You’ve seen Twitter Fail-Whale?  Despite the fact that it compels me to break my screen every time I see this thing, I can’t help but admire the cute whale graphic :)

Predictably, since the first fail-whale being spotted, other social-media sites starting to use similar graphic to give information to their customer about the ‘condition’ of their service.

Today I got one from Hootsuite :) I call it Fail Owl :)

What more can you ask !!!

I have this ‘crazy’ habit with Twitter, every time I get an email notification about someone following me, I open it and manually checking the profile page of that person.  You see, I don’t do Auto-Follow and certainly not Auto-DM, but I do like to know who’s this person following me.  After all, we are going to start a Twit-Relationship, so it’s always good to know who is listening and with whom I am having conversation.
Most of the time I will immediately follow back, reciprocity is always good in social networking (note the word ‘social‘ AND ‘networking‘).  What is the point of being social if it only flows in one direction!  Networking needs two-way communication to work.  Of course there is always some exception (News Broadcast comes to mind).
But lately I got really fed up with people who randomly followed me, of whom I absolutely refuse to follow back.

So, if you are one of the followings, don’t be surprised if I don’t follow you back.

1. You still have the default profile bloody picture!

When you meet someone for the first time, what do you see? Her face? Her body? The things she wears?  You see, regardless of what people might say, first impression always counts!
What kind of impression do you think people would have about you, if your avatar looks like this:

According to the dictionary, one of the meanings of the word Avatar is “An embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life“.  It’s your Alter Ego, your online personality, it’s a window through which other people can take a glance of who you are, it’s a representation of YOU.  This is even more important in Social Networking environment where avatar picture is the first thing that people will notice, not the user-name, not the date of birth or the location.  It’s how the person looks like! There is a reason why the Twit Spammers use photo of cute girl who wears next to nothing as their avatar picture :)
So, I don’t care if you put your own (real) photo, or your cat’s, or even just plain white color! Just change the bloody picture!
Until then, rest assure that I won’t follow back.

2. You write absolutely nothing in your online bio!

After you meet the new person, and shake hands, what comes after?  You would usually introduce each other, yes? Your name, where you live, what you are studying, where you work, what your hobby, etc. etc.
Imagine, if that person just be quiet and don’t say anything about herself, would you still want to be her friend? What’s the point?
The Profile Bio is the place where you can let people know a little bit more about you, to make them to get to know you better.  As an added bonus, the things that you write in there are searchable!  Which means that people can find you just by typing specific things in the search box.  It’s a match-making mechanism, to bring together people that are like-minded, having the same hobby or interested on the same things.  Remember ‘Social Networking‘?
So, I don’t care if you just put one or two words in the bio! Just write bloody something!

3. Your public timeline is either empty, full of marketing ads (of your own stuff), or even worst ‘protected’!

When you finished introducing yourself to that new person, what do you do next?  Having Conversation of course!  What good is it to know each other’s name and background, if after that you only sit there and stare at each other?!

Which part of Social Networking that you don’t understand!  The key is in the word ‘Social‘ and (two-way) Conversation is at the heart of it.  Why would I follow you if you haven’t even say a bloody word? What is it to follow? None!
I don’t mind if you once and a while Tweet about your product that you want to promote, or blog post that you just wrote, after all I do the same thing.  But, man, not ALL the time!  You take some, you give some.  Again it’s reciprocal (or karma if you like).
The worst one though, is the follower that has her timeline protected!

If you are so private and so afraid that people will read what you say, then I don’t think this Twitter thing will work for you (maybe Facebook would suit you better).  I open mine, and you close yours? Tell me why I should follow you? Actually, I would probably block you straight-away.

So, go and have more conversations before you try to follow 1000 people, and for goodness sake, open your timeline!

Let’s make Twitter a better place to Tweet.

Last week I’ve finally managed to start reading Chris Anderson‘s much acclaimed book The Long Tail.  At some point I arrived on the page where Chris was talking about ‘The Wikipedia Phenomenon’.  It tells the story about Jimmy Wales‘ controversial ambition to build ‘A repository of knowledge to rival the ancient library of Alexandria‘.  This idea was deemed preposterous in 2001 when it started, but today Wikipedia is the largest Encyclopedia  on Earth ! 

As comparison,  Brittanica has about 80,000 articles and Encarta has 36,000, while Wikipedia has more than 1 million articles in English alone (3.5 million if include 75 other languages) !  Sure, Britannica and Encarta could be considered as more authoritative than Wikipedia, as one study reported that for example in 42 entries on science topics there were on average 4 errors per entry in Wikipedia and 3 in Britannica, but the great thing is those errors would be rectified almost immediately in Wikipedia, while you have to wait for the next edition of Britannica to be printed.  Personally, I just like the ease of use the speed of searching of Wikipedia, in contrast to opening those big Encyclopedia book (though Britannica has an online version now).

And then the book came to this paragraph, and I quote:

“What makes Wikipedia really extraordinaryis that it improves over time, organically healing itself as if its huge and growing army of tenders were an immune system, ever vigilant and quick to respond to anything that threatens the organism.  And like a biological system, it evolves, selecting for traits that help it stay one step ahead of the predators and pathogens in its ecosystem.”

” … And like a biological sytem, it evolves, ….”

What does that remind you of ? SKYNET !!

If there is one place where the ‘machine’ can learn and becoming self-aware it’s here, the well of knowledge of the entire Human Race, inside Wikipedia.  This is the place, one can learn about the history, strengths and weaknesses of humankind, and while still on this topic, I just want to say, if I were an alien race gearing up to conquer earth, I just need to check Wikipedia (after Google maybe), to plan my conquest :)

So, anybody seen the latest trailer of Terminator Salvation ?  What do you think about Bale playing Connor ?