TOP 10 TECH

Blast Applications BLAP Launches Tweexchange.com

PLAINVIEW, N.Y.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Blast Applications, Inc. (OTC: BLAP – News) announced today it has officially launched newly acquired and fully developed website, www.tweexchange.com.

Tweexchange.com is the fastest and easiest way to search Twitter Usernames and Internet Domain Names at the same time. Tweexchange.com also unveiled a new integration with GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar. Through the Domain Name search, users can Backorder and Register Domains using GoDaddy. If a name is taken and is currently listed for sale on Sedo.com, members can also try to purchase names through the site using the Sedo API.

This is one of the first sites to launch with this functionality, to ease and reduce the time to action to secure the right name for branding purposes. With domain name investment an established industry, consumers can conveniently secure a Twitter ID to match. Cross-referencing Twitter and GoDaddy with Tweexchange.com also enables their members, for a fee, to be notified when Twitter Usernames and Internet domain names become available from being in a suspended state. Tweexchange.com provides Blast Applications with several different revenue streams contained within one site.

Dino Luzzi, CEO of Blast said, “When you think about Blast, our newest web portal, Tweexchange truly fits the bill. This one stop shop for users to acquire and reserve user names and domain names through two of the largest providers of branding elements on the web today, Twitter and GoDaddy is truly a blast.”

About Blast Applications, Inc.

Blast Applications, Inc. (“Blast”) is a premier creator and developer of applications for iPhone^®, Twitter^® and Facebook^®, that allows users to have more fun, be more productive and make social media sites easier to use and more intuitive than before. Social media sites are growing fast all around the globe. Blast Applications has a unique opportunity to monetize the web surfer’s dedication to sites such as Twitter^® and Facebook^®, and through direct advertising programs tied to the Company’s tools and applications. For more information visit www.blastapplications.com.

Editors Note:

We have covered several different web applications, typically focused on twitter from Blast Applications over the last few weeks.  Almost all of them did not appear terribly useful, but hey the team is at least coding something and trying to make a buck.  This particular service combines the search process of looking for a twitter username and an available web domain into a one stop shop.

In reality, it is not difficult to perform either of these steps separately, but I suppose if you are trying to buy and set up a whole bunch of sites and twitter usernames for some reason (I can only think of spammy reasons why you would even contemplate this, but if you can think of something better, let me know because I’m curious!)

Regardless, this is minutely helpful, but probably not that much of a jump past the status quo.

In general, my advice is only to perform domain searches at EXTREMELY trusted primary domain selling sites, and only run those searches when you are prepared to buy.  I’ve seen too many domainers pull too many tricks snatching domains up from under prospective buyers to let my guard down when I’m serious about setting up a site, and I recommend the same practice for all my clients, friends and family.

When I tried this myself, it seemed a little buggy at the search level, things did not refresh automatically, nor even when I hit the clear button, prepare to hit the refresh button on your browser.

Blast Applications BLAP Launches Twuition.com

PLAINVIEW, N.Y.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Blast Applications Inc., (OTC: BLAP – News), a premier creator and developer of iPhone, Twitter and Facebook applications, announces today the official launch of www.Twuition.com.

Twuition.com is a corporate branding and advertising application which responds automatically via Twitter informing Twitter users of translations, weather reports, product pricing, locations and even the national debt by typing in the hashtag “#whatisthenationaldebt”. The tweet platform, generates an advertisement for each response sponsored by businesses for brand awareness via our Twitter profile. This advertising application gives corporations the ability to sponsor answers while building awareness to millions of twitter users, also providing them information without leaving twitter.

“Find out the weather report, shop for a product best price, find the restaurant of your choice or translate while visiting other countries, on your iPhone via Twitter, make sponsors proud of our innovative way of communications,” says Dino Luzzi, CEO of Blast Applications.

About Blast Applications, Inc.

