Well really since there are a group of Twitter favorites that user accounts are setup to follow by default you can guess how some of these people made it to the top … but some are just worth the follow.

TwitterHolic provides a list of the top 100 users based on followers and they break down other statistics such as how long they have been a member, the number of updates they have made and how many people they follow back.

Whats interesting is that some people like TheAlGore and TheOprah have only made 50 or so tweets. Following them isn’t very interesting and tweeting them won’t get you a response.

Dave Matthews with 850k followers at this time has only made three tweets in over 10 months. How useless it that… pretty dam useless…

Other people like Ashton Kutcher actually replies to some of the people that tweet him but the ratio of people he follows is very low.

Britney on the other hand got in early before the Twitter limit and her account follows back about half a million people.

TwitterCounter is another such site that also allows search They provide a top 100 list with statistics You can also compare up to 3 different users and their stats in a graph which is kinda neet.

Others actually rely on it.

Here are a few companies that Use Twitter.

If you know of any more please add a comment with a link to their company website showing their twitter account. Please don’t just list the Twitter account.

Firefox http://twitter.com/firefox_answers
GoDaddy http://twitter.com/GoDaddyGuy
QuickBooks http://twitter.com/quickbooks
Sun Microsystems http://twitter.com/SunBlogs
Cisco Systems http://twitter.com/CiscoSystems
HP News http://twitter.com/hpnews

And get this they are serving the order through Twitter… How do you do that in 140 characters HAHAHAHAH…..this is insane.

The order demands the anonymous Twitter user reveal their identity and stop posing as Donal Blaney, who blogs at a site called Blaney’s Blarney.

The order says the Twitter user is breaching the copyright of Mr Blaney.

Danvers Baillieu, a solicitor specializing in technology, said it was possible for anyone to approach the court about any method of serving an injunction if the traditional methods are unavailable.

Because no one can find out who these people are the court is ordering that the Twitter Fakers reveal themselves.

HAHAHAHAHAH can you imagine?

The first thing … Who’s law are they using?

If the account holders are in the USA and talking about this person who is a politician then this is political free speech.

Pat Benetar is a well known performer that had her name used in a Domain Name battle that dragged on for decades. Even though both parties were in the USA Benetar could not retrieve her own name from the holder because he was not in violation.

If Twitter finds these accounts are in violation of their terms of service then there will be tens of thousands of usernames that need to be scrubbed from their service.

This is a no win situation and the politician in question needs to get back to his own work and stop wasting tax payers money.

Real commercial information on Twitter can be useful.

On my personal account I follow twitter users that have websites about Deals and Coupons and individual websites that I buy things from. Their Tweets are often commercial in nature showing links to special deals that I may or may not want to buy but It is my choice to follow these users.

Spam bots on Twitter often search the Twitterverse for Keywords when we tweet and then follow us either for research or monitoring or in the hope that they can sell us something.

Well Twitter has made it easier for users to report these idiots.

If you look in your followers listings on the right side of the user you will see a popdown menu.

Select the Report user for spam.

And then you should probably block them too.

PS did you know the Egyptians useto gargle with their own Urin to make their teeth whiter?

and that most bleaches used in Teeth Whitening strip your enamel making your teeth age faster and eventually require caps and  verniers?

be careful out there people heh

Anyway the conference costs $469 which I guess is priced to keep out all of the ordinary people who actually use twitter and the developers that can’t justify an expense..

We will not be going … not just because it is across the country but because it has grown pretty tiring to attend these events that are little more then handshaking and lotion parties.

You are probably more likely to learn something useful by using that time searching for sample code or API documentation .. lets face it Twitter is a pretty easy system to interface with…

Anyway if you have more time then you know what to do with then you might want to show up and see some of the people that bring you Twitter.

For More info visit
http://chirp.twitter.com/index.html

In a post by readwriteweb.com including info from infochimps.org that was SlashDotted it was shown that much of your use of MySpace can be collected by anyone through the use of their API.

In addition to this MySpace will now sell your private account information so that any interested party can now connect you to your usage pattern.

The 22 sets of data being made available are cheap. Prices range from $10 for raw dumps from the MySpace API to $300 for everything.

If you ever had any question before that your virtual use of MySpace may effect your real life there seems to be no doubt now.

Unlike Twitter where it is Mass Chaos the idea behind ning.com is to allow people to host their own sites that allows members who are also members of the ning.com network.

Unfortunately it seems that most people won’t sign up for a service whether it is priced $3 a month as ning’s intro account or any price if there are other options out there.  Facebook, WordPress.com, Bloger and a number of other hosting solutions are a perfect examples of free providers so what makes ning think they can make the move to pay services?

Its hard to say.

I had a reason to signup for an account tonight and you can bet when the prices start kicking in there will be nothing keeping me on ning.

Some pretty big names have migrated to the service. The Pickens Plan was one such group that was trying to promote alternative energy and Wind Power.. then Mr Pickens seemed to give that up as soon as President Obama was elected and his group disbanded faster then his interest in Windpower and alternative fuels vanished.

With hosting being relatively cheap you might think that a large association could manage their own site but this is not the way today. With all of the hammering servers take even a small group of people can easily require cluster servers or cloud computing.

Those services are also available through Amazon or other hosts but to manage your site will require technical experience or hired staff.

