So, I haven’t been so great with posting lately, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been online. In fact, I just posted my 10,000th tweet today, so I clearly still have a lot of time on my hands. Even though I haven’t had much here recently, I have been showcased in a few other places on the web. Let’s take a closer look at some of that:
1) For anyone into the Vice Magazine scene, Street Carnage is the site to visit. A few weeks ago , things got out of hand as @StreetCarnage Twitter followers got into a huge “No Homo” parody game. I assure you that it’s not as offensive as it might sound, but I can’t even begin to explain it; you’d best click that link to get a better understanding as to where things eventually ended up. In any case, something that started as a way to pass time on a Saturday afternoon ended up with me getting my name on a site that I actually didn’t own. Check it out:
As you can see, the whole “experiment” produced a bunch of groaners, but it’s still kinda cool that I got acknowledged.
2) A few weeks after that, I found that I got a retweet/reply from @FakeeEtiquette. Again, nothing major, but it’s still nice to be retweeted by an entity with more than 9,000 followers. If you have any “aspiring actor” friends, you’ll probably relate to this:
3) A few weeks before all of that, I helped kick off my friend Marcus’s new internet radio show. I’ve crossposted some of the stuff I’ve written for his site (TGRIOnline.com), and this is just another one of his hairbrained schemes to take over the world. In any case, I love anything that gets me more attention, and it was a fun experience. You can listen to that show here.
Also, I don’t think he has announced it, but I’m scheduled to be on again tomorrow night, so be sure to tune in!
4) Finally, in my aimless attempt at “brand extension”, I’ve found myself with a Tumblr . Now, some of you might be asking “Why do you need another website?” Others might be asking “What’s Tumblr?” Let’s answer that last one first: from what I’ve gathered, it’s all the best parts of “New Twitter” without the seizure-inducing interface. You’re not hampered by character limits, and you can post pictures, text, videos, audio, etc. It follows that Twitter model, in that you follow folks and they follow you. So, it’s just another social networking popularity contest.
So, why did I create one? Well, that’s easy: believe it or not, I actually created it for archiving purposes. I’m sure if any of you are aware, but Twitter imposes a limit on the number of older tweets that you can access. As it stands, you can only search your archives up to 3200 tweets. Sure, that may seem like a lot, but seeing as how I just passed 10,000 today, that means that I can no longer access the majority of my tweets. For most people, that’s not an issue. They use Twitter as a forum for their stream-of-conscious thoughts. I, however, tend to really use it as a “micro blog”. Sure, some of those tweets might be in-the-moment, but I’d really like to remember and review some of them at later dates.
In the past, I had used a website that turned my tweets into a PDF “tweetbook”. Unfortunately, that service seems to be down indefinitely. So, in a somewhat desperate move, I created a Tumblr and linked it to my Twitter account. If nothing else, I figured this would serve as a crude, but effective, archive. I actually created this system around Tweet #7,000, at which point I teased that I would be unveiling a new site. Well, after about 2,000 tweets, I decided to check in on my little experiment. And it was a clusterfuck.
Tumblr isn’t a live system when it comes to imported content, so all of that is queued. My Tumblr was set to update about once per hour, but all that did was distort the natural chronology of things. Posts were out of sequence, often making no sense. So, I spent a weekend going through and trimming the fat. I disconnected Twitter, as I really didn’t need to see all of my @replies scattered any which way. With all of that behind me, I’ve decided to try to use Tumblr for its true purpose. What that means is that I need followers. If you’ve got a Tumblr, let me know and I’ll follow you. While the #followback mentality on Twitter can lead to ignorant/worthless conversations, Tumblr seems to be 75% porn, so I really don’t see how I could go wrong. You’ll probably see content on there that I’ve already tweeted, but that’s to be expected. After all, my tagline is “The Place To Be To See All The Great Stuff You’ve Already Seen Before!” Yeah, it’s basically gonna be a “Best of Will’s Tweets” site, but it’s also going to be where I post photos from now, if only to not have to deal with Plixi servers anymore. I’m sure, over time, I’ll figure out what to do with that site. But for now, as Kanye would say, “It’s a process.”
