Whisperings from Whispered Pearls

My roommate, a dear, sweet woman, is far more social than me. But yet again today, we had another discussion about “I don’t get this Twitter thing.” I’ve been trying to get her to thrive on Twitter the way I do, but she doesn’t even understand the basic concept of it. Given how social and gregarious she is in first life (far more than me), this kinda blows my mind.

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 admit it. I’m a girl, and I’m addicted to The Bachelor/Bachelorette.

It was one of the reality shows that hooked me from the very beginning, with its attempts at classy romance. Lush locales, pretty clothes, elegant people. I loved it.

I’ve watched nearly all the seasons of both shows (all episodes). Didn’t care for the Navy guy (who chose no one in the end) or the blond guy (I think second season.) Other than that, I was pretty much there. I’ve seen their twists and turns, but by and large, it was predictable. And we LIKED THAT.

It’s fairly simple, really. Classy women wanna see a classy woman (or man) choose another classy man (or woman), and take them on elegant dates. Simple formula. It works. Don’t mess with it.

That is one thing that reality shows should have learned from the first season of Survivor, and we know from Twitter. Leave people to themselves, and they’ll surprise the heck out of you. Just thinking of that speech of Sue’s from the final Tribal Council gives me chills now.

The Bachelor series has been fairly free from controversy. Other than the guy picking the girl, then dumping her last season, and re-picking the previous girl, in front of a national audience, there wasn’t a whole lotta drama. (Don’t worry about the dumped Melissa. She went from tears on The Bachelor, to finalist in Dancing with the Stars, to a cushy gig with ABC News.)

People thought that whole thing was fake. To me, it seemed very very real.

This season, though… We have a wonderful new Bachelorette, another dumpee from last season’s Bachelor. By and large, she seems pretty straightforward and smart. Except for this whole nonsense with Wes. The Twitterverse is also starting to talk about how this was a producer manipulation, and not real. “Cause how could she be that stupid?”

For those of you not hanging by your TV every week, here is the basic gist. Wes is a musician. With a band. His deal for going on the show is to promote his music. He doesn’t give a crap about the girl. In fact, he has a girlfriend back at home in Austin, TX.

Now, what’s really fishy about this right from the start is that you know the producers vette the crap out of every contestant. Checking and rechecking and rechecking again so that no craziness shows up when they least expect it.

Either the producers are really losing their touch this season, or they planned all this. My roommate even thinks that Wes isn’t a “guy,” that he’s actually an actor. Because what we we’re seeing is Wes, trash talking the girl (Jillian) to his buddies in the guys’ house, then being all nice to her and telling her there was no problem. It’s brought up MORE THAN ONCE, the reveal actually spans three episodes.

And, bizarrely, she KEEPS him for two of those three episodes, finally getting rid of him this week.

When he’s trash talking her, he says stuff like he’s only there for his music, he doesn’t care about the girl. He just wants publicity for his band. When he takes Jillian on a hometown date, there’s Wes’ band. SURPRISE!

Now, I will say this: to the producers’ credit, they showed as little of his music as possible. Didn’t even really show his band (thankfully). They made the camera shots ALL about Jillian. Still. Wes was there.

It felt very much like Wes was manipulating Jillian, but it felt just as much that the producers were manipulating us. And it’s really never felt that way before. Not since “Johnny Fairplay” lied about his grandmother on Survivor has an audience (and show) been so manipulated and used.

Wes is in the limo, boasting about how he got to fourth place, while having a girlfriend. That’s something to boast about? That you AND YOUR FAMILY lied on national TV? That’s gonna sell records for you? And sell out your upcoming tour? Really? You think so?

I dunno. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but the people I see and interact with in social media are all about transparency and truth-telling. That’s the currency we trade on these days. So while everyone is steaming about what a colossal jerk Wes is, I think I’m a bit more mad about this season’s producers, who added all kinds of hokeyness this season: from the Amazing Race-style treasure hunt to the weird foot fetish guy to this guitar-playing Wes.