Blast Applications, Inc. (“Blast”) is a premier creator and developer of applications for iPhone^®, Twitter^® and Facebook^®, that allows users to have more fun, be more productive and make social media sites easier to use and more intuitive than before. Blast Applications has a unique opportunity to monetize the web surfer’s dedication to social media sites. Through direct advertising programs tied to the Company’s tools and applications. For more information visit www.blastapplications.com.

Editors Note:

While some of Blast Applications other products do seem relatively useful, this one really seems to be a stretch.  If you absolutely can only access twitter for some information, this might be useful, but this same type of service didn’t really take off in the 90’s with 2 Way Pagers either, somehow I doubt it will go far here. 

That said, sometimes you have to work outside the box a little in order to make a break through. 

For all that this is not likely imho to be useful, the advertising that you can purchase through this same channel is not likely to be very robust either.

AUTOMATICALLY DELETE DIRECT MESSAGES ON TWITTER WITH OFFICAL LAUNCH OF TWEDEMPTION.COM

Save Time and Get Redemption Through Twedemption.com

PLAINVIEW, N.Y. – February 9, 2010 (OTC: BLAP – News) – If you ever leave on vacation, step away from your computer for a few days or been on Twitter for a reasonable period of time, it’s easy for your direct message inbox to get full quickly. Blast Applications, a premier creator and developer of iPhone, Twitter and Facebook applications, announces today the official launch of Twedemption.com.

With the new launch of Twedemption.com, a PHP script that allows Twitter users to mass-delete direct messages, you can participate in the latest innovation developed to enhance your Twitter experience. For a one-time fee of $5.99, you can safely and securely delete multiple or all DMs from your inbox on the go.

“If you’ve been receiving a lot of auto generated-direct messages or are building quite a following, this type of program is invaluable for Twitter users,” says Dino Luzzi, CEO of Blast Applications. “What we wanted to do with Twedemption.com was focus on a very talked about problem on Twitter and bring a bit of internet attention to it.”

Going through one-by-one to delete each DM is very time consuming; however with Twedemption.com you can delete all the messages from one Twitter id.

About Blast Applications, Inc.

Blast Applications, Inc. (“Blast”) is a premier creator and developer of applications for iPhone^®, Twitter^® and Facebook^®, that allows users to have more fun, be more productive and make social media sites easier to use and more intuitive than before. Social media sites are growing fast all around the globe. Blast Applications has a unique opportunity to monetize the web surfer’s dedication to sites such as Twitter^® and Facebook^®, and through direct advertising programs tied to the Company’s tools and applications. For more information visit www.blastapplications.com.

Editors Note:

I typically try to keep the number of new services that require my twitter login information to a minimum and after I have used one, I change my twitter password right away.

Personally, I don’t have so many DM’s that I need a mass delete option, was even aware that you had to delete them at all, but I suppose if you are a bit of a clean freak and can’t stand to look at a bunch of DM’s any more, $6 might set you free.

Let’s say you have 50 or 100 or 1000 old blog posts on one or more sites that were sponsored articles.  You were paid up front for a short time advertorial essentially.  That was years ago and those posts haven’t brought any revenue to you since. 

Plus, the FTC has changed the landscape of online marketing and now you have to go back and consider adding some new form of disclosure to an advertorial.  Lots of work for no revenue, all cost, no profit, plus if you don’t you risk who knows what from the FTC. 

QUICK TIPS (ok not so quick) to get those old articles earning money again!

There are several things you can do in conjunction with each other to get those old deep links earning you some money.

