How has this happened ? I mean, here I am, a self-professed “blogaholic” and yet I am ashamed to note that I haven’t posted here for more than two weeks. (Blush !)

Well, I guess I shouldn’t beat myself up too much. Some people are very effective blogging just once a month, so I guess that this just proves that there is no right or wrong. And besides, I have had some catching up to do recently and I do have several “irons in the fire” at the moment.

But it’s important to “step away from the mouse” every now and again and that’s what I did yesterday. I had a lunch time appointment and because it was a beautiful autumn day, I walked. As I did so, I had an experience that I am sure most people are familiar with. (I’m actually searching for its name: not deja vu, but it must be something like it. Let me know if you have any ideas on this !)

You know what it’s like to turn a corner, look at a building that you are familiar with only to suddenly find that a new shop or office has replaced what you are used to seeing. I kept having that feeling yesterday ! (”Jamais vu” ?)

At least six times in the space of half an hour, I heard myself muttering, “Well, that’s new … how long has that been there ?”

And as I turned for home, besides thinking that I should get out more (LOL), I realised that if there’s one thing that you can be certain about in life, it’s that things will change !

With that in mind, be aware that Twitter are making changes as the popularity of their service continues to grow.

First, they are making it easier for users to report spam. If you check out the drop down menu that you see when you click on the Actions icon (the little gear wheel) on your list of followers, you’ll see that you can report a member for alleged spamming. More on this on Twitter’s blog.

Also, there are indications that Twitter are tightening up on people that tweet duplicate content, not just on one account but on multiple accounts. Obviously, this is also spam related. It’s most likely to affect people that use the various services available to schedule automated tweets.

I have had people blast 20+ different tweets at my timeline all at once, seemingly ALL affiliate links … what a turn off ! Besides being anti-social, this kind of practice could also be against Twitter’s Terms of Service.

Personally, I see the next few weeks as being extremely interesting for social media in general and Twitter in particular. I have seen a few articles lately that suggest that it is becoming a truly viable method of driving off-line traffic, so with the holiday season on the horizon, smart retailers will be looking to take advantage of every trick in the book to maximise their income.

But unfortunately, it was no match for whatever the virus is that I caught and am still fighting against Actually, my symptoms have changed and shifted: my throat and chest are not so sore but I still have a cough … though it’s different to the way it was before. Anyway, on the grounds that generally speaking I am lucky enough to be fit and healthy, I feel as if I ought to be doing better. Truth is though that whatever it is, this bug continues to suck my energy.

So every now and then, I have to take time out and have a breather. Well, more often than not, a little nap. Let’s face it, at the moment, I’d be a gold medal contender at the Sleep Olympics ! BUT … I have to say that whilst I have been suffering like this, I have been able to do some good things.

For example, I have been able to do some research on twitter, something that I have been long overdue in getting to grips with. I am steadily building my following and hope to break through the four digit barrier in the next couple of weeks. I am also looking in to a number of different tools to use with it, although IMHO, this is dangerous territory.

Why ? Because there are so many of them ! In some ways, it’s very possible to get lost down the rabbit hole investigating tools for use with twitter in the same way that it is when you’re actually using twitter manually. However, I have found one or two ideas which I think will prove useful.

I read somewhere recently that twitter has now gone past “The Threshold” where it’s a geeky, nerdy thing and that it’s now “Mainstream” … whatever that means exactly ! Whatever, it passed 50 million unique users this summer and growth continues at a seemingly exponential rate. I guess this puts quite a strain on the IT infrastructure. My own subjective experience is that at busy times, it just drops offline for very short periods. It usually comes back pretty quickly, but it must be something of a nightmare for their IT guys.

