Some listeners may know the story of one of the most interesting men (and lovers) in my life. At the time of my reporting, he was 90-plus-something. Currently, he is describing himself as 100-minus-something. For a few weeks several years ago, he tested me by trying to pretend he was actually ten years younger. But I had seen the website with his birthdate and place, there was no pretending.

Outside of the fact that you may be able to fool biology with botox and surgery for a while, yet the closer you approach 100, the harder it is to lie about it. Or, at least, that’s the current state of things. Perhaps if he had done something differently: eaten less meat, done fewer drugs (he was a doctor that could prescribe his own), had less occasion to drink (isn’t dinner an occasion?), swam more laps…

One variable he never dallied with was sex. Were it up to him, he would still use every minute to create opportunity. The fact that he is now accompanied around-the-clock by a woman his son installed in his life (due to his own unavailability or desire to do that job) puts the brakes on that perhaps all-important fountain of youth found in the deep wells of sexual satisfaction.

Or does it? My love and concern for this man has never stopped. So I make it a point to be near him as often as my crazy life allows. There is a natural barrier between this “new woman” and myself: she is from Peru and speaks Spanish, Portuguese and French. My German and English don’t get us anywhere, and my French is appallingly rudimentary. The body language, even before a word has been uttered, is clear: this is now her territory. I am not particularly welcome, absolutely not trusted (what could I possibly want from this man?!) and eyed with suspicion.

Only after several failed attempts at clarification and one arduous shopping journey where we tried to figure each other out (it wasn’t as if I could say point-blank: “look, sister, this is a former lover I am deeply concerned about and want to spend as much time with as possible before he meets his maker, just get out of the way and let us enjoy a few hours…”) did it occur to me that, well, perhaps she wasn’t just doing the wash and making him lunch. Perhaps he HAD, in fact…

There you have it: men can conjur up jealousy spats between women at 98 years of age. Believe it.

I have no idea where the whole thing will go. I know only two things: I’m determined to polish up on my French. And love is truly the most amazing, unpredictable, fascinating thing.

So while we were talking about it, a concept I’ve been playing with came to the forefront.

I have two Twitter accounts, both packed full with 2000 people that I’m following. Initially I considered just filling up an account with 2000 and moving on to the next one, to whatever suited my needs. But this has proved to be impractical. To say nothing of the confusion, if someone is on one list and not the other; or mistakenly on both. So, trust me, multiple accounts really doesn’t work, unless one is for business, one for pleasure, which is how I tried to structure them initially.

But what I found, in using them, is that I gravitated much more to the personal one (@michebella), only checking the business one (@michebel) on weekends or through my iPhone. The personal one, I’d use daily.

And also, and I was trying to explain all this to my roommate today, the personal one I care for like a rosebush. I am constantly pruning and caring for it. I am strictly vigilant about those that I’m following. When I first started (both accounts), I just ran helter skelter, adding as many folks as I could. I wanted to get up to that 2000 number, thinking that was the point, after all.

It isn’t.

Sure you want to have lots of followers, and usually having 2000 will get you close to 2000 following you. On my personal account, I currently have 1400 following me, and can’t seem to get it past that number. Oddly, on my business account, I quickly added the 2000 and got over 2000 following me. (I still don’t understand that.)

It all started this morning with a discussion of Mafia Wars, and why I think it’s rude to one’s Twitter stream. My roommate’s retort was: “Well, they are all just writing about what they had for breakfast anyway, what difference does it make?” (The usual thing from those who aren’t really using Twitter the right way.) But it made me think of my business account, and how in a recent perusal, I had the same frustration that my roommate was having.

The reason I wanted to write this column is because I think this is really key. Part of really GETTING Twitter, I think, is making your Twitter stream work for you. Meaning getting value, as much as possible anyway, out of each and every person you’re following.

People bounce others for many reasons. It could be that they are always talking about sports and you don’t care about that. Or they fall on the opposite side of the political spectrum than you. The important, even KEY, thing here is that you don’t sit there, frustrated, as my roommate does, and bemoan, oh this is stupid. You bounce them. And add someone who does provide value to you.

I’m not saying that every little nugget I put out there in the Twitter stream is golden. Or that anyone’s is, for that matter. But it really is like buildng a friendship. You take the good with the bad, and hope that overall, it’s a good experience.