• First, realize that what ever work went into those articles in terms of copy, research, writing etc, is long sunk.
• The risk of FTC issues is as real as your geographical address if you reside in the US (If you live in Canada, the UK, the Pacific Rim, feel free to laugh at the FTC all you like.)
• Now, go over to Skimlinks.com and sign up for an account. 
• They essentially turn old deep hyperlinks going out from your site in to current working affiliate links if there is an affiliate program through their collection of multiple networks traversing the world. 
• They aggregate affiliate links through multiple networks at commission rates that are often higher than you can get individually. 
• Get your account up and going and load the javascript onto your site. 
• If someone clicks on one of your old deep links and buys something, you get a commission.  $$$
• Pretty easy for just copy/pasting some javascript in your footer!
• Skimlinks is a good option, BUT for advertorials, it will likely only convert if you had kick ass copy on a page that draws a lot of natural search results. 
• If your copy was written for 2006 and not 2010, it might not convert so well no matter how good it was. 
• If your page hasn’t drawn a new hit in 2 years, well then its really not good for much of anything, almost.
• SO, identify your articles that you want to target.  For example, I recently went through an old blog, I filtered for all articles that still had a CountTrakula.com link in it, an old PayPerPost tracking mechanism, then I further filtered for articles from 2006.  THESE WERE OLD AND TIRED! But some of those posts still have some power,
• Some have lots of incoming links
• Some generate traffic!
• So next, you need to install the Redirection plugin into your wordpress site. 
• Don’t have your blog on WordPress?
• Move your blog over to WordPress and stop fooling around. 
• Now, start redirecting those old links to either your home page or a category that is relevant for the post.
• Essentially you are salvaging those backlinks.  yes they are over 18 months old in my example, but a backlink is a backlink.
• I had a few hundred to do myself, not a job for one sitting.  So make sure you have a good audiobook to listen to or TV show to partially pay attention to, and then start copy/pasting/clicking away
• Once your redirects are set up in full or either in a batch, go back and check your redirection logs. 
• 
• Look for old posts that are logging actual redirects to your home page or categories. 
• If you have an old advertorial bringing traffic to your blog for ‘drug rehab’ and you don’t have a better destination for that traffic on your blog,
• then log into one of your affiliate programs and search for a new affiliate program that has a high conversion rate for ‘drug rehab’. 
• Get the link for the program, then go back to your site, and replace your redirection destination link with the affiliate link! 
• Now all that traffic that was coming into your blog for an advertorial and likely bouncing away, screwing up your stats, and not doing anything for you is getting pushed to a high converting affiliate program where it might actually do that Google searcher some good and
• make you a commission!  $$$
• Pay attention to your redirect stats.  If it stops bringing people in, then change that redirect to a new 301 redirect back to your home page to salvage backlinks.  This puppy is harvested!
• If for some reason you like the traffic on that particular topic, but don’t want to send it to an affiliate landing page cold, then write up a NEW blog article that covers that topic or category. 
• Then change that redirect from over to your new article.
• If you are smart, make sure the article includes an affiliate banner to something useful, or at least some chitika or adsense ads or something.  I don’t want you to starve! 
• Sometimes a Rewrite may work too…
• You will not want to rewrite every article, but every now and then your original article may be pretty damned good and still relevant.  If so, polish that puppy up, and republish it with a current date.  Remove the old sponsored/advertorial references and OWN that new article yourself.  Find some new way to mix advertising on that page for that article, especially if it is pulling in traffic! 
• Plus, if it is pulling in traffic, do something on that new re-written post to really try and lock in those readers to subscribing with you.  You already know that it is bringing people your way, do something good for them, and try and get them to come back or stick around.
• A large percentage of your old advertorial articles from years back will not be relevant, will not have traffic and will only bring you minor backlink boosts.  That’s ok, don’t sweat it, at least you removed the liability stemming from the doubt over the FTC’s poorly conceived and executed new rules. 
• For that 10% that can do something for you, well more power and a little extra revenue to you! 

Bonus – if you do leave old deep links in any old article, make sure you put a rel=”nofollow’ tag on it if you hadn’t already.  Might as well please Google while you are at it. 

Since July, I have been experiencing CPU usages on my Virtual Dedicated Server.  In July, my host InMotion Hosting, whom I have had an excellent relationship with for over 3 years, recommended that I should move to a ‘new faster server’ and they would migrate my accounts for free.

