Tweeple: Pwease stop tawking wike Tweety Bird

Since the advent of Twitter, and especially the ever-increasing popularity of its API, there has been an explosion of third-party applications using “tw-” as a prefix. We can list ourselves and find people by profession on  Twellow, measure somebody’s Twinfluence, watch and tweet Twiddeos, and if we have OS X, tweet from our dashboard via Twidget. The list of apps is practically infinite.

Of course, just as naturally, I suppose, has our lexicon increasingly been speckled with the “tw-” prefixed words, referring to anything Twitter-related. We have “tweetups,” refer to each other as “tweeple” or “tweeps,” the world of Twitter is known as the “Twitterverse,” and if we accidentally send a direct message to the public it’s a “twoops.”

There is no shortage of Twitter glossaries out there, but seriously, I think we’ve gone a little too far. The following is not something I am unlikely to hear in real life:

I went to a tweetup to meet my tweeple and got caught in twaffic, but once I got there it was twitterific!  What tweethearts they are! As we were enjoying twitteritas, one twude twinterjected and made a twitfessional that he needed a twatcation because his wife twinks he’s a twitaholic. We said that was twitdiculous!

Seriously?!

Look, folks – I understand the enthusiasm for Twitter. It’s wonderful. I’m practically married to it. But, please, please, PUH-LEASE–

STOP TALKING LIKE TWEETY BIRD!

It’s not cute, it’s not funny, it’s not even coherent most of the time. I don’t mean to be a “mean ol’ puddy tat” here, but every time I hear an adult confound the English language with such absurd Tweety Bird talk, I don’t want to follow them on Twitter — I want to put a helmet on them, give them some crayons, and take their cell phone away.

Is this just my exaggerated imagination, or are you hearing it, too?

blip.fm adds YouTube videos, indie musicians benefit BIG TIME

Once in a while at night while super multitasking (read: not being all that productive because I’m trying to do too much at once), I’m known to blip. For the uninitiated, blip.fm is known as “the Twitter of music,” in that you can play (or “blip”) songs while attaching a little message to them, and you can follow (they say “subscribe”) to other users (“Blip.fm DJs”) much like on Twitter.

A blip on blip.fm:

And to pile on top of all that, you can even integrate it to your Twitter account so that what you blip is tweeted and not just seen by your BlipDJ friends, but by your Twitter followers as well.

A blip on Twitter:

Talk about integration — earlier I decided to blip because I had a song in my head, and suddenly the some of search results had these little TV icons next to them. I didn’t notice at first but HOLY COW is this cool.

This is why it’s important to tag your content.

I have a lot of musician friends, and I don’t upload a lot of stuff to my YouTube channel but when I do, I make sure they’re able to be found with appropriate tags. Case in point, a band that is like family to me, 60 Second Crush:

Three of the first five videos that came up in the search results for them are mine, and all of the results are their band.

So what does this all mean?

This means serious, never-before-reaching exposure for independent musicians like my buddies.

In fact, I found myself blipping quite a few of my friends’ songs that weren’t previously on blip.fm but were on YouTube (including some of my own videos), and are now on both. Blip.fm’s audience is older and spans much farther across the globe than MySpace’s, which had been indie artists’ saving grace until a year or two ago, and I hope I don’t need to remind anyone that MySpace is now in serious danger of dying.

Not to mention that the audience likely has more money (I don’t have figures for this and it’s late so don’t expect me to look them up right now), which means increased sales. Which brings me to another feature I noticed — now if you blip an artist and they’re also on iTunes, there will be a little ad that tells you which album the song is from and a link to buy it from the iTunes store.

(OK, so I know that Natalie Merchant isn’t the best example for a screen shot here but it’s 3:30 a.m. and I’m working with I already had. Trust me — if you’re a smart indie musician with all your ducks in a row and are found on YouTube and/or blip.fm and hooked up on iTunes, it’ll work.)

The only bad thing I noticed, which may have been my own fault, was that the YouTube integration seemed to freeze up my Firefox a few times, which was a real pain in the butt because this is the third time I’ve had to write this paragraph & my auto-save wasn’t auto-saving fast enough. Somebody else on Twitter mentioned that she had trouble with her browser in this, too, but it was pointed out to me that it could be a noscript or script blocking extention I’ve got installed. I’m going to have to check that out but I’m sure it can be resolved easily enough.

Keep in mind that these new features aren’t just great for artists, either. Now that there’s video involved, it’s great exposure for professional music videographers, as well as those who just like to shoot live music for fun.

In case you can’t tell, I’m pretty passionate about supporting local and independent musicians (and always have been). The internet has really leveled the playing field, if not given them an advantage over the “big dogs,” and if social media strategies are executed properly, the possibilities are endless. This new cross-platform integration is pretty exciting, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

I know I’ve got some indie musicians and their fans reading this, what do you think? Lots of potential or just lots of hype? Blippers, has your browser been crashing, too?

(FYI, some more technical information about the changes and how they came about can be found at gigaom.com.)

