I’ve been getting steady Twitter follow notifications since I really got in to Twitter as more than just a passing glimpse about a month ago. Many of these notifications are from legit Twitter users. However, Twitter spammers are absolutely horrible about hiding their spamminess.  Following are my top signs that a Twitter follow notification is from a spammer:

1. They are following more than a thousand Twitterers but are followed by very few. Very few is relative.  I’ve seen some followed by under 10.  If someone follows thousands of Twitterers, they are bound to get a bunch of autofollows, so having even a hundred followers could still mean spammer.
2. After reviewing their profile and deciding to follow, you get an auto DM that say “thanks” for following them and (here is the key) it contains an affiliate link to some “Make Money Online” scheme site.
3. Upon reviewing their profile, you see that that they have less than 5 updates.  The updates they do have are a couple words long.
4. Upon reviewing their profile, you see that all of their updates are the same thing.  For example… hey, follow my link (because I am not smart enough to realize that you know what an affiliate link looks like), and you will receive: a) great wealth, b) hot chicks, c) a great body, or d) great wealth, hot chicks, and a great body.
5. Their profile link is an affiliate link.  Good god people! Do people really click on tinyurl profile links? Are you that crazy?
6. Their profile bio and/or Twitter name imply that they are an SEO, and they have less than a page of updates spread out over the last year. Ok, I can accept that you may have been skeptical of Twitter with regards to SEO.  But if you are not on board now, I’d say you are a spammer or an incompetent SEO.
7. While not a 100% guarantee, if they have a picture of a hot chick, preferably barely clothed, I’ll lay money that they are a spammer everytime. It’s amazing to me how many hot chicks there are on social media sites, and how they love to post their scantily clad profile pics. Awesome!

So now that I get to the end of this list, I guess you are probably wondering what I consider a Twitter spammer. In my mind, someone who is only on Twitter to get you to follow a link of theirs that will make them money is a spammer. I personally don’t care if you are using Twitter for SEO or just to spread the word about sites you want when you post a link.  But if all you do is post links to your crap without offering anything of value in return, that screams spammer to me. You are best not even following me if that is what you want me to do, because I will never (no never) follow your links.

If you have good links and you actually communicate with me on Twitter, I will likely follow your links that intrigue me.

• Google
• Yahoo
• Live

Technical interpretations abound, including:

• SEOmoz
• Search Engine Land
• Yoast (with a Wordpress plugin already)

The SEOmoz and Search Engine Land articles do an excellent job of talking about the canonical URL tag.  The immediate thoughts that come to my mind are:

1. Will the engines later use these tags for some other purpose, like they did when the switched the intention of nofollow from generally indicating a level of distrust to force feeding the idea of nofollowing paid links.
2. Will they shadier SEO’s work on a way to use canonical URL tags to their advantage? On this, I can say with certainty they are already postulating.

Do you think they will succeed?

Well, last night it was announced that USA Swimming was giving Phelps a three month ban.  Additionally, Kellogg is pulling their endoresment deal. Are these actions fair?  Similar to my stance on legalization of marijuana, I’m not really interested in discussing that. People will form their own opinions — and I don’t really care to waste time on an argument where neither side will yield and feels that they are absolutely right.

So what the heck am I here to talk about?

Actually, I am really here to wonder out loud… how long before these Internet photo outings will become so overplayed that the general public views them briefly and then moves on as if nothing happened? I mean really, how long before we become so de-sensitized to this stuff that we just give a “oh, is that so” reaction?

It seems that everyday another high school or college kid has a scandalous photo posted on MySpace, FaceBook, Flickr, or a personal blog; a pro athlete has a photo posted with a drink in one hand and a hot chick on each arm; a teacher somewhere has a photo posted somewhere while doing something amoral like having a beer (gosh forbid); or some moron puts together a video of themselves acting like a fool for 15 minutes of fame

The viewing public, after pausing The Jerry Springer Show on that there Tivo machine, acts outraged that this kind of thing can happen in America — somehow America is plunging in to an ever apocalyptic spiral to hell. Oh, then Bubba presses play on that there Tivo machine and gets back to their own version reality.

Every night on my local news I hear breaking news of people getting killed by a estranged spouse. Teens get murdered at 3 in the morning on a street corner (there are no motives and the mom can’t understand why someone would do that to their precious son — don’t get me started on that). And my point? After these reports, the talking heads move on to the next story with no indication of impact over what they just said. We have become de-sensitized to those stories because they happen every day in every city, and we’ve seen the dead bodies on the street for years now.

It is only a matter of time before we just turn the page after each public Internet photo outing. Please, I hope this happens tomorrow.

