Twitter Followers & No Notifications

Every day I get a couple of followers I end up blocking. Today I got five.

They all have names like Buffy5782, that is "girl"+"numeric" username.
They never have a link on their Twitter profile. A normal 20-someting at least has FB.
They have few commercial Twitters during a week in their hisotry.
They have twitter streams that indicate more or less that they have nothing interesting to say.

AND when they follow me, I NEVER get an email from Twitter.com telling me about it even though I get notified when normal people follow me both before and after these mystery followers.

Why do I block them?

I guess it's just paranoia because I can't see an advantage for them unless it has to do with gaming some Twitter filter that uses community embeddedness for some reason.

Of course I get my share of "Marketing Professionals" who just happen to have a great application that can monetize my twitter stream and get me "millions of followers" and who can change my life et cetera. Meh.

I wish someone at Twitter would explain what is going on like Mark Cuban did when the spam-bloggers were messing with Ice Rocket.

Past Facebook a Hyper-Social Format?

If social media are driven primarily by their ability to facilitate social contact, then we should be moving in the direction of an open social format.

My students like Twitter (speed), Facebook (friends), Myspace (fandom), Digg & Make (interests), Twine and blogging (sharing created content.) Not to mention Geo-location.

I don't see why we couldn't start with a desktop app like Adium to mash it in some way and then move to a cloud app. Then we will be able to see over the walls. Wish list: A sliding indicator for geo-location going from "exactly here" to "nowhere" would be nice.

The move would be invisible to your friends who prefer to stay in a particular comfort zone, yet visible to friends who are shall we say, more adventurous.

It's the heritage of Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and Orlando. The concept of the destination resort with an escape hatch.

Quite a few years ago, a retired judge from Atlantic City gave a talk about the way the city had changed in the wake of casinos. I believe he was trying to warn us that promises of increased tourism from gambling resorts were not reliable. The casinos had captured their tourists and were definitely not sharing them with the rest of the city.

Ask yourself Punk. "Should I Twitter?"

Twitter itself

This link explains best practices on Twitter - OR how to make a fool of yourself on Twitter.

Let Mr. Tweet look for relevant people using Twitter.

Look for people who use key words on Twitter.

Check out your influence on Twitter.

Check out your influence yet again on Twitter.

Filter your Twitters.