I feel very strongly that everyone should have at least 100 people they are following, because if not, you get the same crap from the same people over and over. No one is that interesting.

But once you get up toward 250+, you get more of the concept of a stream, an organic flow of ideas and thoughts. It’s easy to scroll past those that don’t interest you. Less than that, you’re just left thinking that it’s all stupid.

Look at it this way. You have the whole world in front of you, like one huge dinner party. Who are you going to talk to? and why? whose advice are you going to seek out? who do you want hanging around just cause they have a cute turn of phrase? And if you’re now saying, well, Michelle, I don’t KNOW the whole world, I have no idea! This is what Follow Fridays are for.

Those who understand and stay on Twitter, regularly participate in Follow Fridays. Many have explained it better than me, but in short, you have people you value on your list. On Friday, they will tell you who they have on their list that they really like (for whatever reason). So add them.

Or at least check them out and then add them. This is how your list can grow every week, organically, with people you find interesting. Cause very likely those you find interesting will have interesting friends too.

But don’t SETTLE for a crappy list and just moan about it. If people are swearing too much, or flashing too much nudity, or whatever you hot buttons are: unfollow them.

When I settle down to my Twitter stream, it is a pleasant blissful place. I get inspired, enlightened, calmed. I learn things I don’t know. I hear about the latest news. I hear what others think about the latest news. Some friends drop songs off that they like.

Here’s the thing. Just like any good party, you don’t have to linger on someone talking about their foot surgery or their mom’s constipation. You go on to the next one, or, if that’s all they talk about, you unfollow them.

It’s your Twitter stream. Make it grow, make it flower, make it work for you. That, I think, is what those masses leaving Twitter don’t get. They expect it POOF! to be this amazing thing. You really have to work at making it amazing. But once you do, you won’t want to go back to just watching crap scroll by, I promise you.

Now if I could only convince my dear roommate of this. Sigh. I’ll keep you posted.

I exist at the moment, in the greatest depression since my father died 30 years ago (certainly thus far the worst year of my life).

Heck, so far all that’s happened this year was a job loss, an industry that I worked for disintegrating, a radio station that I adored going online only, the bottom dropping out of the financial markets, and the man I love choosing someone else. It can only go up from here!But that last statement is what made me really realize that I truly belong here, here in Los Angeles.

This is a strange city. One that, blissfully, the rest of the country doesn’t really seem to understand, and probably wishes would just drop off into the ocean already. So let me explain.

People come here, with their dreams bundled on their sleeves, believing in their deepest hearts that they write better screenplays, or are better actors, or know the movie business better than anyone else. They probably come here, with stars in their eyes, or at least (as I did) with big dollar signs in them. Foolishly believing that this city was gonna be the path to riches. In reality, I have been broker here than I ever have been in my life.Here’s what I have found in story after countless story of this brutal town. You get two years. You come here, naive and full of hope and optimism. The city quickly shows you that things aren’t going to be handed to you on a silver platter. EVEN IF you are the best actor, writer, dancer, musician or cinematographer this town has ever seen.You get two years to tough it out. Many leave in the first six months, slinking back home with their tail between their legs. Many more struggle with not enough to eat, chasing that dream that brought them here. And if you can tough it out for two years, I think you’ll probably be here to stay.

The magical formula to succeed in this town is one that rears its head whenever times are toughest, like now. You have to BELIEVE at your deepest core, that whatever things look like now, it’s gonna turn around for you. Something’s gonna happen. Some combination of circumstances, some chance meeting, some accident of preparedness meets luck is going to fall into your lap and voila, you are back on top. That is, after all, how this town really works.

You have to believe in yourself with a fierceness that would make others quake. You have to keep plugging away when, in any other city, it would seem like every single door is closed to you. When you have absolutely no reasonable hope left, you have to pull more hope from your inner reserves. Although the flip side of this is that the town is then also filled with people who are never going to succeed at screenwriting or acting or directing like they think they are, but they plug away anyway.

What one discovers as one walks this perilous path is that if you truly love something, it’s something you HAVE to do, no matter the odds, no matter what anyone else tells you, no matter how people like you (as old as you, as heavy as you, as weird as you, as whatever as you) never can succeed at this. Case in point: who would’ve thought a few years ago that Mickey Rourke would be an Oscar-nominee?

