Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

So, I made the final round of NYCMidnight's "Tweet Me a Story" contest. So, the remaining writers all got the same word last night to use in our 140-character stories. So, the word was "tear."

Here's what I submitted, with titles added afterward for fun:

Last Call

"Aren't you skydiving?"

"Yup."

"You're calling from midair? That's sweet!"

"I love you…" he said, watching the tear in the fabric spread.

Father Knows Best

"But I loved him, daddy!"

"Wipe that tear away, honey. Other boys will respect you more."

"How do you know?"

"Because they'll see his body."

Anything for You

"You said you were too happy to write tear jerking songs?"

"Yeah?"

"I just stole your truck to go sleep with your sister."

"Oh, I love you!"

Interestingly, all of them are about love, one way or another. Noticed that after I submitted them. Here's what I didn't submit, and why.

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Updated, see the end for Amazon's response

So, last week two historical books — "Transgressions" by Erastes and "False Colors" by Alex Beecroft — quietly dropped off Amazon's bestseller lists.

Not because they stopped selling, mind you, because Amazon apparently instituted a new policy of removing the sales rankings from books with "adult" content. De-ranking a book doesn't remove it from Amazon, but it does keep it from showing up in Amazon's bestseller lists (cutting way down on sales derived from browsing) and there are reports that de-ranked books aren't showing up in regular searches with any consistency.

More newly stripped books followed, lots of them. When asked about this by various puzzled authors, Amazon's rep said this: "In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature."

Defensible. Annoying, but defensible. Only… there's still an awful lot of adult material on Amazon with sales rankings. Most of their adult material is still ranked. Nude photography books, explicit romances, everything by Chuck Palahniuk. In fact, judging by what has been deranked, it seems that someone at Amazon is defining "adult" as "gay."

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You may be getting a lot less social soon if the economy keeps de-bubbling.

LiveJournal, home of diaries, dreams, daily ruminations, and eye-watering slash fan-fiction for a decade, just laid off a buncha people (early reports said 20, LJ says "about a dozen").

LJ was one of the first sites to include social networking as a major component of their operating system and for many, many people it's still the place to go if you want to keep up with your friends' lives without being blasted with blinking neon ads for the latest Hollywood pablum or having to decide how to respond to a virtual vampire attack from the guy you barely know from Human Resources. But it's looking like their tiered payment-and-ad-supported system isn't making the beans it should. How will the economy affect other social networks?

Facebook (which just announced this morning that they hit the 150 million user mark) is ad-supported, with reasonably unobtrusive ads popping up on the side. MySpace went the hyperactive-used-car-lot route and plastered ads on every available surface of your profile. They and other community sites will probably weather the storm; adversity draws people together, and they'll need somewhere to share their pain (Mood: Homeless).

But what about Twitter? A micro-blogging-and-SMS service with no ads, no membership, no fees? I don't know what's keeping it going now, much less how it will survive when grocery stores begin holding customer gladiator fights for the last pound of ground chuck. Twitter lives on nothing but starlight and moonbeams, and about a zillion tweets about Obama. How will it survive?

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I hope. Setting up Twitter Tool is getting me a daily digest of my tweets posted here, which I wanted, but alao generating another tweet about my digest of tweets to Twitter, which i didn't want as that's just getting silly. Settings say not to do that; it's doing it anyway. Time to hack.

Twitter also about to play a larger role (but not much) in my job as I begin sending tweets for breaking news, polls, quick hit news blurbs, and other stuff to my paper's account, @dbnewsjournal . Had a lot of fun explaining (along with the younger reporters who already Twitter) to management what, exactly, Twitter is and what it's for and how it could possibly help our traffic. Hey, all the cool kids are doing it…

So now I get to search for the elusive balance between promotional tool and actual useful I-want-to-follow-this Twitter account for my job, which I'm actually kinda looking forward to. What makes a useful Twitter feed if it's not one of your friends or a celebrity you want to casually stalk?

• @templesmith I think his problem is he's been a little vague on everything lately. I'd just rather pick the battles he can't defend. #
• @templesmith Love to see someone pick lines out McC's last few speeches and compare them to Bush speeches. More of the same… #
• @templesmith I think that's why Lieberman would be a good veep for him. Another honorable man who seems to have strayed from his principles. #
• Just spent a half hour updating book covers in my LibraryThing account. Not sure why. I'm going to bed now. #
• The strip will be posted tonight. I have decided to blame Tropical Storm Fay for this and all other delays in my life, for at least a month. #
• McCain has announced his running mate: his POW story. His story will accompany him to all functions, and in need will take over the office. #
• Buying a home in Florida? Now's the time to drive around and see where it floods… #
• Five days of steady rain, massive flooding, and two more storm systems forming out in the Atlantic. Welcome to the Sunshine State! #
• Apparently the no-fly list really only protects terrorists. I feel so much safer. http://tinyurl.com/59z99s #
• Currently working up flood photos and being very thankful we didn't have to wade out of our house this morning. #
• Blog: Don't make Superman dark, make him Superman http://tinyurl.com/5zcv39 #

For those of you who prefer your Serenity merchandise updates in small, easy-to-digest form, SerenityStuff.com posts are now being piped (with a slight delay) to my Twitter page.

Soon no social network will escape my reach. Bwahahahahahaha! And so on and so forth.

cabridges That isn't just mundane minutiae of everyday life that nobody could possibly care about. It's Twitter!

cabridges Mulling over wardrobe choices, which means socks that match as long as I wear thigh-high boots. Success! Wait, one's a glove…

cabridges Twitter is the hottest new Internet social trend, which means it's been around since last summer and the media has finally noticed.

cabridges It's a microblog, or group IM. You post messages for anyone to see, and people can friend you or just subscribe to your ramblings.

cabridges Speeding when workers are present is evil, according to the signs on I-4. What if the workers are goofing off? Can I wing one?

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I'm sitting here in the dark, light from my monitor flickering across my face. Were I a drinking man, I would surely be hammered and morose; instead I'm starting to get queasy from all the Diet Pepsis. I've started to type dozens of times in the last two hours, each time getting several sentences in before angrily deleting it all in frustration.

I have a great idea. Original, startling, innovative. Guaranteed to get attention and maybe bring in some bucks. And I don't know where to talk about it.

I started to put it here where it would have the biggest audience, but froze when I realized that my MySpace page would have a broader reach. Then I backpaged and went to post it on my own Web site since anything major in my life should go there, even though I usually forget since the most major thing in my life is usually posting on a blog.

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