A few days ago I sorta quit Twittering, reading or writing. I’m still off the Twitter crack, for now, but now that I’m feeling refreshed like a summer’s breeze again, I am wondering if it’s time to just dump Facebook too.

I’m like the Heat-Mizer of social tools!

I swear this isn’t linkbait (Sam). You’ve heard me say this privately. I don’t “get” Facebook. At least Twitter was awesomely useful to me, despite being overwhelming.

Facebook to me is like a nice, more “friendly” version of Linkedin.

But at least Facebook is free.

So do I need to get rid of Facebook? The answer is no, but what do I really need it for? I don’t really go there more than once every few days, and that’s just to accept new friends, check a few spammy messages and see what everyone updated to.

I’ve heard friends tell me they are using Facebook hours out of every day… Doing what? Seriously.

Perhaps I’m just a fuddy-duddy. Perhaps I’m missing something. Besides being a glorified contact database for me, what other problems does it solve for me? I can’t figure it out.

The best tools and services are those that solve problems for me. I’m struggling to figure out where Facebook fits in that equation for me.

Never try to tell a marketer there’s no way to sell someone. There is ALWAYS a way to sell someone anything, if you’re creative and good at it.

Case in point, ReadWriteWeb put up a piece about how it’s impossible to make money in the long tail.

Illustration by gapingvoid.

I disagree. In fact, I think you can “make money” anywhere, if you market the right way. Particularly for this discussion, I believe that “fun” is the key to marketing to the long tail.

Why? From my earlier post…

I’ve said this a million times. Tim Carter taught me this. People come to the Internet for two reasons…

1. To solve a problem. 2. To have fun.

Think about it. EVERY action you take online falls into one of those buckets. Really think about it.

Those two ideas have driven my decisions on how to blog, what businesses to create, what kind of videos to make, etc… I ask myself those two questions before I do anything.

ScratchBack, in my opinion, does both. But let’s get back to fun. Fun is HIGHLY overrated. Sure, fun may not be practical in the “making money online” world, but you know what? I don’t care, why, because it’s fun!

Sure, I want ScratchBack to be successful, and I chose to position the marketing of it as “fun” as opposed to “getting rich” because I truly believe that there is only so far you can go down the long-tail by pushing “get rich” stuff.

Cnet is right.

And creating that Long Tail content has never been primarily about making money.

As the headline says, I’m afraid I have to stop twittering, for a little while at least. I love Twitter. I enjoy getting updates from friends and colleagues, and frankly I find a LOT of good links and information from it daily.

But sadly, I’m drowning in tweets and it’s becoming too much of an information overload to keep up with reading them all.

I think the turning point was last week when I installed a neat little application called OutTwit, which delivers tweets directly to my Outlook. This is great, I thought, I don’t have to login to the website and try to catch up on my tweets, now I can just read them in my email.

Wrong decision.

What happened was that I found that my 195 “friends” send a TON of tweets. I went away for close to 48 hours and returned to see my email inbox full of about 800 messages.

So Shawn suggested I have the tweets sent to a special folder in Outlook, which I did, but the problem with that is, I see them all collecting in there, and when I try to go and read them, I feel completely overwhelmed. I mean, today alone I had over 500 tweets in that email box.

So Twitter, it’s time for me to walk away, for a little while at least. I just can’t keep up, and you’ve become way too much of a distraction for me.

I’ll be back, someday?

Anyone have any tips for Twitter information overload?

Thanks to Armano via Twitter for the link to this. This…is…Awesome! Watch a video, and scroll 360 around… LIVE! Amazing.

Immersive Media presents Immersive videos. My favorites are the Notre Dame game day, and the coral reef dive.

Wow, where are we going to be in 5-years from now. This video ride is going to be fun, are you on yet?

Is there a reason that you, or your company, make it so difficult to be contacted?

There is? Why? What, you don’t want my business?

Assuming you’re selling something… there’s no conceivable reason to me that you would want to make it difficult for a customer to get in touch with you.

Yesterday I had to do some online shopping for a company to host my video ads I’m going to run for a client in 6 online major newspaper markets. Here’s my short saga.

Naturally I started at Doubleclick.

• Check out this super-long web form that I was NOT going to fill out. Forget it.
• So I called the toll-free number and left a message that I needed assistance asap.
• Closing in on 24-hours later, I have received no contact from them.

Sure, they need to route the sales lead to the right sales person and all that, but you know what? I need help… now, not in 48-hours.

So what did I do out of frustration? I went to the next company.

I went to Adinterax.com, and went straight to their contact form. I needed to talk to somebody, quick. But as you can see from the screenshot below, the only way you can contact them is by… Snail mail? Wow.

After those two experiences, I’ve called a few others, and everything went sorta fine. Hats off to Eyewonder for not only picking up the phone (live person) when I called, but actually giving me pricing and answering questions when I called.

Not being easy to contact is just plain old dumb. Even me, the super Internet geek that I am, often just wants to get on the phone and find an answer quick. I don’t want to have to fill out yet another long web form. I don’t want to have to send an email or read through a forum. I just want a quick answer.

I make my contact details VERY easy to find on this site (home page right column). Why? Because I want you to contact me and let me help you solve your online marketing problems.

Is there a reason you don’t?

