The Impact of Sharing Your Location Through Social Media

Last summer, I was out of town on a family vacation and I thought it'd be cool to tweet that. Later that day, while listening to This Week in Tech, one of the hosts mentioned the rise in house robberies after someone tweets that they're not home. I was horrified for the rest of the trip.

Thankfully, my house was not hit. However, sharing your location publicly through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare can be dangerous. Getting your house robbed is one thing; but what if someone you don't know decides to go and find you?

Please Rob Me is a website that aims to raise awareness about the dangers of sharing your location publicly on social media platforms. While they don't actually want people to use this site as a resource for who to rob, it very well could come in handy for a lot of bad things if used the wrong way. Through this site, you can see every Foursquare tweet in the world, or narrow down your search by location or Twitter user name. I was especially startled when I searched a local city and found people I knew on the first page. The sad thing is, I'm sure 99.9% of the people listed on this website have no idea that their tweets are being displayed on a site that indirectly encourages people to rob you, let alone the fact that your tweets are being displayed elsewhere at all.

We still have a long way to go before we can catch up with the technology and the ramifications of our actions. I'm not saying to stop playing Foursquare or never share your location. Just understand what you could be getting into when you put your location out there.

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Twitter 101 For Businesses

As Twitter continues to grow, more and more businesses are jumping on the bandwagon to try and improve their web presence. For a lot of start-up advertisers and marketers (such as myself), creating and maintaining a Twitter account is going to be an increasingly important part of our future.

Thankfully, Twitter has launched a guide called Twitter 101 for Business. Having read through it, it seems like something you should definitely check out if you have any sort of social media work coming your way.

If you're already a Tweet junkie, you can probably skip the basics (such as the lingo section), but the "best practices" section in particular I recommend you check out. Using Twitter as a business tool takes makes your role in the Twitter-verse a bit different, and people's tolerance for your "Twitter-rhea" is minimal. I've removed myself from such accounts cause it was just too many tweets to go through.

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Twitter Trending Topic Pollution

One of my favourite things about Twitter besides telling everyone how awesome my lunch was, is the Trending Topics feature. I've always found it fascinating to see what people are talking about and be part of the "party line" either by reading what people have to say about the topic or jumping into the conversation.

But recently I've noticed a ton of people taking advantage of the system and to me it's really hampering the experience.

Let me pull up one example from a trending topic this instant: Wal-Mart.

Why is it a trending topic right now? Let's see if I can find out.

lcarou2148 Make $20.00 an Hour on Twitter See how here! http://tinyurl.com/mrwcve Michael Jackson harry potter WAL-MART less than 20 seconds ago from web

Swing and a miss. Spam is becoming increasingly prevalent on Twitter and it's really disrupting the conversation. People who throw in trending topics into their tweets to draw attention to their spam are just as evil as any other form of spammer.

chiquitaaa @LegendaryWriter Why the heck is wal-mart in the trending topics??? O.o weird... less than a minute ago from web

It seems like every time something new breaks into the trending topics section, 80% the tweets then become, "Why is this a trending topic?" instead of just hitting the topic button and finding out for themselves. Ugh.

Divas365 I sometimes hook in Wal-Mart parking lots hoping to meet harry potter & Nia long.

Personally the worst to me. The people who think they're clever writing a sentence with every trending topic at that moment are just maddening. Your not clever if everyone on Twitter is doing it. And the idea is dumb in the first place just a shameless cry for e-attention.

I'm about 100 tweets in, and I STILL don't know exactly why Wal-Mart is a trending topic? I found only two bits of news (something about India and something about rating eco-friendly products), but 98% of the Wal-Mart tweets were just garbage.

I'm not sure if there's any solution to spammers or people being...people. But I do miss when it was easy to find out why a trending topic was a trending topic.

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Tweet My Gaming: What Nerds Are Talking About

One thing I love about Twitter is being able to join and follow the conversation. Regardless of the topic, you'll be able to use the search engine to see up to the second what people have to say about pretty much anything.


