RT and #followfriday.

I guess if you are on my Twitter list, you will know that I don’t really like RT and detest #followfriday.

RT: Re-Tweeting

While I do understand that sometimes, there are certain quotes or articles shared by someone in your list and you think people in your list will enjoy it, I think if the MAJORITY of your tweets are RTs, then I’m sorry – Twittering FAIL.

Posted this up for Twitter Tees by Threadless.

Okay, let me attempt to explain why. Twitter (and I quote), “..is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time..” Therefore, if you are just purely RT, how are you staying connected?

NEXT! If you are RT-ing say on one consistent topic all the time then I think that is still acceptable, because it shows that you are interested in one topic and wants to share it with other people. It shows/reveals that you have a personality. BUT! If you are just RT-ing a jumble of stuff on different topics, then it’s irritating and reveals nothing about you.

BESIDES! By consistently RT-ing about one topic, it works in your advantage. For example, when people are looking for someone to follow on that certain topic, your name might just pop up in their mind/recommendation because you have consistently showed your interest and that you have interesting articles to share. Remember, Twitter is actually blogging in micro form. Think of it like a blog. If you are constantly blogging about one topic, people are more likely to recommend your blog for that topic. You know like uniquefrequency, who constantly blogs about social media. So yups! Use that blogging analogy and apply it to Twitter. (Of course, your credibility will increase in Twitter if you share your personal thoughts ON TOP of RT-ing.)

Think along the line of @photoschool who tweets and RTs things that are related to photography. (Sorry, I don’t follow alot of people on Twitter so this example may or may not be ideal.)

Still on RT: RT-ing yourself

I understand that there are some people who holds multiple accounts like @photoschool and @socialmediadude are all by @willyfoo (sorry, dude! have to use you as an example!). The aim or objective is so that you can tweet/RT about specific topics in specific accounts. For example, things about photography goes to @photoschool while things about social media goes to @socialmediadude. Totally make sense and in sync with what I’ve said above. Totally cool and dainty!

HOWEVER! When you start RT-ing yourself, like first, you RT on one account (in this example, @willyfoo) then you RT yourself again on the other related acoount (either @photoschool or @socialmediadude), it’s gets a little irritating. Imagine people who follows you on all three accounts. They will be flooded! Kinda. And if they do want to make a reply, which one do they reply to? To some extent, you are actually defeating the purpose of setting up the respective account because you are mixing everything up.

And IF! You only RT some articles about one topic in both accounts and some articles about that topic in only one account, people will get confused! Who do they follow? Just @socialmediadude or both @socialmediadude and @willyfoo (Sorry again! Using you as an example!)

Bringing it back to ‘generally speaking’, I understand that by RT-ing yourself, you are just ensuring that all your target audience will be reached (since not everyone follow you on all 3 account) BUT! Wouldn’t it be better if you just direct people to ONE account in your profile? And perhaps, add a byline in your profile to let people know that you have seperate accounts about <insert topic> and if they are interested, they should follow you over there.

In this way, your ‘direction’ is clear and you don’t flood people.

Moving on.

#followfriday

I was on a Twitter break for about a year. Okay, fine! I was hooked onto Plurk for a year. But the first Friday that I returned to Twitter, I was pretty impressed with the whole idea of #followfriday.

Basically, #followfriday invites people to recommend interesting Twitters to follow. Mashable probbaly has a better explanation – #followfriday and if you are on Twitter, you probably know how #followfriday works.

But after awhile, #followfriday got really irritating. It seems like people are recommending everyone on their list! Like everyone and anyone is interesting. And for some, the same people keeps getting re-recommended by the same people. If that person is really interesting, we would have followed him! You don’t have to recommend him over and over again. If you are afraid that some of your new followers will miss out, then perhaps you can re-recommend that person a month later and not every week.

Oh, and there are some we recommend other people in the hopes of getting recommended. Like heh?

I quite like this article about #followfriday – Followfriday is Sabotaging Your Twitter Experience. It summarizes my thoughts quite neatly and nicely. I quite like their suggestion of not recommending more than 3 person in a day and giving a reason why the person recommended is interesting and has follow-value.

However, I’ve noticed that even this seemingly useful suggestion is being abused (*gasps*) and it’s now even more irritating. Instead of getting on Twit with a list of people to follow, I get multiple (more than 5) tweets in one blast over several periods. Gah.

#followfriday#followself-promotionfriday?

I’ve noticed that some people will recommend themselves every week. What’s up with that?

Add the byline that you have other accounts and then maybe recommend yourself on every other #followfriday.

You will sound less irritating and probably won’t appear like you are over-promoting yourself.

the deadly combination: RT-ing #followfriday

This is a relatively new observation I made. Someone will do several #followfriday tweets and then sometime later, someone will RT ALL those #followfriday tweets.

I mean, gee! Maybe you guys are recommending the same person for the same reason, but perhaps, you would like to paraphrase or come up with BETTER reasons that will probably entice people to follow the person that you are recommending. I guess I should say, “RT-ing #followfriday is not #followfriday, you parrot!”.

