention might call ‘respectable’. Tools that rate, rank and grade feed the frenzy and give us all the ability to measure our success in order to insure that we are doing things ‘correctly’.
A few weeks back I got involved in a conversation on Twitter in which another user (identity to remain anonymous) was tweeting complaints to TwitterGrader (a tool that ranks users based on an algorithm that goes beyond simple numbers). This person was upset because they have almost twice as many followers and updates as I do, yet TwitterGrader listed me in the top 5 in my city while leaving him somewhere further down the list. I told him it really didn’t matter and that this whole thing is not a competition, to which he responded vehemently, “EVERYTHING is a competition! LIFE is a competition!”
Really? Is that the world we live in?
- Readers Sound Off: What Do YOU Want On the bkmacdaddy Blog?
I have been writing on this blog for a few months now and I’m trying to get a handle on what would be most helpful and interesting for those that are reading, subscribing, or pass through every now and then. I watch statistics very closely in order to measure which posts get the most views, comments, tweets, Diggs, etc. It is very interesting to me to see how people respond and what catches readers’ interest. As I’ve stated many times here before, I definitely do NOT want to change the way I write or what I write about in order to increase visitor traffic. However, I definitely DO want to hear from you, the readers, what topics are of most interest to you so I can better communicate and share and inform.
- How Twitter Reminded Us That People – Not Numbers – Are What Matter + My Weekly Recommendations
This morning as I was going through my routine of catching up on RSS feeds and all the latest design, social media and tech news, I came across the story from Mashable that explained how Twitter decided to clean up spam and bot accounts last night. The article revealed how the result for most Twitter users would be a drop in follower count. Like most who read it, I quickly put down my coffee and checked my own statistics. I have to admit I was shocked and even disappointed to see that overnight I dropped from over 5,200 followers down to the 4,700 range! My initial frustration evaporated quickly though, when I thought about the fact that the 500 or so accounts that had been deleted from my numbers were actually programs or autofollows or other garbage that truly were not of any interest to me anyway. This got me thinking yet again about the whole numbers game most of us tend to get caught up in with our social media accounts and how we like to achieve milestones and statistics and such.
- MacDaddy Links of the Week – 071809
Here is this week’s (somewhat) organized compilation of the articles, tutorials, free downloads and more that I have added to my personal bookmarks for my own use. I hope that by sharing these you will find some useful treasures of your own.
- MacDaddy Links of the Week – 7/11/09
Here is a (somewhat) organized compilation of the articles, tutorials, free downloads and more that I have added to my personal bookmarks for my own use this week. I hope that by sharing these you will find some useful treasures of your own.
- My Weekly Recommendations of People To Follow On Twitter – July 10, 2009
I REALLY wanted to write an accompanying article giving some more tidbits and tips and insights into Twitter that I’ve learned, but somehow my days this week only had 24 hours in them. Did anyone else have that problem? I’m drafting a petition for more hours in the day. Let me know if you would be willing to add your signature. So instead this week I am simply going straight to a new compilation of people I follow on Twitter.
- 10 Reasons This Design Blog Will Not Use Lists
Over the past few months as I have dived into the social media realm I have discovered a wealth of graphic and web design blogs and resources on the internet that I never before knew existed. In future articles I will share my experiences and delight I have had meeting and sharing with various people online that I otherwise would have never met. But in this article I want to focus on one thing: the never ending abundance of lists.
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