Though this method does have it's limitations, which is why I find Tweet My Gaming so cool. It tracks in real-time all tweets that mention video games or anything video game related. Using Twitter search, you can only find stuff if it's hash-tagged or very specific things. For instance, if I wanted to find stuff about "video games", Twitter search would only pull up results where people typed "video games". Tweet My Gaming seems to be able to grab anything with a video game reference.

It'll be cool to see all of the different variations on this idea pop up to follow all sorts of subject matter. Tweet My Baseball? Tweet My Lunch? Tweet My Re-tweet?

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Twitter + Google Street View = Stweet = Overly Creepy Mash-Up of Technology?

Thanks to Mashable, I discovered this new application called Stweet. It's the unholy mash-up of Twitter and Google Maps street view so that you can see the latest tweet in that city and a view of approximately where the person was tweeting from. It works by syncing up with such mobile applications as Twitterfon and locating an approximate address of where you just tweeted. For some, part of the appeal of Twitter is having people care about each and every move you make. But do you really want people to know exactly where you are when you do it?

Right now the site is a bit buggy, with the feed dropping out every few minutes. Certain cities work better than others. I'm not sure if this will ever have any practical use as is, but it's a cool mash-up nonetheless. For now, I'll go back to randomly stalking New York tweeters for no other reason than the fact that I can now.

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Tips to Control Your Personal Brand

The idea of personal branding is extremely important to me. I started this blog as one way to control my personal brand, so that there were other things to find out about me besides a fake Amazon review under my name. I also started Leaders of the New as a way for other future advertisers to control their personal brand.

Yesterday, Mashable (which is quickly becoming one of my favourite blogs) posted an article about 5 ways to control your personal brand right now. If you have any sort of interest in controlling your personal brand, it's a must-read.

Thanks to the article, I signed up for a Google Profile, which will help bring up direct information about you when people try and search for you. For current and potential Leaders of the New, it wouldn't be a bad idea to post the link to your interview on your Google Profile.

I'm not going to run through all 5 tips, because the article explains it a lot better than I could. The one other thing I wanted to mention is that the E-elevator pitch is real, and happening right now.



There is a service called twtjobs, that allows users to create and distribute a resume through Twitter in 140 characters or less. When I first came up with the e-elevator pitch, I half meant it as a joke. Now it's real. Should I brush up my current pitch?

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60% of Twitter Users Abandon Fail Whale After Only A Month?

According to a post on the Nielson blog (which I found through Mashable) over 60% of Twitter users quit the service after only one month. All of the staggering growth aside, it seems as though Twitter may have a hard time riding out this momentum long-term.

From the Nielson blog:

Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.

image from Nielson

A 40% retention rate is not that great, especially compared to Facebook and MySpace, who years later still hover around 70%. Having people drop off the service that fast will not be good for growth or the future of Twitter.

Personally, I know a lot of people who signed up for the service, thought it was dumb and left. Part of that comes from the service being caught in the media hype-train. Part of it comes from the stigma of Twitter being the service to tell people what you just ate for lunch. Part of that comes from people who try it out and find out it's not for them.

I've become quite the Twitter fan, but having used the service for a couple of months now, I don't see it offering enough to ever catch up to something like Facebook or Myspace. Does it need to? Probably not. Right now, it's estimated to only have about 6 million users, which is still low, especially considering all the hype it's been getting. Do you think Twitter is going to make it through or is the high dropout rate proof that Twitter is the next social media fad?

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Twitter Wars: Niketalk Vs. Diddy

image from Niketalk

Niketalk is one of my favourite message boards on the Internet. No, I've never been an official member of the board since I started following it in 2002. And no, I haven't even been following the sneaker industry for years. But the Niketalk general message boards are a regular stop-over of mine, checking a few times a day at least. It's an interesting window into the world of sneaker fans that includes a unique perspective on the latest events of the world, lots of discussion about girl problems, and is one of my favourite places to get funny pictures.