Social media is like plastic baggies

This came to me somehow while I was over at Beth Harte‘s reading one of her recent posts, where she was discussing social media’s dirty little secret, which is neither dirty nor a secret:

“. . . social media is NOTHING new. If you want to look at social media plain and simple, it’s a bunch of tools that help us to network, share information and build relationships in a different way. The concept of social media from a human relationship aspect is nothing new either.”

I’ve been trying to tell people this for a while, but still, many people just don’t get it. But you know what people do get? Analogies. And do you know what I love? Analogies. Especially when they’re a little offbeat.

Plastic baggies are nothing new.

Call them Glad bags, Ziplock bags, or what have you, y’all know what I’m talking about. And you all have some in a box, in a drawer somewhere in your kitchen, probably hanging out with your aluminum foil and your wax paper.

Like social media, plastic baggies have evolved over time. They come in different sizes, they are different strengths, and they have different features — some are “blue and yellow make green, that’s how you know it’s sealed,” others have a little zipper thing on top to seal them, some have labels where you can write the date. Some, like basic sandwich bags, don’t have seals at all. They all have their different purposes, yet in the end, they all serve the same purpose — to deliver your content in a package while being transparent.

The contents of your plastic baggie are up to you, but the vehicle is essentially the same.

You are responsible for finding the right plastic baggie for your contents, and even if you have the right baggie, the quality of what you put inside it is your responsibility.

You could put a sandwich in a 10″ freezer bag with a label and a zipper on top, send it with your kid to school, and it would still do the job, but not only would that be impractical but your kid would probably get teased. Better to stick with a regular sized sandwich bag, no fancy bells or whistles.

It all comes down to practicality.

But if you had a bunch of loose change you wanted to take to the CoinStar machine at your grocery store, you might not want to use the same little wimpy sandwich bag you use for your kid’s lunch. That 10″ sturdy freezer bag with the zippy is probably your best bet — it’ll carry your change to Kroger without spilling all over your car, and keep it in there until you get to the machine.

Your contents usually dictate what kind of a plastic baggie you’re going to use, not the other way around. Neither should social media tools dictate your content.

Just because YouTube is there, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should be making videos. However, if you have a video or think one might be a good idea (depending on your audience and objectives), you can use YouTube . . . but who’s to say you shouldn’t use Vimeo or Viddler or another video site? Do you know the features of the others? Choosing the right baggie for your content isn’t always easy but it’s an important decision.

So what’s in your baggie, baby? And what kind is it?

Photo by nep.

Finding comfort in transparency

Last week I had a family emergency, and I tweeted it. To my recollection, I don’t remember having ever tweeted anything so. . . heavy like that. I think it’s safe to say that most people, as much as they preach about transparency in social media, probably would not have done that.

I did hesitate — briefly. But I chose to do it for a few reasons:

1. Some of my close “real life” friends are on Twitter, including my BFF Kelly (please tell her to change her username so she doesn’t look like a bot), whose parents are good friends with my parents, and the message would be relayed to the appropriate people.
2. For my own records.
3. I’m a social media transparency purist.
4. I’m also a Twitter addict. (I know, the first part is admitting it.)

Little did I expect to be flooded with 60+ @replies on Twitter when I signed back in that evening. I received multiple direct messages on my phone during the day from many people whom I had never met, and of course, text messages on my phone from those “real life” friends who have my number and knew it’d be OK.

All of these messages were supportive, and many people were praying/sending good vibes, hugs, etc. What I found most interesting, from an observer’s standpoint, is that many people insisted that I keep updating about the situation.

I want to thank everybody who @replied, texted, or direct messaged me throughout all this. Your thoughts, prayers, hugs, well wishes, etc. are much appreciated.

Mom came home on Friday, and the only thing the doctors  can figure out is that the extreme dizziness must’ve been dehydration combined with the wrong dosage of blood pressure medication. Luckily that’s all they can figure out — it could’ve been much worse.

In retrospect, I learned something from this experience, and that is this:

With all of its recent commercialization and mainstream exploitation, the merit of Twitter is still not lost.

In little blurts of 140 characters or less, people all over the world are relating to one another, showing their humanity and sending their support — in other words, people give a damn. Perhaps 140 characters isn’t a limit at all . . . maybe it’s a blessing.

Have you been surprised/overwhelmed at the outcome of support you’ve received on Twitter for anything? Have you tweeted about a personal/family situation that others might not have? What was it like?

Photo by Guanatos Gwyn.

I’m a guest reviewer — that means somebody cares what I think!

(I forgot to post about this last week.)

I was asked by my friend Jackie at The Book Blues online bookstore if I would be the guest reviewer for this month, so I chose to review World Wide Rave, latest from my favorite author, David Meerman Scott.

I’m not going to repost the review here, but if you care to know what I think about it, head on over to The Book Blues and find out. You can also find out how you, too, can become a guest reviewer, and if she picks you, she’ll send you something cool.

Support independent bookstores, online and off.

What do they have that Amazon doesn’t? Personality.

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