Just give us our Bachelor, straight up. No muss, no fuss, and especially no Wes. Thanks.

In response to this blog post:

http://blog.teamnimbuswest.com/2008/11/why-social-networking-locally-and-digitally-can-be-a-bad-idea/

I have this to say:

Boy, do I disagree with this premise.

First of all, perhaps 148.7 is the maximum number of relationships someone could have in 1998, according to some anthropologist (and even that I disagree with). But a lot has changed in the interim 11 years.

Things just don’t work the way they did in 1998. We are an accelerated culture. Things are moving faster, our communication methods move faster, we get and lose friends (and social contacts) faster.

Perhaps you could argue that those few friends whom you could sit around the coffee table with, pouring out your soul are few and far between (as you do state later in the article), but I really don’t agree with that either.

The nature of our interaction has changed with this new technology too.

The model, as you state the case, used to be that we’d be uptight and bottled in around our business colleagues and the public at large, only “letting our hair down” with a “few people.” It isn’t that way anymore and I certainly don’t operate that way.

I have become my brand, and those who know my brand know me. I’m a podcaster and an author, I blog frequently and am active in nearly every social network. And anyone who knows me in any of those places knows me, complete and unvarnished. There isn’t anything I hide from anyone.

Anyone in the blogosphere who cares to knows everything about me, from the fact that coffee ice cream is my favorite to the fact that I was sad about losing my job recently as newspapers dissolve.

I have a large listening audience (which I’m contractually obligated not to disclose), 17,000+ friends on MySpace, 1,100+ friends on Facebook, 2,900+ following on Twitter. Which of those would I be sitting down to have coffee with? Well, any of them that ask. Who am I going to glean information from? Build business relationships with? Advance strategic partnerships with? All of them.

Instead of parceling out morsels of information to my close associates, I can now share what I know with anyone who needs to know, and they share theirs with me. Who knows what types of questions I will ask my audience on Twitter? or they ask of me?

It’s become an ebb and flow of constant information, and constant relationships. I expect and hope that these people trust me, as I trust them, because that’s how it works now. I am honest and open and real with everyone in the blogosphere, to the best of my ability.

My connections are WIDE AND DEEP. And no, having 73,000 followers on Twitter isn’t meaningless. It increases the chances that whatever I ask will get answered by someone. That’s huge. It also says to me that those people think that what I have to say has some value. That’s important to me, whether it’s 73,000 or 7 who are really listening.

But, as much as I do consider myself to be a brand, who hopefully one day will make money by my presence and my insight, I sure don’t look at those 73,000 followers as people who can help me “make more money in less time.” For heaven’s sake.

And, frankly, someone like you who was just talking to me because he was looking for a business opportunity “to make more money in less time” would be someone I bounce immediately from my Twitter connections list. Cause that person just doesn’t get it.

In reference to this article:
http://www.davidhenderson.com/2009/02/28/should-traditional-media-fear-its-social-sibling/
I have this to say.

Listening to some of the voices online at the minute, it’d certainly seem that way. Yet history doesn’t bear these opinions out.
TV would kill radio.
DVD’s would kill movie ticket sales.
CD’s would kill vinyl.
The Internet would kill traditional media.
Music downloads would kill traditional retailers.

Maybe I’m looking at the wrong picture, but I still see all of the things that are meant to be dead by now. If anything, many of the doomed mediums are thriving and actually performing better than their replacements.Obviously, he isn’t seeing what I’m seeing here. Way back in the day, people used to sit around their radios and watch them. TV came along, with all its fancy pictures, that sure ended. Sure, people continued to listen to radio, but it was in a very different way than it was previously. The dominant media force became the TV.

As far as music, the only people listening to and enjoying vinyl records are the diehard collectors, who probably even have a few 78s in their collection. For that matter, CDs aren’t as prevalent with the youth of today as digital music. In case you haven’t noticed, buying online, listening on your iPod or computer, has replaced what was previously.

