While tweeting a thought I had moments ago about why it seems that Twitter is mostly Adult / Older aged users I had the idea to publish a poll to get a general understanding as to the actual average Age of Twitter users!
Please be honest, and select your age bracket in the poll below! Of course I urge you to tell others so we can make this poll as acurate and useful as possible! Thank you for participating, and passing the word! RETWEET!
[poll id="6"][...]
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NOTE: Please remember to see the updates at the end of this article for the LATEST information I have on this issue.
It seems today a Phishing scheme was activated that is using peoples Twitter accounts to spread itself in order to obtain new user data.
It is sending a message via Direct Message (DM) that says "hey! check out this funny blog about you...http://jannawalitax.blogspo... " Going to this link sends you to a phishing site.
The source of the problem is likely from people providing their Username & Password to a Third-Party twitter service. This third-party Twitter service seems to be using that information to log into your account and Direct Message all of your followers with the aformentioned message.
The way to fix this is to simply CHANGE your password!
To prevent the spread of this exploit, mention this to all of your followers, so they too will know to change their password.
If you get a DM from someone, do them a favor and DM them BACK and let them know their account has been compromised. They should change their password IMMEDIATELY!
As I learn more about this situation, I will post it here! Do your followers a favor, and pass the[...]
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Have you ever noticed that you are not able to send a Direct Message to people on Twitter if they are not following you? Theoretically, that is how it is supposed to be! I have discovered a "back door" approach which will allow you to send a Direct Message to someone even if they are not following you!
To do this:
- Open Twitter in a new Browser window and sign into your account.
- Go to the following URL:
http://twitter.com/direct_messages/create/##USERNAME##
Be sure to replace "##USERNAME##" with the exact User Name of the person you are attempting to Direct Message!
That url will open up a blank message where you can then send your 140 Character (or less) message!
That's It!
UPDATE: I am a GOOF! I originally created this post a few days ago and the
"hack" was working Perfectly!... But I sat on the post without releasing it. I decided to finally publish it a few minutes ago, without testing the theory again (this would seem ok, right!?) Evidently, in the last few days Twitter has updated some back-end coding that prevents this loop-hole from happening! Instead of deleting the post, (since it has had over 120 views within its first 4 minutes of life) I thought I would[...]
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Because of the rampant growth and popularity of Twitter.com, many people are only aware of the present state of Twitter. I decided to take a step back in time to see what Twitter was, before it was Twitter as we know it!
Follow me on this little journey! A visual history of Twitter, with whimsical commentary from yours truly!
Exploiting the magical mojo of The Wayback Machine I was able to step a few years back in time to see the beginnings of Twitter.
Twitter.com as a URL dates back to March 2, 2001. It stayed as a parked domain, owned by Dotist.com (evidently an ISP with a side-business in domain squatting), essentially unchanged except for rolling advertisements and layouts likely placed by the hosting services until May of 2004 where the fun begins to rear its feathery head!
May 18, 2004 - An update to the site is posted, and parked domain advertisements are removed.
February 5, 2005 - A simple little blue Twitter "logo" is[...]
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Today, Twitter will be rolling out a spam list removal protocol which will result in many users noticing a great decrease in followers. This is great to see that Twitter is taking efforts to purge their database of the spammy followers, which essentially give a false sense of quality follower levels.
From Twitter's official blog:
we’ll be releasing a change later this afternoon that will start removing deleted and suspended users from your list of followers. As this hasn’t been cleaned up previously, you may notice your follower counts go down. This is to be expected.
They later updated with this statement:
Also: on the decreased followers, this will not happen all at once but over time.
This roll-out explains why I, personally have not yet been effected by this, but have noticed (Via TwitterCounter's
Top 100 List) some of the Twitter Elite suffering a dramatic hit in the 'hundreds' of followers over-night!
The greatest of these seems to have been @newmediajim taking a 403 follower hit! In the image below, notice the drastic drop in numbers from yesterday to today!
So, when you[...]
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I have been on a roll finding some odd-ball pictures and situations lately... I swear this stuff FINDS ME! My latest discovery? The Obama Express Food Market... They just put up the sign and renamed it! This is located near my work.
I'm willing to bet Obama didn't approve THAT message!
Click image for larger version.
[...]
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Remembering shortcut items and how to do obscure functions are something I have a problem with, and one of the most forgotten things that I tend to want to do on occasion is remove those pesky unwanted AutoFill Drop Down items that you misspelled months ago that continue to appear in Text Fields that you run across all over the internet.
You know, the little section where you fill in your name, address, email, and many other things when signing up for various sites and services, and of course within Search fields on various sites. These entries auto-save to attempt to save you time and keystrokes in the future by supplying you with this information in similar field types. ie: Fields labeled "First Name" will supply previous entries that you entered in other websites that were labeled "First Name".
Although very useful when filling out forms, to prevent the redundancy of typing the same information time and time again, the problem with these fields is they will also retain unwanted, or accidentally misspelled items! The fix to this problem is not so obvious... therefore I always forget how to do it. [...]
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Today while driving home from work, I noticed a man who was texting on his cellphone while driving. To me that is absolutely insane, and a very disrespectful and careless thing to do. Considering the potential for catastrophe, this is just as bad as drunk driving or even driving while wearing sunglasses at night! Sir, do you really not care about life enough to wait until you get to your destination?
What makes my little story a little more unusual from the typical idiot texter is the fact that he was driving a moped while doing it! Seriously! I was able to catch a picture of this guy while we stopped at a traffic light. I promise you, he was doing it while we were moving! I didn't want to be "That guy who got into a wreck while driving, attempting to take a photograph of a guy who was texting while driving a moped." Great headliner huh!?
This little situation got me thinking! I wonder if anyone else has some crazy stories of idiot drivers doing totally insane things while driving?
If you have any stories,[...]
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In the growing world of Twitter, many third-party Twitter services have surfaced that work in tandem with this wonderful micro-blogging platform to accomplish a number of great and useful tasks.
With this growing number of useful services, there have also been a number of ideas that allow users the capability to monetize from their growing popularity on Twitter, the most well known being MagPie. Magpie has seen an overwhelming response of negativity because it inserts content related advertisements between users normal Twitter Feeds. Therefore, the user who uses MagPie is simply looked at as a spammer and quickly unfollowed by previously loyal followers.
Along comes Twittad, an unobtrusive approach at serving graphic advertisements that will only appear on your own Twitter Home Page exploiting the customizable background feature within user's Twitter profile. Therefore you aren't spamming your followers with irrelevant Tweets that you didn't personally send!
Originally I signed up for Twittad with the intent of mocking the service as yet another site attempting to monetize Twitter, just like MagPie was! I even sent a couple Tweets regarding this! I signed up for an account,[...]
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I just received notification that Pownce.com (a major competitor to Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms) will be shutting down service starting December 15, 2008! This comes as quite a surprise considering it seemed to be growing in popularity. I think Twitter's relentless growth along with economic effects have made SixApart consolidate to sustain a solid future (especially following the recent acquisition).
Here is a quote of the email I received from them moments ago:
We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15,
2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new
pro accounts.
To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can
save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export.
Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not
be accessible after this date.
Please visit our new home to find out more:
http://www.sixapart.com/pownce
Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,
The Pownce Crew
Please post your comments! Are you a Pownce user?[...]
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