And that is it. That is what drives me. This almost pathological impulse to continue when everything in the world tells me not to. To believe deeply that things will turn around. That those closed doors will open up, that that guy’s heart may turn around one day, and even if I try and try and try and nothing happens, it’s all about the journey, anyway, right?

That, my friends, is the essence of succeeding in Los Angeles. I am truly home.

Having been a recent victim of a newspaper’s layoffs, I have a few things of my own to say about all this. I also consider myself to be deeply ensconced in new media, and have a few things to say about that, too. 

I wanted to comment on an article that I have posted on my Facebook, link here: http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/12/media-landscape-newspapers/ 

Max Gladwell, who already doesn’t understand social media enough to have a comments section attached to his dissertation (sigh), makes a case about the death of newspapers. What he posits is that newspapers shouldn’t die because they are still the Fourth Estate, the ones responsible for holding the government’s feet to the fire. To which I say: where has this Fourth Estate been in the last eight years then? Where are the angry epithets about all of the war crimes committed by the current men in power? As our habeus corpus was taken away, where was the outrage of that Fourth Estate? Did it reach to anyone other than the few journalists who knew what it meant? Torture? At Guantanamo and elsewhere? Where was the commentary about that? Global warming, and the corporations that condone it? And on and on.

To those ends, I say, the newpapers’ power to effect change has already transferred hands, in case Mr. Gladwell’s not noticed it. The news that affects people, gets into their system, makes them take political action, is already happening more on Facebook, MySpace and blogs than from reading any newspaper. WE the PEOPLE have become the Fourth Estate. We talk about things that are wrong with our government, and do something about it, as Obama’s largely Internet-fueled election proved. The newspapers, also in case you haven’t noticed, are firmly in the pockets of the land barons, the rich profiteers, the corporations who are carrying out the very things we need to be railing against.  We, we who still care about our country, are out here, carrying messages hand to hand, if necessary (well, ok, maybe with the little help of an iPhone) to tell others the truth.

We blog it, we podcast it, we status it on FB, we tweet it on Twitter. The thirst for real news will never die. But the place we look for it has already changed. And I would have told Mr. Gladwell that, if only he was new media-savvy enough to have a comments section.

She was talking in Beachwalks 551 about “the freedom to give,” specifically mentioning her yoga class and how she ended up giving more when she could give whatever she wanted, as opposed to a set fee.

I think the band Radiohead learned this too, when they offered their album online for whatever people thought it was worth. They ended up having quite a few downloads (with people giving various amounts), but the fascinating thing is that once the physical album was available, it didn’t suffer in its sales at all.

The most important thing about these experiments, I think, is not the dollar amounts given or not given, rather it’s the change in thinking that is propelled here, that needs to be encouraged. Give me what you can afford. Give me what you think I’m worth.

I know that when I’m in a restaurant that forces a 20% tip onto the bill, they get not a penny extra from me. But if it’s variable, I tend to be a good tipper as a rule.

I can see the whole Internet economy (certainly as regards podcasting) going this way. If you like my show, drop a few dollars in the PayPal box. Or pick something off my Amazon wish list and send it to me. And if you’re broke, and can’t afford it, that’s ok too. You can still enjoy the show too.

It somehow puts the whole package into the heart mode, instead of the capitalist pocketbook mode. It is an exchange of good faith. I give you my good faith. Most people will respond with good faith in return. And really, isn’t the whole thing Radiohead was saying was: let’s get it BACK to touching your heart, instead of being money-grubbing pigs here?

I don’t know how Radiohead feels about it, but what encouraged me most reading that story and listening to this show that Rox did, was that. Let’s deal in the commerce of the heart more. Let’s get it back to the square that it needs to be in. A love-based, faith-based economy, instead of the fear, when am I gonna get mine?, place that it’s been in for too long.

All of that being said, right after I finish this, I’m going to explore how to put a PayPal button on this site, cause right now, I do my podcasts for absolutely no money. But I have faith it’s all going to work out, anyway.