Sounded good, I asked a few questions, hoping to make a relatively informed decision, but I know next to nothing about servers and hardware, which is the reason why I turn to them for hosting and Virtual dedicated hosting specifically.

They upgraded me and within about 2 weeks, I started having problems with my account using up too much load on the CPU of the server.  My sites and the server were crashing every couple weeks, and InMotion Hosting started telling me that I would have to upgrade to a dedicated server, a price difference of $150 per month!  (Currently paying about $50 a month, prepaid for a year, Dedicated costs about $200 per month).

Frankly, I couldn’t afford the move.

At the time this first started happening, I was traveling in NYC for Affiliate Summit, and I didn’t have the time to completely figure out what was going on.  Twice over the years, I’ve run into CPU load issues and it usually involved a plugin that was broken or not working right.

I searched through my cpanel accounts, checking the error logs on each.  I found a few little errors but nothing significant.  I fixed those, checked with my host, and that didn’t seem to phase anything.

I did some heavy lifting in robots.txt to insure that I wasn’t being indexed by bots that were driving up the CPU (there was some indication that a bot masquerading as the cuel (cool) search engine was causing a bit of a problem.  I worked to eliminate bot access to every folder that wasn’t essential.

I triple checked my largest sites to insure that my images were optimized too.  (they were already, but I wanted to double check)

I was already running WP-Super Cache on my largest 2 sites, so I started loading that up on all my other sites.  Then I added DB Cache and even Widget Cache and DB manager so that I could routinely optimize my DB.

That seemed to make a small bit of a dent but not enough.

My biggest problem was really the lack of information at a domain level.  On a VDedicated account, I have absolutely NO TOOLS to help me identify if one domain/cpanel account is causing the bulk of the problem or if all domains are.  I thinned out the herd and eliminated/suspended/moved some cpanel accounts.

Again that helped just a little bit, but not enough.

Finally towards the end of September, I spoke with a admin at Inmotion who was able to install a script or a program to monitor my account.  I couldn’t view this program, but she was able to tell me the top domains or directories that were using the most CPU at the time.  She was also able to point out a couple plugins, that were not creating errors but did seem to be consuming to much of the cpu resources.  I deactivated and deleted them.

A couple days later, I got a message from Inmotion saying that that action had fixed the problem!

I sent back a message saying terrific! I can’t believe we finally solved this.  I was very happy and relieved.

But 20 minutes later, the same person replied again and told me that actually things weren’t fixed and we’d have to continue monitoring.

Uh, OK.

Four days later, I get an email saying that things were still bad, and my account would be shut down tomorrow, the original deadline given several weeks earlier.

So I called in, got filtered through hold for 20 minutes, got a low level representative on the phone, who was nice and polite but frankly jerked me around for 14 minutes because 1) he couldn’t do anything about the issue 2) its his job to make sure that people like me no longer have direct access to the admins 3) their own internet connection was apparently down 4) when he tried to transfer me, it didn’t work a couple times, maybe internet down related.

So I finally get on the phone with the admin who had sent me the latest message.  I mentioned to him, that when I had spoke with the helpful representative that had set up the monitoring script, that she had indicated the next thing to trouble shoot would be whether my Apache configuration on the new server was not optimal for my sites as compared to the Apache configuration on the old server.

I asked the new guy if we could look at this.  I had done some quick research that had indicated:

mod_php Vs. FastCGI

How you integrate PHP into Apache has performance implications. The two most popular options are:

mod_php

The PHP interpreter and all it’s linked in libraries are compiled into a loadable Apache Module (mod_php) and this module is loaded into every running Apache process at startup time. This is generally the simplest way to run PHP and is supported by most hosting environments. It also introduces memory overhead because of the monolithic Apache processes which you have running, and because the PHP interpreter is included in the web server binary which services non PHP files.

