Tag: Twitter Book

Are Twitter Users as Dumb as I Suspect?

Yes, I really do think that many Twitter users are about as intelligent as the rocks that line the bottom of a fish aquarium. Do I think I am better than them? Oh, if I have to go into that, I will just piss you off and show what an arrogant, annoying, and “better-than-you” person I really am. If you really want the truth, I may have to write another book just to explain how much smarter and better I really am. Hmm? I think I will get to work on that one right away, in fact. This is not because it will sell tons of copies, but just so I can get it off my chest and so that I can continue with more self-righteous Twitter use.

WOW! You must think I am biting the hand that feeds me. After all, I wrote a book about Twitter, I have spent a lot of time masterfully deceiving all of those Twitter minions and collecting their precious dollars to further implement my evil plot to take over the world. *Mwah haa haa haa* laughs the evil scientist of social media. “I will exact my revenge upon you and you will now do as I say.” Oh, yes, that is me … the evil social media scientist, plotting my revenge and sucking up your precious nickels-and-dimes-per-book royalties to fund my massive takeover of all things that once existed in your mind. You have no mind now, and your thoughts belong to me.

OK, a little less drama may be in order. Something that I added in that silly little book was “The Antagonist”. What I did not have time to include as I rushed through my semi-masterful plot to take over the planet was that many Twitter users love to argue and mince words to prove that they are right and you are wrong. There you have it … Twitter sucks. Every Twitter user knows it all, and even if they do not, they will bitch and moan to their friends until you give up and let them have their glory.

Am I kidding you? Yes, partially, but not entirely. I encountered a response just moments ago that embodied the minced words and drama of social media. I sent a message with a lot of meaning behind it, and it was met with an unsupported and negative comment from a Twitter user whom I always kind of saw as positive. This time, it was not. I direct messaged him to ask for clarification. I even stated that his message seemed much unlike himself, because I had always considered him a more positive and upbeat person. He asked his users to chastise me because I had replied to him in a direct (private) message asking for clarification. He claimed that he had tried to keep it private but apparently since I made a general statement that I had an antagonist (no names given) that I would like to invite for a live video Webcast, his stupid little boy gloves were off. I wish he had taken me up on that Webcast. The amazing thing was that the only private message I received from him was a single word, and I quote “Yup.” Well now, that was insightful, right?

The dumbness goes on … A few days ago, I held a video Webcast, as I always do on Friday nights, which allowed for others to join in and turn on their Webcam to participate in fun and social discussions.  A woman came in and started extolling her greatness and stated that she had received a million unique visitors to a given tweet. She then overran the whole Webcast with her recommendations of who we should all follow, and blabbed on for a long time about some crap. This was a Webcast that I have hosted for a long time, and I never met this egotistical loudmouth in my life. While this happened, I was receiving private messages asking why I had not cut her video feed off. Yeah, a million unique visitors from one Twitter message … try again! I think I saw that same thing once, but that was after I bumped my head REALLY hard and then I woke up. She was purportedly a friend of a friend, so I tried to avoid confrontation. *Damn dumb Mark.*

Of course, I waved the bullshit flag on her million unique visitors statement, and she back-pedaled to say that a million people could have seen it. Oh yeah, but that was only if they gave a damn about her blah blah blah about yada yada yada. The craziness came in when she started throwing ultimatums to others that if they did not unfollow me that she would block them or whatever such crap. I had a lot of people telling me that it was a huge drama for her, and for her minions. One of them just keeps on begging people to unfollow me for disrespecting her by asking her to leave. It seems funny how his continued defense of her and expected offense to me could get him anywhere he wants to be in life. Note to that dude: “She will still not get naked with you, Chump.”

To all of this, I have to say “Who gives a damn?” I mean, really, if you do not like me, if you think that I am out there to put an endangered spotted owl between a couple pieces of bread for lunch while I make my excursion to go club baby seals and hunt whales while throwing out matches to light forest fires on my way to the “Ruin the World” convention … click your unfollow button and create a better life! You deserve it … really, even if I do not!

To those who seek joy in arguments and take their win from promoting negativity, you really need my latest book! It is titled “Living in the Storm” and it is available for sale TODAY. Get your life straight and stop nagging others for things that really do not matter to your own life. Heck, if you are so desperate for something to do, maybe you should feed your mind instead of only feeding your egotism. Twitter is not your bitching board for showing how screwed up and cynical you are. It has much more positive uses.

One last note for those Twitter knuckleheads: If I am such an awful influence, why do they keep putting stuff like this about me out there on the Internet?

Did Twitter Go Deaf With Broadcast Static?

“Twitter can you hear me?” This is a question that many Twitter users are asking. At first, I was concerned that it was just me. Maybe people just didn’t hear me … maybe I didn’t bathe enough and stunk up the place. That would have been a great scenario for Twitter, but I have found without doubt that this is not limited to me, and that it is a widespread issue. There are some specific reasons for this, and I want to share my thoughts and I want to hear yours. I hope that we can get this all sorted out before the famous Twitter question of “What are you doing?” becomes “Are you there?”

Do You Hear Me?

I may not be the best example to pull from, but I have used Twitter, a lot. In fact, I used it so much that I tweeted my answer to “What are you doing?” over 20,000 times and found so many interesting facets of Twitter that I wrote a book about it. Yeah, a book! I have met some amazing friends, and learned a lot along the way. I have encountered some of the very best things Twitter has to offer, and I am a huge fan. My list of reasons for loving Twitter is long.

