Bloqhead.com | The Web Design Portfolio of Daryn St. Pierre » Social

Carol Zara Featured on G4TV’s Women of The Web

Daryn — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 02:36:53 +0000

Wait, what was I talking about?

My sexy Brazillian blogger pal Carol Zara was featured on G4TV‘s Women of The Web today. If you’re into video games, blogging, pop culture and other things that some might refer to as vices, she’s you’re girl. I help her out with her website from time to time and frequent it for a laugh.

Check her out on G4TV’s Women of The Web. You won’t regret it. You can also follow her on Twitter or checkout her website DigitallyBlonde.com.

Annoying Twitter Practices

Daryn — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:04:07 +0000

Before I get started, this blog post is pretty random. It shoots from the hip and was thought up in the matter of 5 minutes or so. Short and hopefully to the point (it’s late and I’m tired). I know at least some of you have encountered these. They seem to be commonplace amongst the garbage users that would happily send you spam tweets all day, as opposed to actually interacting with you on a human level.

These are some of the absolute most annoying things about Twitter user practices. These are things that would ultimately drive me away from Twitter completely if I wasn’t so tied to the multitude of REAL users I have between my 3 accounts (yes, 3–They all serve their purpose). In no particular order:

Auto DM’s — I don’t care what they say. They’re annoying. It’s like calling someones house and repeatedly getting the answering machine, and to make matters worse, the answering machine message is terrible. Why bother even calling? *unfollows*. Get this: The other day someone sent me an auto DM that simply said “hey, how’s it going?” I genuinely thought it was a legitimate DM so I replied cautiously with “Good. How about yourself?” I never even got a reply back. Asshole.
The Unfollower — This has to be one of the absolute most irritating things ever. Those people that will follow you just to get you to follow them, and then immediately unfollow you to avoid reaching the limit for how many people they can follow. In other words “I want to make sure you receive my garbage tweets that advertise how you can make $54,887,684 a day with Twitter and gain 10 billion followers in 5 minutes; but I don’t give a shit in a hand basket about your tweets.” I always check to see who is actually following me back. If you follow me and then immediately unfollow me, you get unfollowed and blocked. I don’t care who you are. If you don’t value the tweets I post, then why should I even bother reading a single thing you post?
Zero Tweets — If you have zero tweets and are following 910 people, I will not follow you back, period. It’s pretty obvious that your auto-following rampage is in preparation for bottom-of-the-barrel, meaningless tweets about things nobody cares about. Besides, save yourself the trouble. Your account will probably get deleted within a day anyways.
Sleeper Tweets — These ones can be sly but if you’re paying attention, you can pick them up. These are the bot accounts (and sometimes human) that will try and slip their spam tweets into a barrage of seemingly harmless, although meaningless, tweets. Stuff like “Listening to music…”, “Just finished watching ____” and I’ve even seen some do @replies to users that were never even talking to them in the first place. I’ve been fooled by some of these before but the ones that got me were actually run by humans. As soon as I see that “Get 300 followers in a day” tweet, you are gone. Some of the bot accounts can be funny though. I’ve seen some say that they’re watching a television show that isn’t even on anymore. The other day I saw one say that it was watching the Red Sox play and this was a few days after the Sox were eliminated by the Angels (fuckin’ Halos).
The RT Whore — Okay, you find something interesting posted by a friend and you want to RT it and make sure your friends see it. Fair enough. That’s harmless. Doing this all day long is annoying. If all you’re going to do on Twitter is pedal everything that someone else posted before you, then you should…just stop doing it. Post some original content. It’s not that hard. If all I see in your Twitter stream are RT’s, you’re getting unfollowed for being unoriginal and late.
Web Host Comparison Bots — This is a personal annoyance for me because I encounter these often due to my field of work. The Twitter user that @replies people with links to web hosting provider comparisons and recommendations. I especially loathe these because they act like they’re your friend or something. Like you were looking for web hosting and voilá, there they are to help you out. This is annoying in 2 parts though: 1.) I was never even looking for web hosting to begin with, so stop soliciting me. 2.) Those web host comparison sites are always a scam. It’s been proven that the majority of the web hosting top 10 list websites give out their spots on the list based on either the amount of money you pay for the listing fee, or how much you pay to be an “affiliate”. Base your web hosting reviews on human experience.

And there you have it. A short list of some of the worst things you can encounter on Twitter. Got your own to add? Post a comment or contact me.

Another Twitter Scam Website

Daryn — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:52:16 +0000

Scammers never sleep. There’s a new website out on the net that strives to do one thing and one thing alone: steal your Twitter account credentials. Thanks to an RT of @wakooz’s post from @RR5280, I was able to make sure I steer clear of it I’m now making sure to pass it along. I wrote a previous post that talked about another website that did basically the same thing.

The moral of the story

Be weary of the URL of the website you’re signing into. I once had a Rapidshare account stolen from me because I failed to check the URL I was signing into while downloading a file. I had to purchase a new one to replace it. Be careful!

There’s a New URL Shortener In Town

Daryn — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:52:57 +0000

That’s right. And it’s URL is bloq.in. I like to experiment with the scripts that other developers create and PHPurl is an awesome one. Written by Nile Flores, it’s a simple script that does exactly what you need it to do: shorten your URL. It also has the nice feature of allowing you to set a keyword for the URL you are shortening. For example, if the link is about the late Michael Jackson (we miss you, MJ), then your URL would be something like “http://bloq.in/michaeljackson“. If a keyword has already been used, you will be prompted to enter something else. Simple and awesome.