FastCGI

An alternative method of using PHP is to have the PHP interpreter running external to the Apache process and to use the FastCGI API to interface between the web server (mod_fastcgi) and the PHP interpreter. The advantages of this method is that you don’t load the full PHP stack into Apache, you can call upon PHP only when your web server needs to run a PHP script (not images, or HTML/CSS etc) and you also get security benefits of running PHP as a user other than the web server user. This setup is slightly more advanced, and usually requires custom compilation of PHP. One other possible advantage here is that you may be able to run the threaded Apache worker MPM when using FastCGI, since technically any non threadsafe PHP libraries are not being run inside Apache, but inside an external process.

I also found this useful description in a forum post that broke down a few additional settings from someone with the username ‘till’:

2nd April 2009, 10:42

The php option depends on traffic that you expect for the site and if the site e.g. uploads or creates images or files on the server.
mod_php:
- fast
- runs not under admin user of the site
- well suited for low and high traffic sites, but not for cms systems like joomla.
suphp:
- not so fast
- script runs under web admin
- secure
- well suited for low traffic sites
fastcgi
- fast
- script runs under web admin
- secure
- well suited for high traffic sites
so basicalley the decision is, if a site is low traffic, use suphp. suphp spawns a new cgi process for every page request, but it does not use resources when no pages are requested. On the opposite fastcgi, the php processes are running permanently even if no page is requested, this is faster and fine for a high traffic site but for a small homepage with 100 pageviews per hour you would waste resources.

So he agreed to try an alternative, and later sent me this message after it had been set up:

Just to follow up with you I have made two major changes to your VPS platform. The first being php was upgraded to the latest (from 5.2.10 to 5.2.11) and no longer uses suPHP. Also I have recompiled apache to use the MPM Worker instead of MPM Prefork which may help to
reduce load used by apache.

So now I’m in a new holding pattern, hoping that this change might be the magic bullet that gives me back my happily functioning websites and vdedicated account.  I’m heading to BlogWorld next week, so I expect that my account will likely take a crap on me while I’m traveling, not a traffic spike or anything, just a Murphy’s Law issue.

Last week I signed up for the newsletter for the Ellen Show. This Monday around 3 am I received my first copy and was pleasantly surprised to see that Ellen does a number of things very well with her newsletter (no surprise, she runs a ning social network on her site, as opposed to the locked down forum thingy that Oprah has as a contrast of a billionaire doing something wrong).

So here’s what Ellen has, what can you spot that is good?

Notice, on the left her show is branded well.  Even better she’s using a great picture of herself to re-emphasize both the branding of the show name and keep her image fresh in people’s mind. 

Hard to feel negative about ‘just another’ newsletter email when you’ve got a smiling face right in front of your own.

Then there are the easy access social media buttons, both twitter and facebook, which should be standard, but ALSO the link to her own NING community.  Smart, let people talk to you where ever they want to talk to you, but don’t forget to make it easy for them to come into your (ning) house and chat for a while.

Even better yet, is that short little message from Ellen.  Reading the silly little joke, it sounds like something Ellen would say (probably has said too many times), but that’s perfect here.  You DO think she’d say it and not some flunky or automated geekish gimp in a cubicle somewhere.

I’m the first to admit that I SUCK at newsletter’s myself.  Its something I drastically need to improve, but you know what?  I could learn a thing or two from Ellen and her team on this one.  It wouldn’t hurt me and probably not you either to benchmark a little from Ellen’s example.

Here’s an excellent Presentation slide show from Brad Williams of WebDevStudios who recently spoke at a WordPress NYC meetup.  Excellent presentation.  Slides built so well that you will get a ton of very very useful information from this presentation to help you secure your WordPress powered website.

Wondering why your site just got knocked down in Pagerank or in the SERPs?

Maybe you were hacked and didn’t even know it.   ~ Just one example of the the very useful information in this presentation on WordPress Security.