But I guess a few RTs of #followfriday is allowed. Just not ALL.

the end.

the office is really conducive for blogging! of course not during office hours where everyone is walking around and flooding your emails. right. heading home now.

the different types of alcohol.

Beer makes me high and hyper.

Liqueur makes me puke.

Red wine makes me sleepy (and I don’t itch!).

Take your pick.

disturbed nights.

I don’t know. But the past 2 nights have been pretty strange.

1st night

The last time I used my camera was after I went for the Bridge Photoshoot on Sunday. Usually when I take out the SD card, I will switch off the camera. And I believed I DID switch it off this time.

But on Monday night, around 3.20am in the morning, I was woken up from my sleep by the sound of my camera switching on and off, on and off. You know, the sound it makes when the “lens” pops out. And of course, the screen was flashing on and off as well, creating a flickering light on my chair.

I groggily climbed out of bed and tried to “switch it off” but I realised that the button is ALREADY at the OFF side. And pushing the button didn’t stop the camera from switching on and off.  The screen showed the warning, “Please replace batteries” so in the end, I just took out the battery and it took awhile before the camera totally shut down.

I climbed into bed, hugged my bible and muttered (in my head), “Go away. We are from the same family.” before falling back to sleep.

2nd night

Exhausted due to cramps and stuff, I fell asleep around 1.30am. Then around 3+/4am, I woke up thinking that it’s 7am already and that I need to wake up and get ready for work.  I couldn’t hear myself think, just this “in-built” reflex of getting out of bed and I made it as far as the door before sense won over and I got myself back to bed, and squinted at the clock.

The same thing happened again 1 hour later.

SO! Two nights of disturbed sleep. The first one spookier than the other. I’m tired! *yawn*

The Last Summer (of You and Me) by Ann Brashares.

I stumbled across this book when I visited Bishan Library after my final paper. I was too lazy to climb all the way to the 3rd floor and browse through the many shelves for book so I decided to take a look at the recommended books on the 1st floor.

The title caught my eye. Don’t you think it has a bittersweet feel to it? Especially with the You & Me written in brackets. It’s almost like those words were added as an afterthought. Like the author was unsure if those words should be there or not. I don’t know.

Anyways, other than the title, the author caught my eye too. I rather enjoyed “The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants” so I thought I should give this book a shot. And I’m glad I did.

The storyline was pretty normal. Not fantastic. I found it  a little hard to get used to the lifestyle and scenes described in the book. Usually I will have a pretty good mind-map of how the houses look like and such. But not for this book. Almost gave up but lucky I stayed.

The description of the feelings of the characters in the book was pretty good. It got me ‘inspired’ to write one of my own sappy stories too (take a look at my OTHER blog). But yeah.

As per usual, not going to say much. Just going to share some quotes from the book –

Love was a rose, according to the song, and you weren’t supposed to pick it. Well, she’d picked it, and now she had the handful of thorns.”

The longer he spent with his father’s things, the less remote and the less precious they become. He got better at throwing them away. It seemed analogous to the moment in a relationship when you got comfortable enough in another person’s presence that you could waste time together.”

We trusted ourselves when we were younger….We didn’t trust ourselves to be adults, though. We thought we knew better then (when we were younger).”

yups yups.

sometimes.

sometimes i wish that i dont leave impressions or get noticed because of my energy level and hyperactivity.

sometimes.

more serena than blair?

ConnieChan @ deviantart.

While watching Gossip Girl on the way to work today, it struck me how similar some of my personality is to Serena’s. I know they are fictional characters but you know, the similarity is there.

I am not a party girl like her. But in that we tend to draw conclusions from small things. Storm around, create a fuss and then when we realised that things are not as bad as it seem (or as we think it to be), we start to feel immensely guilty. Of course, we hope that people will forget and forgive us. Yups.

And I like this conversation between Dan and Serena in Episode 17 –

Dan (to Serena): Why are you so ready to believe the worst?

Serena : Honestly? I think part of me wanted to.

Yups. Actually that whole scene was pretty familiar. HMMM. But yes. Serena’s reply hits home. It’s not about trust or the lack of it. It’s just that subconcious want to want to believe the worst.

So! Are you a Serena or Blair? Or perhaps Little J?

the types.

On the way back to HQ from NTU, my colleague asked, “..so what types of guys do you go for?”

I went, “I don’t think I have a type. All my crushes look pretty different!”

And while on the way home, it hit me.

I do go for a certain ‘type’ BUT! not in terms of physical character but more like “character”? So what do I for in a guy?

Well, I go for guys who are successful and driven. And what they do with their success.

I mean looking through the crushes that I have in the past 3 years, there’s K, L, D and W. And most of them are VERY driven AND pretty much successful.

Yups! But usually they are infatuation? I think I like being around them because they spur me on. And I think they won’t be very sticky. *shrugs*

And well, another random fact. I go for guys who don’t look their age. They either look older than they are or younger than they are. LOLS!