The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Twitter

Goodbye Ashton Kutcher

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Forgive me, but I just don’t feel badly about this. I am not saying that stalking isn’t serious, but are you trying to tell me that you haven’t already taken preventative measures.

Are you telling me, “Mr. Celebrity” that you are suddenly worried about this. Are you telling me that after you put yourself out there and sought fame that you are upset. Sorry, I just don’t feel badly. Don’t want you to get hurt, but try living in the real world with the rest of us.

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Ashton Kutcher — Twitter’s top tweeter — warned he may pull the plug on his tweeting if the micro-blogging service partners on a reality TV show.

“It’s all fun and games until somebody gets stalked,” Kutcher wrote in a Twitter posting late Monday.

Variety magazine reported Monday that San Francisco-based Twitter.com had partnered with TV producers Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment on an unscripted show that would be “putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format.”

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said there was “no official Twitter TV show” in the works, but “we have a lightweight, non-exclusive, agreement with the producers which helps them move forward more freely.”

Kutcher used Twitter to post a link to a news report about the partnership along with this message: “Wow I hope this isn’t true. I really don’t like being sold out. May have to take a twitter hiatus.”

The actor, who boasts a record 2 million Twitter followers, frequently posts updates that take fans behind the scenes of his life and his current movie production — “Five Killers.”

How To Blog, Use Facebook & Twitter

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During the past two weeks quite a number of the people following me on Twitter have turned out to be experts in Social Media or SEO. For a moment I was puzzled by this and then I realized that they have done so because I am the leading expert on all matters. Jack sees all and knows all, just ask DovBear.

Anyhoo, the beauty of these various tools is that there really isn’t one proper way to use them. However, it should be noted that while there may not be one right way, there are also several wrong ways to use them.

The most obvious pitfall from using these tools is being careful about what sort of information you enter into them. If you consider the viral nature of the net it is easy to imagine that anything you post in cyberspace can be viewed by millions of people and for an unknown duration of time.

It is not far fetched to suggest that the YouTube video you made at 12 could still be around when you are 50, 76 or 176.

The point being is that you need anytime you put something out there you need to consider the present and future implications of that post. Not only that but you also need to remember that you don’t have complete control of what is posted.

For example friends of yours could post pictures of you in compromising positions. But for the purpose of this post let’s limit the discussion to what you post. You need to assume that anything you post can be seen by current and future employers, friends, colleagues and others.

So don’t post anything that you aren’t prepared to discuss and or if needed defend. More to come on this in a later post.

Tweeting About Twitter- One Blogger Speaks

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I signed up for Twitter in December of 2008 and have been exploring/examining its utility for myself since then. Midway through my fourth month of using it I don’t have a good feel for whether it is really helped me.

There are aspects of it that I really like. It is a useful tool as a source of information as well as for disseminating it. But I suspect that it is doing more to hinder blogging than to help it.

Based upon personal experience I find that things I would have blogged about are getting swept aside and turned into a simple tweet. It appears to me that some other bloggers are experiencing the same thing.

However since I haven’t conducted any sort of poll this might not be entirely accurate. I don’t know.

I have also been careful not to let myself get too wrapped up in it. There is only so much time in the day and far too many things that serve as distractions or unintentional time sucking devices.

In fairness I should add that I feel a bit like I am in the middle of the dog days of blogging. I still do it and I still enjoy it, but it has lost a bit of the shine for me. We’ll have to see if that is temporary state or something else.

What do you think of Twitter?