Twitter Trash

March 18, 2009

Yeah, I put trash and Twitter in the same sentence. Shoot me.

Lately I think the crap has hit the fan with Twitter. Don’t get me wrong ladies and gentlemen, I love Twitter. I joined in March 2008 and have found a lot of great people that I’ve built good relationships with. I found Twitter to be a great techie/new media/social media community where I could turn to for many things whether it be advice on a new gadget or who around me would let me borrow a VGA cable.

But now, everyone and their mother is on Twitter. Every time I turn on the television and watch the any news networks it’s Twitter this, Twitter that, follow us on Twitter etc. The people Twitter suggest used to be people with valuable things to say in the tech world, e.g. Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington and the like. Now it’s Dateline, CNN, Barack Obama. It’s getting to where sorting through the noise is getting harder by the second. I’m not the type of person that when one thing goes mainstream I leave and loathe it, but this is something I feel a little more near and dear to. I loved the small techie community feel. Now we have porn stars, actors (or people Tweeting for them), companies advertising how to get “success” on Twitter, spammers etc. flooding the network. A few days ago I posed the question to myself, should I delete my Twitter account? It wasn’t a serious thought but one to put on the back burner.

Then I come across TweepMe.

TweepMe is a site that guarantees you get more followers by the opt-in model they have. Basically for every member that joins, everyone automatically follows them and they follow you.

tweepme1

Why does the number of followers matter that much???

tweepme2

Has this become just another popularity contest? Honestly, I don’t care how many followers I have. That doesn’t mean that I don’t care that they follow me though. I’m glad that they think what I say is valuable enough for them to follow me in their main Twitter stream. If it weren’t for a few followers I might not have some of the opportunities and information that I have now. But Twitter isn’t about the number of followers you have. If that’s your main goal on Twitter then I politely ask to please leave. It’s because of people like that the service is looking a little more bleak to me.

I may be ranting, b&m’ing and being an elitist but I just don’t like where Twitter is going. Maybe I just need to change my angle on it? I’m not sure.

Feel free to comment or un-follow me.

Tweet: leave igerard or text “leave igerard” to 404-04


VexedTech LIVE and FREE SOFTWARE GIVEAWAYS!

March 5, 2009

If you don’t already know, VexedTech now broadcasts the podcast recording LIVE every Monday night at 10pm ET / 7 pm PT!

I know what you’re thinking, YOU CAN GET YOUR VEX READ AND SOLVED LIVE!

That’s absolutely correct! If you haven’t dropped  your complaint card over at the VexBox, you can have it read and answered live! Now, where do you go to get this instant gratification? All you have to do is join us on Ustream at this link. You can keep the “ustreamer-xxxx” nickname but we’d love to address you by your real name/alias/twitter name/whatever you want. You can change the name by either signing up for a Ustream account or simply typing “/nick (the name you want)”. It’s as easy as that!

If you haven’t heard either, we’re giving away free software! For right now we have software from Ambrosia Software, a great company that makes incredible Mac apps including WireTap Studio, the software we use to record the show.

Special shoutout to Ambrosia for hooking us up with WireTap Studio to record the show!

We’re also brainstorming for ideas for free software to give away to Windows users so give us your ideas on the show or by simply emailing me over at igerard@vexedtech.com!

I’ll be posting a video soon on how exactly to win this free software so keep it tuned here!

Thanks to all of our viewers and listeners! We love feedback so keep the comments and emails coming, we read EVERY ONE!