These past few weeks have been a tough one for the service, though - accounts have been hacked into, and tons of new spammer accounts have popped up. I’m not going as far as some to swear off the participating alltogether, but my own user experience has grown increasingly frustrating lately, and it’s at least time for a change.
It used to be that I followed nearly anyone who followed me. If they weren’t over-the-top spammers (no, @penisenlarger, I’m not falling for that one), and as long as I thought they might provide some value, I added them to my stream.
However, especially recently, that approach has gotten me in trouble. I’ve gotten a lot of follows from people with 2,000+ followers themselves, who look like regular good users. The problem I find when I follow them back though, is they aren’t there to interact or to add value like regular users, but just there to bump their own creds, and boost their own products. They’re trying to build a brand (theirs), not a community.
This approach is tiresome… especially as I see it over time. Rarely is any one tweet insidious, but never really are the collection of their tweets of any value. I go along thinking that they may be at some point - that I’ll be able to pick up on something I can use - but there’s just no space for interaction in broadcasting.
So, this is my note to these people:
I have a new policy. I only follow people providing immediate value to my stream. Follow and unfollow as many people as you want. Get as good a following/followers ratio as possible. Even reply to some people (so it looks like you’re going back-and-forth). But from this point forward, you can’t fool me. I just unfollowed you.
My new policy, only a day later, has already significantly streamlined my stream, and delivered a much better experience. I’m glad I did it.
YOUR INPUT: What about you? What is your twitter policy? Has it changed recently, with the greater influx of stupidity?
This is a review of the new Canon EOS 5DII - the latest off the line of sexy Canon camera bodies. I came across it on loan from the awesome ProPhotoRental, and am reviewing it as the hack-amateur I am. Read this page to get context about my reviews. Naturally, the photos interspersed into the post are those I took with the 5DII.
My impression is that the camera lives up to the hype. It’s well constructed, it makes sense, feels right, and takes killer shots. The interface is pretty intuitive… which makes it easy for people like me to shoot real nice stuff (without knowing a lot about technical stuff). It did well shooting across a dimly-lit bar at high ISO, and did equally well in my sunlight apartment the next day. It has a killer video feature that captures in 1080P HD, and that allows you to take still shots while shooting (which I think is a cool feature). It’s nice-looking too… pair it with a nice lens, and you have a chick-magnet worthy machine. Top-of-the-line gear always has a way of making you step up your game; The 5D2 qualifies.
I took some nice pictures with the 5DII - the three here are what I believe to be the three best. You can see the clarity the 5DII shoots with, and you can see I had some success with shallow-Depth of Field closeups. I like those shots, but next time, I’d like to work on shooting better with larger subjects and higher aperture settings - I’d like to capture more of the story of each shot, in other words. I’ll definitely post them up here, so keep an eye out for that in a couple weeks!
All in all, I highly recommend the Canon 5DII to anyone. It’ll run you upward of $3k, but if you’re willing to invest the money, I can guarantee you’ll be pleased with the shots you get. If I can do this well with the 5DII, I know you can do better.
I had a chance to present at the latest Ignite Boulder event, which was held over at CU, and put on by Andrew Hyde. The idea behind Ignite is to give a presentation you’d normally take 90 minutes to get through, and do it in 5. It’s 20 slides, auto-advancing every 15 seconds, no matter what you’re doing, or what else is going on (I had a dog walk through mine). It’s all crazy, for sure, but it’s also entertaining and a ton of fun. No surprise, I presented about copywriting for startups - how to do it, and how to do it well. That’s my passion, and even though I took a goofy path to get to my point, I think I brought some disruption and provided some value.
This post serves as my (terribly late) review of the night - my three big impressions from being a part of it:
1. it was a blast. really. we had a great crowd, we had free beer, and everyone was into the presentations. there was great energy in the room, and it made it that much more fun to get up and talk.
2. it was a great place to make connections. that’s partly because I presented, and thus, got to meet people who came up to say hi. but it’s also because it was a packed room of like-minded people, who were primed to chat. I met a lot of new friends, got a lot of new cards, and followed a whole bunch of new people.
3. it made me a better writer. yep. I didn’t expect this one. but somewhere along the way, whether it was compiling 5-minutes of what was absolutely vital to success in my profession, whether it was the act of presenting this material out loud (and owning it like I never had before), or whether it was engaging with the audience around my passion, I came to a new understanding of exactly what I do. since then, I’ve not only been inspired to do more work, but had the inspiration to do better work.
For an event like that, to not only be entertaining and to give out free beer, but to change the way I see my profession and give me some contacts to move that profession forward, is very cool. I highly suggest you attend the next one if you’re in town, and I highly suggest you get up on that stage at some point.
Here’s an HD video of my presentation from the event… you can see an extended one with text from my slides here, and you can see the presentations from all the other awesome presenters here.
My name is Brian. I’m a copywriter, and (supposedly) a good guy. I run a company, and this is my personal blog. You can also connect with me on any one of the social networks below