I received an email today from a member of our local WordPress meetup group asking the following question:

Got a minute to clue me in on how my WordPress site got hacked?
My service provider said it was easier to do because my WP
version wasn’t updated to the recent version. What can I do to
help prevent this in the future?

As I write this, WordPress 2.8.4 is the current release of WordPress.  I mention that because 2.8.4 was released to address a serious security flaw in 2.8.3.    I learned about this simply by logging into WordPress and reading the updates in the Admin Dashboard of WordPress.

While this should be your only source for information about practicing good security on your WordPress powered site, but it is a good starting point. 

Here’s the email reply I provided below

Its definitely important to review the new wordpress updates as they come out. They often address security concerns. Hackers are always looking for new ways to break into sites, computers, operating systems etc, so the groups and companies that maintain the software behind sites, computers, operating systems etc have to continually evolve and update their systems.

This is one of the advantages to using WordPress. It is supported by an extensive open source network of programmers around the world. They provide continued development and improvements not only in functionality but in security. All you have to do is keep up with their updates and apply them to your site and plugins.

Part of your role as a web designer or webmaster may include keeping up to date on these changes, and making the updates to your own or your clients sites. As you develop more and more sites, it can take a significant amount of your time to continually review the updates needed, test them out to make sure they work on any given site and do not conflict with plugins that may or may not need to be updated as well (or may or may not be compatible with updates) and then execute the upgrade.

In general, you need to practice at insuring that you and your clients use good usernames and good strong passwords. This is typically the area that is easiest for hackers to target because too many people use default or simple user names and passwords that are ‘easy to remember’ which both mean, easy to crack and hack.

In years past on my personal sites, I used to use simple passwords that I could remember.  I never do that now.  I use passwords that are ridiculously long, they include both caps and lower case letters, they include numbers and many symbols.

This definitely can help ward of crackers.  But you can also use stronger passwords, don’t use the default ‘admin’ password if you are setting up a site with Fantastico for example.

Also there are a large number of detailed tips and resources, plus some plugins that can help you evaluate the security level of your site today and improve it in the future.

Here’s just a quick tip, something I noticed on TubeMogul today.  I had just uploaded a video on TubeMogul to be launched through YouTube and other video services.

After it had been launched, I was given the option to connect to YouTube as well, which I did.

Now when one of my videos goes live on YouTube, a link to the video will be tweeted on my twitter account for me automatically. 

The cool thing is that they wait until the video is live.

OK, so you take a look at your twitter account and wonder to yourself,

• are the people I’m following, following me back?
• Did those people I randomly followed for no flipping reason a year ago, really worth following?
• Just who the hell am I following anyway?

So you dig in and visit Friendorfollow.com to find out just who it is you are following.  The problem is that as you go through the process of trying to determine who you are going to scratch, you kind of feel like, well Dennis Leary captures it best in song I think . .

I did this and learned that I was following about 490 people that were not following me back.  That’s almost half the people I follow, and it seemed a little bigger than I thought it should be.

But that wasn’t all bad.  I used to think that a lot of the people that were following me, were only following me, because I followed them. (Oh the irony).  But as it turns out, I have about 1200 followers and I follow about 1100 people, but of the 1100 people I follow, 490 people do not follow me, so that means there are people following me that I’m not following (and who might read this article and drop me a like a wet fish!).

Well, first things first, I wanted to understand those 490 people.

Dropping my Friend’s Companies that I don’t Do Business With

I started digging into them and was surprised to see a few ‘friends’ in the list.  I suspect some of these are people that I know from elsewhere that just hadn’t followed me back on twitter(yet), some were companies owned by friends like @blubrry owned by Todd Cochrane.  I know Todd, like Todd, but don’t do business with his company, so I kept following him @geeknews and unfollowed his company.