For those out there who aren’t currently on Twitter, don’t use it, don’t know what it does, what purpose it serves, let me explain that I can hardly imagine a life without Twitter. You add people that seem interesting. They add you if you seem interesting. Social etiquette of Twitter has decreed that if someone follows you, you follow them back. To do otherwise has been deemed rude. 

Out of all the social networks, Twitter was one of the ones I couldn’t imagine living without. In short, it is like a real-world IM service WITH the entire world. Kinda like AOL used to be way back in the early days of the Internet. Where you could tell where the sun was setting and rising by who was logging on. There’s England, now the East Coast, now the Midwest people, now the Californians, etc. Its biggest advantage so far, other than keeping those in your network intimately connected to you, is that you hear REAL time news in real time. The last California earthquake was Twittered, and beat AP’s reporting of it by 20 minutes. That, probably, is the reason I’ll continue to stay on it, cause no one else offers that. 

But, and this is a note to budding social networking gurus out there: when you come up with your great next social network, prepare for growth. Structure it into your business plan. And whatever you foresee for growth, multiply that by ten, and do that. Twitter stumbled badly lately when their servers choked from unexpected exponential growth. They also had a problem with bots creeping in and destroying business. Their answer for all of this was to limit the amount of followers a person could have. However, they didn’t tell anyone this. All of a sudden, you just couldn’t add anyone anymore. The first problem (other than being non-communicative, and what the hell is that for a social network? built on people TALKING to each other?) is that finding anyone to communicate your problem to is next to impossible. Hearing back from anyone is absolutely impossible. I’ve even Twittered directly to both of Twitter’s founders, and have heard NOTHING to this date. 

The second problem is that the whole thing is completely arbitrary. While it’s clear to absolutely everyone who uses Twitter that you are required to speak in bites of 140 characters, it is completely unclear exactly how many followers you can have. Or how many you can follow. At this moment, for example, I’d really like to add my sister, who arrived at Twitter after me. According to what they are telling me, I have to delete followers to add more. But how many? I had 3,106 people that I was following when all this transpired. (1,770 are following me.) Do I need to drop 6? 60? 600? Nowhere is this stated. Many have said to me, why do you need 3000 followers anyway? Why do I need 15,000 friends on MySpace? Why do there need to be limits? How many people are in the world? If I want the ability to talk to all of them, shouldn’t I have that ability? Sure, maybe many will only use Twitter to talk to friends and family, but I have a wide social media circle. The depth and beauty of Twitter is in the variety of people you are talking to, in my estimation. 

I have many more thousands who listen regularly to my podcast. What if every one of them wanted to read my Tweets? They probably couldn’t. It would probably max out Twitter’s system. I communicate with many people. People from all areas of the various social networks I belong to. People from many places all over the world. People I know intimately, and people I just met. Rather like life. Why limit that? Twitter saying, well, it’s set up so that you talk in 140 characters, you should be used to restraint, doesn’t really wash when you are talking about growing your business.

The ideal for any social network is to have as many people talking as possible, isn’t it? To say nothing of all the people IN my social network whom I promote (or promoted) Twitter to, on a daily basis. It’s frustrating, it’s counter-productive, and it’s causing me to use and promote Twitter less. I hope you’re happy, Twitter founders. And I’m going to keep writing and blogging about my dissatisfaction as long as these problems go on. That’s how social networks actually work. Who knows? Maybe someone out there will realize what Twitter’s doing wrong and be able to build the next Twitter. You let me follow as many people as I want, I’ll jump over there in a heartbeat. 

Beach Walks (www.beachwalks.tv), as you may or may not know, is a podcast filmed in Hawaii. The amazing host, Roxanne, aka Rox, gives us insight or inspiration or just thoughts as she goes through her day (kind of like what we do on Whispered Pearls). But she’s walking along the beaches of Hawaii. A must-watch, btw. 

She also gives various Hawaiian words to us to learn and embrace. For me, a linguist, it has been very interesting. It makes me sad that the Hawaiian language is dying out so much, because Hawaiians seem to embrace language in quite a different way than any I’ve been exposed to. The words quite often come more from spiritual principles, and descriptions of feelings, than the more concrete things that Germanic languages derive from.

Well, at least part of this derives from the fact that Germanic languages come from places dealing with snow and ice, and Hawaii is beaches and sunshine. It does provide people with a different mindset (having lived in both types of places). 