Most people would perhaps never even imagine a book’s worth of useful insight about Twitter, and much less publishing it to share with the world. I did, and it was done to preemptively meet the challenges of Twitter growth to the point of deafness. Deafness from people who tried it and did not understand Twitter and left. Deafness from those who saw little value because they are just out to look popular with a lot of followers. Deafness from many other ailments due to an explosive growth curve.

It has been my attempt to help new and existing users to find the greatest value of Twitter and help them to make it more useful. Am I too late? I do not think so, but we will all determine the outcome.

Measuring Twitter Engagement

You may wonder how I measure whether Twitter is listening. There are many ways, but I will show you a couple which cannot be denied. I ask questions of people, and I watch statistics … I am a marketing guy, after all. Some people even tease that I may be leaning toward autism in my watchful eye on trends and numbers. It is easy to see when somebody reads a message, and I will show you how. First, I want to start with a very social question that I asked, and it was really just because I wanted to know. I was trying to connect and start a conversation with people. I recently asked a question as follows:

I am curious to hear you answer the official Twitter question: “What are you doing?”

I received a lot of replies. After all, it was a good question. I loved reading the replies and it started some fun conversations. So does this message really answer a question of deafness? Yes! It was an engaging question that encouraged a response. I was delighted with the response. All the same, as a studier of numbers, I would bet dollars for tweets that I would have had ten times the response rate in May.

Another measurable way to see the deafness cloud hovering over Twitter is to look at any Bit.ly link. Bit.ly is a massively used URL shortening service that will allow any user to see how many people have actually clicked on a given link. I will give you a fantastic example. Here is a tweet sent by the number one most followed user of Twitter, Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk). His tweet was about The White House wanting people’s input on health care reform. It encompassed topics of government, health care, and small business, all at once. These are wildly hot topics, so one could assume it would have a lot of clicks. Go see for yourself … you can click here to see how many people actually clicked on the link. It died on the vine, and gives a view of how people are busier sending tweets than actually paying attention. This is coming from a guy with nearly 3,000,000 followers! What do your followers do?

When Did Twitter Go Deaf?

This all begs the questions of “When did Twitter go deaf?” and “What can we do about it?” I hope to have an answer, but I do not have the only answer. We can decide the right answers collectively. My answer is to help people understand the best assets of Twitter (relationships) and how to be sure they are seeing what they want to see. This may be a long way around, but the idea is that if you, and you, and you and the rest of you are able to manage your use of Twitter more efficiently, the whole service is improved.

In the past couple months, as I was staring into my monitor for days on end seeking inspiration and working on my LCD tan, I seem to have lost Twitter. Somehow, as I was writing until my fingers hurt, the deafness of “The Twitter broadcast” has grown like that little bump under your arm that gets bigger and bigger, until it is time for a biopsy to check for cancer.

Maybe you can say that I am manstruating and I just need to change my manpon, but I know that many others have noticed the same issues. I think it would be really nice if we could all listen again, and perhaps that way maybe we can be heard, too.

If you believe that helping others to use Twitter more efficiently will help, please tell them about my new book, “Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends”

Sorry Twitter, But You May Thank Me Later!

Have you ever apologized for something that you have not yet done? That is what I am doing here, but at the same time, Twitter may thank me for it later.

I have tried to make it pretty clear to my readers that I recently wrote a book titled “Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends”. The book is now ready for orders, and I do not plan to let anybody forget it.

So why am I apologizing?


I wrote a really useful book to help new and experienced Twitter users alike, so that should be a good thing, right? I guess you could say that I am apologizing for the self-promotion that some people may complain about. After all, it may seem pretty self-serving to repeatedly tweet about my book. Well, I am sorry, but I plan to do just that.

I plan to tweet it, blog it, and scream it from the top of my lungs for a few days. I can only hope that people will understand that while I am feverishly trying to get the word out that it is intended for the betterment of Twitter. I believe that when enough people read the book, it can have a great value to the Twitter community. Hopefully my many friends and followers on Twitter will forgive me, and thank me later!

I am asking for your help!

I know you may have better things to do than to help me promote a book, but I am asking for your help. If you will review the Introduction and the Table of Contents, I hope you will see this as a worthwhile effort.

Please Tweet to help me to tell others!

Twitter Success Stories

Do you have a Twitter success story, or do you know somebody who does? If the answer is yes, I want to hear about it.

If you have heard something that gave you a smile, made you cry, or just made you think about why you use Twitter, you are not alone. Every day we see “tweets” that reinforce our belief in people and prove that we are not alone. It may be a story of a restauranteur who was able to bring more smiles with their culinary delights, or the person who found a job and saved their home and kept their family secure.

Some success stories are more profound than others, but they all count. Some of the success stories of Twitter have changed the world for a few, and others have changed the world for many. I want to hear about all of them.

Please take just a moment of your time to tell the story of how Twitter has changed your life, or forward this article to somebody who will. Your story may be submitted as a comment to this blog post. You may also reach me to discuss the story by phone at my direct line, toll free, *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE* (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*) or by Skype (username murnahan).

I will select stories to be included in my soon to be released book, “Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends”. If I select your story, I will credit you in the book, and your copy is “on the house”.

Please be sure to include your Twitter username in your comment in the form of http://twitter.com/yourusername.

I do not often push my readers to retweet things, but in this case, I am asking you to spread the word and help me to find positive stories to show the readers of my new book positive and uplifting examples of what can happen when we work together.

Please help me to uncover the Twitter success stories that prove that Twitter really is the great social media resource that so many of us have come to enjoy.