There were a sprinkling of ‘celebrities’ I follow like NIN and Jane’s Addiction and John Cleese and others.  I kept following most of them, but did drop quite a few that I’m not as interested in or that don’t have much to say on twitter that is of any interest.  Their not into twitter, I can definitely relate to that, I’m not really in to it either, no more than I am ‘in to my fax machine’ or something.  I don’t use my fax machine more than twice a year at best, so I can’t expect people to ‘fax me’ crap all the time.

Then I noticed some people that I know but not real well.  Some of those I followed after having a conversation with them at a conference, party, event, what ever, hoping that the conversation might result in a friendship, or just because I was interested in what they were doing.  Quite a few of these I kept, and some I dropped.

My Friend the Queen of the PayU2Bloggers

There was this batch of about 100 bloggers that blog with PayU2Blog that I followed once upon a time for reasons that escape me now, think it was research on paid blogging or something.  I unfollowed most of those but kept following their queen, @mskat,  and a person I consider a friend, even though she probably thinks I’m an asshole because she gets really really pissed at me when ever we have a conversation.  I kept following Kat because I like her.  She’s smart, she’s got spunk, and she’s a great debater (even though I disagree with her from time to time and she loses her temper with me, but hey such is life). 

The Date Didn’t Work Out

I also unfollowed people that hadn’t done many updates, or who had recently followed me, I then followed them back to get to know them, and they unfollowed me.  TheFatCowboy comes to mind on this one.  My re-un-follow was not really vindictive, I just don’t get TheFatCowboy and apparently the feeling is mutual.  I’m not fat and don’t wrangle cows, even though I have broken and trained a horse before (hidden talent I didn’t know I had).

Unfollowing 400 people resulted in Lowering my followed list by 200 WTF?

So after reviewing all of the people that made up the 490, I estimated that I unfollowed about 400 people or accounts or fake accounts or weird odd people or people that faded or whatever.  After all that work, I logged into my twitter account, checked my stats and saw that the number of people I was following had decreased by less than 200!

I have no idea. 

The People I’m not following back

So next I went and looked at the people that are following me, but I’m not following them back.

This group had a lot of people with owl eyes (the brown default image) and a lot of young women that were often unable to point the camera at their face.  Apparently the camera tilted down a bit at the last minute resulting in a lot of ‘headshots’ of their breasts.  Either that or maybe a lot of young women have recently bought a camera that malfunctions a great deal, or maybe there are some horny geeks at twitter that have rigged the image upload tool to pan down for young women, or maybe these aren’t young women at all, but some spammy jerk trying to get middle aged guys to follow them with a picture of breasticles on a twitter profile.

Whatever, I didn’t follow a lot of these people back.  But I did follow several.

SURPRISE I wasn’t following you back there but I am here!

That’s when I found that some of the people that I unfollowed, that weren’t following me, apparently had an additional twitter account.  They weren’t following me on twitter account 1, they were following me on twitter account 2.

In some cases, it was the ‘real’ person following me and apparently I had been following some poser.  Situation fixed.

Cooking Twitter Percentages with Two Accounts

But since I work with a lot of social media people and I used to be an auditor, I started to develop this suspicion in the back of my head.  Say you want to boost your twitter stats for some completely retarded social media douche baggy reason.  So you don’t follow people on one account but you do on another.  You attract followers to the first and don’t care about the other.  Using tweetdeck or seesmic, you could easily see any @replies coming in to the second account and reply all day long from your primary, but that primary account would over time generate a lot of followers.

Nice way to pump stats around for those that care about that type of thing.

Double Checking the Numbers

So after all that following and unfollowing, I went back to see what friendorfollow said about my non-followers now.

It now shows me that I’m following 173 people that are not following me back.  Guess my estimate of 400 of 490 was off by about 87 or so.  Which means that I actually only unfollowed about 300 people not 400 or something, still doesn’t seem to reflect correctly in my twitter number but I don’t really care about that, just here for the conversation. 

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