The other beauty of Bloq.in and PHPurl is that instead of using a random 3 or 4 characters as the URL, it goes by single digits counting up from 1. So until it reaches the 1,000′s, the URL is gonna be short and sweet (unless you use some /longobnoxioustaginstead).

The admin panel is also fantastic. It shows the amount of hits for each link users have added, which IP each link was posted from and you can also create new links and edit existing ones.

Making it all look purdy

I’m the type that likes to redesign everything to my liking and PHPurl wasn’t going to escape from my web developer clutches. So I took it upon myself to redesign the administrator panel, as well as the front-end so that everything matched Bloqhead.com.

Redesigned PHPurl admin panel

So there you have it. A plug for my new URL shortener Bloq.in and a small review for PHPurl.

Quality vs. Quantity – You Are Not A Guru

Daryn — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:16:32 +0000

I'm vulgar. Call someone who cares.

With the huge rise in social networking popularity across the web, “social media” and whatever other bullshit buzz word the next “guru” has coined; comes the huge influx of people hopping on the bandwagon as the next self-proclaimed savior to the mediasphere-addicted masses. I’m really at my wit’s end with the amount of “professionals” bombarding me on Twitter with crap like:

“10,000 followers in one month!”

“How to make money with Twitter!”

“Make money at home!”

Ugh, just shut the fuck up already (sorry, late warning but this post has vulgarity). We get it. You’re some elite genius who has risen from the ashes of MySpace and other half-assed, master-minded, millionaire-making mounds of shit – otherwise known as social networks. Alright, fair enough. Everyone has to have an angle, right? Sure, whatever. You’ll tell me anything if you think it will sell me.

Okay, you’re burnt out at your bland desk job. Like a lot of savvy web users, you’re always using things like Facebook, Twitter, Brightkite, etc. You think to yourself,

“Man, I’m pretty snazzy when it comes to this social networking stuff. Look at all the people I’ve got following me on Twitter! I must be on to something…”

That’s when it hits you. You’re going to write a book and then build a website, maybe even start doing videos promoting your new techniques and start holding seminars. It’s going to be AWESOME! YOU’LL BE A MILLIONAIRE IN NO TIME! There’s a huge flaw in this idea though: 10 million other annoying people have thought of the same exact idea. Those same 10 million people are currently shoving their idea in peoples faces in the form of tweets on Twitter or whatever the hell else there is out there.

YTMND

The one that annoys me the most are the ones that are always talking about how you can gain 10,000 followers in a week or whatever insane time frame they lay down. Of course you know if the first guy said a month, the next guy with the same brilliant, original idea is going to say 1 week. Whatever happened to quality over quantity? I really have respect for the Twitter users that have built up their following by putting in the sweat and tears required. More power to them. They’re obviously interesting people and thus others want to hear what they have to say.

Quality vs. Quantity

But then there’s those users that do absolutely nothing but push theirs and other peoples “make money fast” products, and rehash links/material/etc that someone else put hard work into creating. The ones that just RT (ReTweet) the crap out of anything they think people will read. There’s no originality in any of it. It makes sense on some degree. For example, if you’re selling a product that you’ve really put your heart and soul into and people really love it, then sure, bombard us about it. But if you’re some self-proclaimed social media guru who just goes around tooting his/her own horn, posting crap people have read 300 times over from another source, then please go away. Find a new angle (there’s that word again!) and GTFOH (you’ll have to figure this abbreviation out on your own).

Twitter Fake URL Scam

Daryn — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 01:13:19 +0000

About 5 minutes ago I was followed by someone that gave away the strong essence of “bot”. Lo and behold, a bot it was. If you’re new to the world of Twitter, the username is a dead give away. Usually bot usernames will consist of random characters and make absolutely no sense.

Beware this latest method. Here’s how it went down:

Received a follow notification via email, knew it was a bot (the erratic characters in the username)
Click on user’s profile link regardless (to block them)
Click on the user’s profile URL out of curiosity
Was slightly thrown when it lead to the Twitter home page
Checked the URL of the page I was viewing and realized the deal

Twitter Scam

These bots are farming Twitter accounts to pedal their garbage. This type of stuff pisses me off. If you click a link anywhere that leads you to the Twitter home page and you notice something weird about it don’t log into the website. If you do, you can kiss your Twitter account goodbye.

BloqParty.net Launched

Daryn — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:01:25 +0000

BloqParty is a community geared towards the discussion of pretty much everything-including technology, sports, clothing and fashion, graphic and web design, video games, movies and anything else within reason. The intent of it at this moment is to keep a once thriving community’s comradery alive and to also invite new members to the mix. I plan on promoting it more and more over time and am considering other avenues of networking to get the word out.

If you’re not already a member, make sure to stop by and check it out some time. bloqparty.net

Bloqhead.com | The Web Design Portfolio of Daryn St. Pierre » Social

Carol Zara Featured on G4TV’s Women of The Web

Similar Posts

Annoying Twitter Practices

Similar Posts

Another Twitter Scam Website

The moral of the story

Similar Posts

There’s a New URL Shortener In Town

Making it all look purdy

Similar Posts

Quality vs. Quantity – You Are Not A Guru

YTMND

Quality vs. Quantity

Similar Posts

Twitter Fake URL Scam

Similar Posts

BloqParty.net Launched

Similar Posts