Which brings me to the word she talked about today (well, in the episode I watched today): mahalo. Silly me. I thought I was all over the word mahalo. I knew, roughly, that it meant thank you. I also knew that Jason Calcanis (one of my favorite web stars) had designed a cool site around it (www.mahalo.com), and from that arose Mahalo Daily, another cool podcast. I’m all over mahalo.

Then Rox explained it.

Mahalo, you see, is not only thank you. In fact, it actually is more the word for gratitude. And, as Rox described it, it’s “gratitude mixed with respect.” A typical Hawaiian word. Coming from the spiritual.

And it is now that I can truly embrace mahalo. When I’ve heard people rally around mahalo, I just didn’t get it. Mahalo, I realize now, describes my life, the way I’m trying to live every day. Gratitude, mixed with respect. It is the way I approach people. It is contained in every interaction of every day. Mahalo is one of the best words I have ever heard, in fact, streamlining, as it does such essential stuff, big stuff, into one useful word.

And now that I think of it, I can’t even think of a Germanic equivalent of mahalo. Germans being all stiff and cold, and Hawaiians being all embracing and giving from the heart. (Not to stereotype…but there is some truth in this, again related, I believe to the weather of the areas.)

Fascinating stuff. Thanks again, Rox. Even though I’m so behind with your podcasts, you enlighten me every time I listen.

Sincerely: mahalo. –Michelle     

So I’m spending the weekend trying to relax, not be in front of a computer screen, be outside enjoying the sunshine. Yet, here I am, listening to Adam Curry’s shows (trying to catch up…I’m so behind on my podcasts…sigh). How did we create this reality? It seems like there is always so much to do, and never enough time to do it all.

I really hope to tape all three shows this weekend, since I’m behind on that too. Or maybe just be good to myself and do nothing but get lots of sleep and eat good food. (Healthy food, not fast food, that is.)

So whatever it is you’re doing right now, I hope that you are treating yourself well, and putting yourself and your life in front of your job. Ya know? Do like I wish I could do, not like I’m actually doing… heh.

Take care, everyone.

–Michelle

PS–I hope someday to figure out how to give Maureen and I both our own separate space here. But learning WordPress is down on my list of priorities. However, if anyone can lend a suggestion, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.

Scoble’s assessment is that you are only as strong as the people YOU follow or add as friends on the various sites. I would agree with that. But I would go further to say that media has changed. It is very much a pro-active game now. And WE, as in WE THE PEOPLE, are in control of it now. It’s an essential distinction.

I actually had someone on my friends list on Facebook try to sell me on his new application which featured movies from Paramount that I could add to my site. When he approached me, he explained that people like it ” because it gives them a measure of fame and some contact with Paramount.” I promptly wrote him back, and said, boy howdy, YOU are the one who doesn’t get it here.

We have surpassed Paramount. Why do you think YouTube is so popular? Because Paramount seeded it with its movies, and bowed down to us little people? No. Because WE (we the people) decided what we liked and thought was funny (much as we do in our regular lives) and passed it along to our friends.

And what he was essentially asking me to do, as I pointed out to him, is to pimp out my friends, and blast Paramount’s videos at them. Essentially an ad for Paramount. For FREE. On my page. What does he think I am? Stupid?

So, after I unfriended him, I replied that I don’t do that, and that if he’s working for a social media company, he better get with the way it really works out here in social media land. People are my friends (even on MySpace, where I have close to 15,000 on one account) because I DON’T blast ads at them. Or, if I do, like my choices on iLike on my Facebook account, it’s because I personally think it’s cool. If they choose to click on it, they can decide for themselves.

It is the height of arrogance and a sure way to get unfriended on any social media platform to blast ads at your friends. This is even true on platforms like Second Life. Remember, first and foremost, these are ALL communities.

Sure maybe all 15,000 of my friends aren’t close and personal, but I treat them as if they are. I respect them enough to not sell them crap. And expect the same treatment in return. It’s the unwritten etiquette of the world of social media.

What others who don’t get who aren’t participating in these new worlds yet is that it’s a fabulous way to meet new friends, colleagues, people with like interests. Just respect the turf, man.