This is one of the primary reasons people turn to solution providers like Facebook or Ning to get the word out. Unlike Twitter where you can tell everyone about an event it is impossible to manage your content.

Well Ning.com’s new pricing goes into effect July  20th with three tiers.

Mini $2.95 a month Plus $19.95 a month and Pro $49.95 a month.

The mini plan will only allow 150 members and seems pretty useless.

With the Plus and Pro plans you can have unlimited members.

Final Plan selection must occur by August 20th 2010 so they are giving you time to make arrangements and tell your members you have moved.

Like I said I won’t be continuing with my new ning account but you can probably bet that some of the bigger name stars and companies will continue their relationships due to being offered free and special services the rest of us never see.

What do you think will happen to Ning?

This line between business and pleasure has blurred dramatically with social networking and although you primarily see this with high profile stars and athletes you now also see it with larger companies.

Recently the FTC announced new rules as to endorsements of products on website blogs. They were after mommy blogers that would receive free products and then talk about them in their posts favorably. Basically they were saying that this is payment for services and not just your friend giving you a candybar because they liked it so much and wanted you to try it. That is pretty reasonable.. its called bartering..

But can the same be said about social networks where a high profile person announces their use of a product and never mentions the discounts they receive or the special handling they get in return.

In addition to the subliminal are the blatant advertising of products and services. Not only self promoted but co-branded or associated products.

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

So we all know when these things happen but what is the proper use of social networking?

Personally I try as hard as I can to not mix personal life and business because what you do is more often how you fund who you are. I have a large handful of sites that tweet and they are business related only. I also have a personal account that I almost never talk about business on and never use for publicity.

The antithesis of this would be foodies or WineO’s you see on twitter that almost equally talk about work and life and expect you to buy things from them because they are so popular.

And somewhere in the middle you have performers who spend 90% of their life working and endup talking about business because it ends up being their life… there is no big problem with that unless you see Britney Tweet a 25% off white sale at Sears.

So, how does social networking play in Business?

This is a very difficult question to answer. Life in general is a popularity contest. You see it in Hollywood and also in politics…

The more popular you are, the more attractive physically or how funny you are can mean a lot to how well you will do economically. On the other hand do you risk offending people if you are blatantly using them to promote your business or someone else’s.

I have heard and attended forms where people say they only use twitter or youtube videos in relation to the income it can generate and they wouldn’t use it at all except for the fact everyone else does.

I have also seen first hand people use their family to promote themselves… taking pictures of children who almost look like they are in pain to have another photo taken… or doing elaborate things just to get attention.

I find that a little offensive but if you are reading this and would like to share your thoughts on the matter I would really be interested in your comments.

Is it proper to social network solely for the reason of publicizing or should there be some separation between business and pleasure or family life?

This seems to be a very hot topic on Twitter among the PR community. When twitter first became almost necessary for every business there were dozens of mostly unknown sites that skyrocketed to fame. We all know their names so there is no reason to go into pointing fingers but what has been lost or gained and how has that effected the content we read on a daily basis…

It is not as if content is developed purely for social networking but when you look at some of the articles that continue to be pumped out rather then information that can actually be helpful you have to wonder who is getting hurt.

It is almost impressive to watch how social networking sites can change people and by people it is not only stars like Miley Cyrus who decided to walk away from twitter… its technical writers even politicians and news agencies..

People of all trades seem to take that ride of insanity when they find something they said generated interest.

What is worse is they try to duplicate the experience by sticking to what they thought worked instead of understanding that their primary success is not related to bumps in social interest.

This ends up poorly with the loss of their base or primary support.

I will give you an example….

There was a tech writer who had been very popular on the web for a decade maybe more and one day he received a bill in the mail (im not going to say what company) that was generated by mistake. The calculation of the amount due was maybe 5000 times higher then he actually owed and instead of chalking it up to a glitch and getting on with his day he decided to rant about it on a social network.

Because the company is very large and generates tens of millions of bills there were a few thousand people that were in the same boat as he was… some of them were in his social network group and word started to get out and he became the master of the bad bill….

From that point on the guy continues to write about similar problems with bills and businesses and this became more of a primary concern then his technical reviews and previous content…

Sure the guy was getting a lot of immediate attention and that was a good use of Social Networking because it introduced a variety of other people to him.. but the people that he attracted were interested in Bad Bills not Technical Information … eventually the guy became lost in the madness of trying to please people that he had no business BUSINESS dealing with in the first place.

So I think you probably get where I’m going here… popularity on social networks can be very misleading and misguiding. In High School you can get very popular if you cut a loud fart in the middle of assembly but do you really want to live the next three years as Fartman having to chow down a can of chili before every play or concert just to maintain that persona?

yea.. didn’t think so..

So, my advice is to use social networking as a tool and don’t give into the hype.

If you find you are spending more time then you previously did managing your social networks start to examine how you are using them. If you see that much of your content is off topic then evaluate whether that is really a direction that you should be taking.

There is nothing wrong with finding a new direction in life.

The average person will change their careers between 5 and 7 times during  their life and the reason for that may be fulfillment or just to make money.

Neither is a wrong reason…

However when you make changes in your life you want to do so with open eyes… and you also need to get a grip on reality some times.