As Beet.tv is reporting, YouTube overlay ads are beginning to appear all over the place. Want to see it in action? Try this video from Tim Carter. You’ll notice the little yellow bar in the player… that shows where the ad is going to play (if there is one, you may have to refresh as the ads don’t load every time).

Here’s a screen grab of an ad on that video.

Relevant ad for some kind of DIY network.

So why is this important to you?

If you’re not making videos yet, you should be. This is just another reason for you to get started. High-quality videos uploaded to a YouTube channel you create are going to be chosen by advertisers.

Video is wide-open. It’s like Google 5-years ago. Don’t believe me? Go to YouTube and search for any phrase, and do the same search in Google. I’ll do it for you.

I just searched for “debt”. That’s a HUGELY competitive term, right?

On YouTube, there are 5800 results for videos marked with “debt” in tags, titles and description. In Google, there are 185 MILLION results.

Which one do you think is going to be easier to climb to the top of?

A high-quality, well tagged video can get onto the first page, and sometimes the top listing on YouTube in 24-hours or less. I do it every week, for highly competitive search terms. Nobody else is doing it yet… nobody.

I’m telling you now… you’re either going to do it today, or wait until everyone else does it first, than play catch up… again. Get your video camera today and start making videos.

I started blogging in August 2001 (here’s my Web archive link), a month before 9/11. What a horrible day with mixed emotions for me. That was the day I saw my first child in a sonogram for the first time, then 10-minutes later I watched the WTC towers collapse in a doctor’s waiting room here in Cleveland. An emotional day for me for sure. A severe high, and a severe low.

I was surfing around in my archives and I found my old 9/11 day after post. Here it is word for word.

September 12, 2001
……………………

This country will be changed forever. Unfortunately, we will not rest until someone is bombed I believe. I wish there was another way, but I’m not seeing it.

Here’s my hope. I hope that this tragedy educates us and exposes our flaws to ourselves so we can learn.

I hope that this tragedy removes the cloud of arrogance we have as a society of invulnerability.

I hope that this tragedy unites us and makes us stronger.

I hope we all get through this with minimal bloodshed.

I hope my children have a better place to grow up in the future.

I hope all the hero’s of yesterday, and the next few weeks are recognized with the highest honor that true hero’s deserve.

I hope that we don’t take blind action against our fellow citizens of ethnic race.

Most importantly. I hope we unite and stand strong. Only division between our politicians, our citizens and our allies will bring us down.

I’m not going to talk about politics on this blog. But I wanted to post this as I’m still wondering the answer to my own questions.

The point is… Because of blogging, I am able to look back at my past thoughts and relive them, and so can my readers. When was the last time you looked back at your archives? Just another reason why blogging is so powerful.

It’s only been a few days since BlogBucks launched, and already the testimonials are flying in. See one below.

BlogRush’s days are numbered, we’re kicking their butt. I give us a month before every BlogRush user is switched to BlogBucks. Sorry John Reese, ours is better, easier and well, just more fun.

Are you experiencing a massive flood of dream traffic of your dreams from BlogBucks like others? Then leave your testimonial here in the comments, or send it in and join the happy users!

“I recently signed up for BlogBucks.com and it has changed my life. First off, within an hour after signing up I had 100,000 visitors to my site. By the end of the first day, my athlete’s foot had cleared up entirely. Thanks, BlogBucks!!!”

John Hawkins
http://geeeek.com/

The cat is out of the bag. I can keep it a secret no longer. Yes, BlogBucks is launched and it’s going to kick BlogRush’s you know what to the curb. It’s better, easier and more powerful.

Get the free traffic of your dreams, without any work! Introducing…

How I’ve been able to keep this system so secret for so long I have no idea. The thousands of beta testers who tested the system out had to sign non-disclosure agreements, and I can’t believe none of them leaked it.

Anyway, if you haven’t heard of BlogBucks yet, that’s why. So what is BlogBucks?

The fastest & easiest way to do absolutely nothing to drive a “flood of traffic” to your blog & wads of cash into your pocket!… Absolutely Free!

So it’s open to the public! Try BlogBucks today and get the dream traffic of your dreams!

Digg this story please?

If you read this “guide to viral video” at Techcrunch, there are actually some really good tips in there about tags, and other tips about how to create videos that people want to watch.

But in the end, the article is crap for you and me… why?

Because viral videos are a waste of your time, just like traffic.

You tell me something. How do you monetized a viral video? Seriously, I want you to explain to me how to do it? That article didn’t explain it. In fact, that article specifically points that “they make money by taking other people’s videos and making them get viewed a lot”.

A. That’s not viral really. Views aren’t viral per say. Sharing is what really makes something viral.
B. That’s a good model if you can sell it and find clients, but is that really your thing?

Again, that article tells you nothing about how to make money from your “viral” videos. Why? Because it’s really, really hard to do, unless you’re a porn site.

People, stop chasing b.s. dreams like “viral” and “traffic”!

I’m here to tell you, that it’s a complete and utter waste of time. The odds of going viral are extremely low, and even if you do, it’s hard to monetize it.

Now, let me just say that if your goal is to become famous… then you should absolutely attempt to make videos that go “viral”. But to monetize… forget it.

More from Mathew, the dudes at Commoncraft chime in as well, and Centernetworks writes a great headline.