Tr.im is a URL shortener, your next question will be “what’s a URL shortener?” Well on the internet you have a normal domain name such as thiswillbealongdomain.com or some other name ending with .com or the hundreds of other extentions at the end of a domain name.  What shortners do is allow you to send a small link such as tr.im/ab1 which would redirect you to the site, the major reason shornters came into existence because of micro-blogging sites such as twitter where you need to send your message in 140 characters and the smaller the size of your links the better for usage of that 140 characters.

Well Tr.im sent out a post tonight saying “tr.im R.I.P.” they are closing the doors of tr.im because as they stated:

Twitter has all but sapped us of any last energy to double-down and develop tr.im further. What is the point? With bit.ly the Twitter default, and with us having no inside connection to Twitter, tr.im will lose over the the long-run no matter how good it may or may not be at this moment, or in the future.

When I saw that statement I was pissed, not that I used tr.im but the fact that they geared the whole kit and kaboodle on twitter alone, and now that they can’t get twitter to buy the work that they have put in, they scream “well it’s because of twitter” come on get off your high horse tr.im.  If you guys or gals had put together a better plan, and worked on making tr.im better and not be so dependent on twitter you may have been able to create a better business model, but instead you put all your eggs in one basket.  I always thought rule number #1 was “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.

Don’t get angry at twitter, get angry at yourselves for not understanding the dynamics of the web and how to create revenue.  Not only do we have to hear you bitch and moan about how twitter is doing you so bad, now we have to look forward to all the tr.im links that will no longer direct people to content.

It’s not a sad day in my opinion it’s just another day, of another company, that looked for the money and really didn’t give two cents about the community.  Do us a favor release tr.im as an open source project so it can live on, and go about creating another business model that sucks some where else.

TBTR

I’m always amazed at some of the content that people make just for the sake of helping out the community.  Here is a video from Commoncraft.com about Twitter Search.

Enjoy

TBTR

What is it?

#followfriday is a way of recommending friends to follow on twitter.  If your new to twitter your probably looking for people to follow, here is a great way to find those new friends.  Although it could be a universal movement across any website the main use is for twitter.

So how does it work?

Lets say you have a friend on twitter that you follow. He or she could be in any profession, but you follow this person because they tweet about  for example: starting a small business. You know that what they are saying is relevant and would benefit some of your other online friends. So you want a way to tell the world or your circle about them.

So on Friday you create a tweet with the hash tag #followfriday, the # sign is used to create a way to follow the conversation on twitter.

Is this how it’s always done?

In the beginning of @followfriday most people just added the names of those they recommended you follow example:

but as time has progressed people dont just want to know the names, they want to know why they should follow them. So people started to form the #followfriday tweets a little different, by adding the reason why you should follow someone example:

This has answered questions for those looking to add someone interesting to their network

My recommendations about #followfriday

I recommend you #followfriday selectively and cautiously. Get to know some of your online friends, only recommend relevant, and deserving people. Others throw anybody into #followfriday without really knowing them or what they are talking about. You will see a backlash if you do this blindly so think before you recommend someone who might just be a link spammer.

While some people do this for the shear volume of people they follow to pretty much gain more followers.  Litterly recommending everyone on their list.  Recommending someone for #followfriday is really important and with great knowledge comes great responsibility in my opinion.

Have fun

In the online world you could say you only get one chance to get it right. Most online services/communities let you choose a name to go by sort of a handle of types.  Some of the names you see online for individuals were created back more than 20 years ago and they stick with us.  Since I have been online in one way or another since the early 90’s, doing this for so long I wanted to help those new to the game of online social networking/media.  So I wrote this short post as a way to help this ever growing online community.

1. To use a nick name or not?
2. Do you want people to call you by the name you make up 5, 10 or 20 years from now?
3. Does the name help or hurt your cause?
4. Will you want to change the name in the future?
5. You infomation will be indexed by Google, Yahoo & others are you ready for that?

To use a nick name or not?

Most people who use a nick name do so because they want to conseal their real name.  Online communites and communications can be a bear.  Especially when things get heated people start to take things personally.  Consealing your real name can be a important part of your online life.  **Women especially need to be cautions when using their own names, safety first**

Do you want people to call you by the name you make up 5, 10 or 20 years from now?

Sometimes a decison today could follow you around the internet for years to come.  What ever name you come up with people will always refer to you with that name for a long time.  As the years go by just remember first impressions always stick.  It’s kind of hard to change perception down the road, but not impossible.

Does the name help or hurt your cause?