And last I checked, Tower Records has gone out of business. You can argue that there still are record stores around, but it’s all a question of time and priorities. The fact of the matter is that 20 years from now, everyone will be buying their music digitally, and not even think about what they have lost by not having vinyl around or brick-and-mortar record stores, for that matter.

Until recently, DVDs pretty much had put a serious dent in traditional movie ticket sales. Why go to a theatre, when you can sit at home with your friends and watch on your big screen TV, with the surround sound? People are going back now, interestingly, because of the recession, it is posited. But moviegoing has become less of a “we must do this in a theatre” proposition, and more of a “let’s get together with our friends at the theatre tonight” kind of deal.

What is succeeding in theatres is what cannot be done at home: big explosion type movies, great special effects, 3D things. Moviegoing has become quite a different thing than it was even ten years ago.

So, really, the only one left in that list is “The Internet will kill traditional media.”

Look around, my brother. For my money, newspapers are dead and dying daily. People get their news, their sports scores, their entertainment coverage, their crossword puzzles, their classified ads–everything they went to newspapers for, they now get online.

People who work at traditional media can piss and moan about how they wish this wasn’t so, and how it just “couldn’t happen.” It’s already happening. There was a story yesterday about how Hearst wants to “save newspapers” with a Kindle-like device on which people could read their daily paper. Are they kidding? Newsflash to Hearst: I already have such a device. It’s called an iPhone.

The only newspaper which seems to really embrace the changes and be adapting to it (the New York Times) is there, in an iPhone app, and I happily read it there.

Furthermore, the other item that traditional media–radio, TV, magazines, newspapers, I’m talking to ALL of you–seems to be blissfully ignoring is that people are CONSUMING information quite differently than they used to. Traditional media is busy arguing whether or not newspapers are dead, while people seek their information through Facebook and Twitter and whatever news aggregator sites they prefer. I like Digg. Radio is arguing about whether or not terrestrial radio is more viable than satellite while we are seeking out music through online stations and our iPods. TV is scratching its head about why viewership seems to be down everywhere, and doesn’t seem to notice how popular Netflix is, how many of their TV shows are being watched and sought out online.

It’s happening, people. Keep your head in the sand as long as you want to, it’s already changing all around you. And for us, the consumer, this is a good thing. Podcasts give us a breath of fresh air, where people speak truth and are free to swear if they want to. Why wouldn’t we seek that out instead?

If traditional media wants to save any vestiges of what it’s got left, it needs to quit bellyaching about whether or not it’s dying, and figure out some way to get those journalists and those radio DJs and those TV anchors onto the web, and find a viable way to pay them to do what they do so well, but do it THERE.

It’s not that we don’t want it anymore, we just want it in this new format in our time-shifted patterns, and wish to hell they’d quit staring at their vinyl records, and figure it out already.

The brickbats are flying fast and furious about the death of newspapers.

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.

Once again, I am inspired by Rox, from Beachwalks with Rox.

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.

First, let me explain.

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. 

Was just watching an old episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Beach Walks with Rox. (Actually, I don’t know how relevant the concept of “old” and “new” really is anymore, since the temporal way that people watch TV and podcasts and every piece of media we take in has changed so much. We get to it when we get to it… But I digress…) 

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     

Wow. I think I endured more stress in the past two weeks than I have since I’ve been in California. We are revamping our product totally at work, and it’s been tense. Lots of overtime and such.

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.

In my daily perusal of the Twitterverse today, and the ensuing reading of Scoble’s column, I realized again that not everyone is at the same place I am in the whirl of social media. It still kind of astonishes me when I hear about friends who still don’t have either a MySpace, Facebook or Twitter account, or ALL of them, as I do. (To say nothing of Pownce, Mahalo and all the other ones that are popping up after them.)

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.