We’ve also seen Facebook announcing what look to me like “me too !” features, adopting the @name nomenclature as well. In terms of numbers, I understand that Facebook is still light years ahead of twitter. But, a recent report on brandrepublic.com suggested that it’s actually serving two increasingly distinct audiences. The report quotes Nielsen as saying that only 16% of twitter’s users are under 25.  It goes on to say …

According to one theory, teens are more interested in Facebook than Twitter because their lives tend to revolve around their friends and Facebook is more oriented around friend groups.

Twitter however is better for broadcasting comment, ideas or products to the outside world, to people users have never met.

Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “Many people use [Twitter] for professional purposes — keeping connected with industry contacts and following news.

“Because it’s a one-to-many network and most of the content is public, it works for this better than a social network that’s optimized for friend communication.”

Source: brandrepublic.com, 26 August 2009

Interesting, no ?

Meanwhile, back in the real world (whatever that is !), my researches have caused the seed of an idea to germinate. It combines the use of twitter with some of the ideas taught by my internet marketing mentor, Alex Jeffreys. As best I can at the moment, I am looking in to setting up a little trial and when I do, I’ll let you know about it.

Final word today: I will be dosing myself with all the necessary to allow me to stay up and listen to my co-student Rob Canyon give a totally unique talk to a strictly limited number of people. The title of the talk is How I Made $3,758 In 21 Days Online With My Double Click Blueprint Strategy. I know that Rob is a great marketer some I am signed up already.

The thing is that for tonight only, he will explain this strategy for free ! After that, he’ll be charging several hundred dollars for people to discover his secrets. Time is tight now and there’s a limit of 200 people for tonight’s webinar, so I can offer no guarantees as to whether you’ll get in. But if you have a chance, click on that link and follow Rob’s instructions. Hope to see you there.

Although today’s winner is one of the last to pick up his award, the first time I noted him was some time ago, about 10 days before Alex Jeffreys’ traffic competition even started. He posted a video to his blog about social media marketing. I don’t think he’d mind if I call it a rant !

But it was a controlled rant, it brilliantly summarised the way that a lot of us feel about what’s going on at lots of social media sites, particularly twitter. In many ways, I’m still getting to grips with twitter and I’m kind of having a love-hate relationship with it. I can really see the power of how to reach lots of people that you want to build a relationship with. But like today’s winner, I can also see that it has huge scope for ticking people off with floods of tweets about get rich quick “opportunities”.

So even before Alex’s contest started, I knew this was a guy to watch. And since then, I’ve seen more good content going on to his site. A lot of it is on video and there’s a nice mix between “how-to”, motivational and personal posts.

But the thing I get most from this guy, the thing that has clinched the award for him today is that he seems to be having so much fun with this ! He is just loving what he is doing and that enthusiasm really comes through in pretty much everything you find on his blog. And we all know that if you are really enjoying what you do, then your chances of success just sky-rocket.

Finally, I must ask if it’s a coincidence that this guy shares our mentor’s name ? There ! I’ve given it away … because fellow students of Alex Jeffreys will instantly know that today’s Blog Of The Day Award goes to the irrepressible Alex Lim for alexliminc.com.

Congratulations Alex, your award badge is on its way !

As is well documented by now, today twitter was the subject of what seems to have been a “distributed denial of service” attack on its servers.

Result ? Apparently, London ground to a halt !

Not ! I say that in jest because it was also reported yesterday that London has more twitter users than any other city in the world !

But no – we all had to learn how to communicate ordinarily again. (Shock horror !) Well, I have only been twittering for a few weeks, so it wasn’t too hard to re-adjust. If you’re interested in a technical analysis, I recommend Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols excellent “cyber cynic” blog.

If you find it a bit heavy on the technical analysis, (and he does mention one or two conspiracy theories too), there is an important bottom line to his piece.

And that is that these DDoS attacks come from “botnets” set up on PCs, both domestic and commerical, that have been infected by viruses.

The moral of this story ? Make sure that your PC is regularly screened for nasty stuff like viruses and other malware.

Not only will you benefit, so will the rest of us ! At least those that “can’t live” without twitter