This is a good question because people can come up with some very innovative and thought provoking names.  Over time you may always be explaining how the name kind of stuck even when it is no longer relevant.  For example if you become a financial planner with a name like @fasteddie or @stickycheeks it might not be the best for the new business.

Will you want to change the name in the future?

Later down the road will you want to keep using the name you first started with on your social sites  Today you could be using twitter or some other service for fun, but tomorrow you could be wanting to use it for something else.  It’s a lot of work to try and recreate your following.  Depending on how long you have been on the net this could take months to rejust to the changes.

You information will be indexed by Google, Yahoo & others are you ready for that?

Social sites are getting enourmous traffic infact so much traffic the search engines are jumping on board and indexing your post almost hourly.  That means that everything you say can and will probably be indexed for anyone to look at in the future.  This trail you put down over time is important to you, but if you change your name frequently or just once that trail may be lost and those links back to you will no longer apply.  So you really have to think about changing your name when you have established so much online traction.

No matter what you do, taking catuion when thinking about this thing takes only a moment.  It’s better to do the thinking upfront than redirecting in the future.

Leave me your comments on this issue.

Twitter is a micro blogging free platform that allows anyone to sign up, create a name and send out updates to the world in 140 characters or less.  It seems that Hollywood has finally caught on to the buzz that some of us geeks have known for far to long, twitter is cool.    So you might ask how popular is Twitter ?  Many celebrities and PR firms have been showing up on twitter over last few months.  Some of the most well known are Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, Sean Diddy Combs, and Shaq O’neal.  While there are a grip more of them out there, I don’t have enough strength to mention them all.

As a enthusiastic twitter user for almost 2 years, I was never into following someone just because they ask me to, or because the flock of sheep all ran to the new Joe in town.  My network has been small and focused on technology tweets.  In the beginning I would look for people to follow who were all about technology, But Something happen along the way as twitter became more and more popular.  I noticed celebrities joining twitter in small numbers at first.  In the beginning many of us would follow a celebrity only to find out later that it was an impostor.  Twitter has never implemented a way to confirm that someone was who they said they were.  Typically a celebrity (REAL or FAKE) would join today and by 5 P.M. tomorrow they would have thousands of loyal sheep.

This got me to thinking, and reminded me of high school where the popular people became more and more popular.  While the less popular continue to be harassed and abused on a daily basis by some “School Celebs.” Popularity usually came in two forms in High School, one was usually the Jocks who gained fame off of sports, and the others were dubbed “The Beautiful People”  These beautifuls’ usually hung out together and unless you were beautiful you couldn’t get a pass to that group.

So what does all this mean to the community of twitter.  In my opinion it means get ready to get your lunch money stolen by one of the jocks or and don’t even think of looking at the beautiful ones.  I say Twitter is about community, and connections both which are mostly ignored by most celebrities.  Just take a moment to look at most celebrity profiles on twitter.  Most of them have tons of followers; some have hundreds of thousands and now over 1 million.  How many are they following? Less than one hundred in most cases.  The truth is they only follow the other celebrities and people they know, which probably is NOT YOU!

So this phenomenon begs the question Why?  Why do we care so much about the celebs and they care so little about us?  Most of the celebs only follow other celebs hence my comparison to the beautiful people.  In high school why did the beautiful ones hang and socialize with other beautiful ones?  Most often it was because if they were caught with someone less beautiful their so called friends would make fun of them.  In the online world how does this equate?  I’m really not sure, I mean is there someone (consultant to the stars) out there that has scared the celebs into thinking that associating with real everyday common people could be a recipe for disaster?  Maybe the media has helped in this false sense of thinking.  Maybe because they don’t want a trail of breadcrumbs leading back to them.  While some celebs have tried to engage this vast and wonderful community, others have not.  Far too often most will never follow you back, an even more so they will probably never speak to you.

Twitter is about community, communications, and contact.  Why have the celebrities come? I think the celebs are here for only one thing, communication.  Some agent or consultant has explained to them that they need not follow everyone for reasons unknown to me.  Celebs are doing to twitter what they did to the tabloids they say how much they don’t want it, then they go to a place where they can spread the roamers and lies themselves, thus creating a full market for their next project.  It goes to show you how shallow most consultants and so called Guru’s are on twitter.

So I simply have one question for every celeb on twitter.  I can say real Hollywood celebs down to the social celebs.

WHY ARE YOU REALLY HERE? You don’t engage the community in conversation with you most times your just passing through with a thought or your motivational tweet is a copy of a Winston Churchill famous quote.  Why treats us your community like this is high school again.  I lived that life 20 years ago I don’t want to live it again. You keep talking, but what are you really saying?

Jayson Flint

My take on followfriday which happens every friday on twitter.