I was on Niketalk just now and I found the community decided to do something I hadn't seen done before.

Gang up on a celebrity. First victim? Diddy.



In the "NT Roastin' ______ on Twitter Appreciation...Who's next?" thread, they coordinated an attack where numerous Niketalk members sent Diddy countless insults through Twitter. Let's look at some of the highlights:

@iamdiddy Ol, "You had a spark when you started / but now you just garbage" - type of man.4 minutes ago from web

@iamdiddy Ol' "I've never even wrote helped compose the best songs on my own albums"-style man.21 minutes ago from web

@iamdiddy Ol', "I charged Miss V. Wallace $$$ to use her son's music in his own biopic"-man. (-_-)

Dre_704 Ya moms didn't let you play baseball after ya greasy %%% slid from 1st base to centerfield. Umpires f'd around and called a travel @iamdiddy

pasCHITOWNyo ol selfish %%@ %@+!$..the least you coulda did was put craig mack in some proactive commercials @iamdiddy

I wish Jada woulda really hit you w/ the refrigerator @iamdiddy.

There were far too many insults thrown at Diddy for me to post here, so I'll leave it to you to find the rest of them. Diddy didn't respond directly to the outpouring of hate typed his way, but he did post this towards the end of Niketalk's tirade.

image from Niketalk

Certain companies and celebrities have opened themselves up more through technology like Twitter, for better or worse. On the other side of the coin, you, as an average person have power. If you know how to use something like a blog, Twitter, or Facebook, you could make something happen. Like making Diddy sad, if that's one of your goals in life, I guess. I'd hope you aim higher than committing the virtual equivalent of throwing a cream pie into someone's face, but I guess this is a start.

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Rick Rolling and the Online Cultural Movement Behind Rick Astley

image from Nuclear Family Warhead

Odds are, at some point in your life, you've been the victim of a Rick Roll. Heck, you might have been victimized as recently as April Fool's day 2009 by jerks like me.

Apparently, due to deceiving Twitter posts like mine, over 500,000 people got Rick Rolled two days ago. That's pretty good for a prank that people have had about two years to figure out and get tired of.

I still find it hilarious how the Internet community made Rick Astley and the song "Never Gonna Give You Up" relevant again after all these years. And in such a weird context. I'm sure he doesn't dislike being big enough to Rick Roll the Macy's Parade last Christmas, but somewhere in his heart he must think, "Damn...I sold millions of records in my prime, and all people will ever remember me for is the Rick Roll."

Due to the nature of Internet humour, jokes usually burn out really quick. But if those numbers are any indication, there's a chance that maybe the Rick Roll will remain as the Internet's equivalent of a whoopee cushion.

Oh, before I go, I saw this amazing goal by Linus Omark that you have to see!

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Organic Using Twitter For Job Postings

image from ZDNet

With "only" 7.9 million users as of February 2009, I've noticed that most of my peers in the Creative Advertising program have yet to sign up for Twitter. Many of them hear about the service constantly and still don't know what it is. Others think that having a separate service for what is at its core the equivalent of a Facebook status tool is dumb. Before I signed up, I was in the latter group.

However, people are finding a lot of creative ways of changing the world 140 characters at a time. According to this article in Ad Age, Twitter is now Organic's main job-posting strategy. The article goes in depth on why this works so well for them on the company side. I don't know if this will ever become the go-to strategy for all job postings, but if you're on the fence about signing up, maybe Twitter's ability to help you get a job could be a reason to sign up.

It's another way of finding a job. It's a more direct way of finding a job posting the moment it hits the web on a service you'll probably use for everything else. You may have less competition (for now) through a Twitter posting. It also shows employers (particularly those with vested interest in people with online skills) that you know how to operate the tech. Heck, we might not be too far away from the "e-elevator pitch" where you're asked to sell yourself in 140 characters or less.

Here's my "e-elevator pitch":

I may need to work on that.

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