I realize this post may be of no interest to most, if any, of you. However, I am using it as kind of my own de.licio.us bookmark — a place that I come to often, and can modify as needed. Here goes:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Mixx
• MySpace
• Digg
• OpenSocial
• Not social media, but important to me: Wordpress API

Telephone Problems

We are having issues with the phone lines in our house. Not really issues, it is more like our phone lines are possessed. Having some knowledge of the phone companies policies, I know that if you plug a phone in to the NID (the little box that your phone service runs through, typically on the side of your house) and it works, the phone company will charge you dearly to fix the problem. Upon determining that the issue is in the internal wiring we called Verizon to check on their services. The CSR was polite, told us about their rates (somewhere in the vicinity of $1.4 million to diagnose our problem, and another $32.15 to fix it — I kid, but only slightly), and then quite unsolicited mentioned to my wife that pretty much any independent contractor could do the work at a much more reasonable rate. That is not the customer service of which I speak (that is still to come).

Then I started calling independents listed in the phonebook (since no local contractor either have a website or can do SEO good enough to beat out the lead gen sites or the scrapers). After leaving about 6 messages I finally got a callback. Nice gentleman. Questioned me about the problem, gave me a couple hints, and then told me that his business was not in to residential phone line repairs, rather they were typically in to new builds. Then unsolicited, he mentions that there are a few companies that do offer this service, and proceeds to give me insight as to which he would go with and why, while mentioning the quirks about them. It was a very positive conversation… one which ended with him saying that if the companies he referred were not able to meet my needs that I should call him back for more options.

This guy had no obligation to be this pro-active. As a matter of fact, he was one of only 2 people to call me back out of the 7 or so that I ended up leaving messages at.

I’m not exactly a power Twitterer, but I do okay.  So, there must have been some unique attributes of my profile that appeal.  Now, if I can only figure it out so that I can increase my friend base!   You can find and friend me on Twitter as esoomllub.

While Internet marketing and the entrepreneurs trying to make a living in it may seem far removed from the credit crunch (aka, financial meltdown), the downstream impact of corporate belt tightening is being felt across the entire land:

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting video on the impact to Silicon Valley;

Money has a great article on Detroit, in particular the auto industry troubles;

NBC has a downtrodden unemployment report.

But fear not. If you, the Internet entrepreneur, need a little pick me up, check out Jim Kukral’s inspirational post. A little inspiration can go a long way when you walk out of the house after 30 minutes of doom and gloom on CNBC.

Why do I care you ask?

Well, if you take the 3 minutes necessary to register to comment on this blog, you will be able to not only leave a great comment, but you will also be able to link your social profiles on major social networks to your comment.  So lets say you want your fellow commentors to see where you are on Digg, Sphinn, or other major social network.  If you spend an extra 10 seconds scrolling to the bottom of your profile page, you will be able to enter your username on your networks.  Then next to your comments you will find a link to your profile on that network.

What if your favorite social network is not an option?

The beauty of this plugin is that it allows the blog owner to make simple code modifications (just adding an extra array value really) and have new networks show up. Obviously your new social network needs to have a simple, consistent method for linking to your profile.  For most networks this is the case.

Isn’t this a waste of time?

I guess you might think that.  But take a look at the HTML behind the link then re-answer that question to yourself.

I just read a post about SEO and social networks via a link in Mixx. The article itself was fine, save for some grammatical errors (but given that I am prone to grammatical errors I can’t say a whole lot). It was a quick read, and re-iterated a chunk of things I already believe (and some I don’t). Instead of the text of the article grabbing my attention though, the thing that struck me on the page though was the sheer number of social media links in the content area of the page.

The following is a screen capture of the social networking list at the bottom of the post:

So what do I see here:

• 28 icons to save the page url
• 16 icons to share the page
• a Yahoo buzz up link
• a Digg link
• a Sphinn link
• a Reddit link

Now I’m not here to say this is wrong on the part of newbornbusiness.com, because their usage of these icons is prevalent across a large number of blogs.  I’m more questioning when enough is enough? At what point do these icons and social network links just become invisible to users, kind of a banner blindness of the 21st century? Agreed, if you click the ShareThis link on the bottom of this post, you will see a full list of social networks.  I prefer this less obtrusive design, although as I set here now, I wonder which more effective (a test for another day).

Trust me, I get the importance of social networks from an SEO, marketing, and general visibility point of view. I just don’t know how visible something can be when it is visible to the point of distraction.

• million dollar portfolio has a simple contest to enter for a chance to win a Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder, 60-Minutes (Black)
• uber affiliates marketleverage contest
• Enkay Blog has a contest ending on August 4. They are giving away a brand new Asus EEE Laptop PC, a $50 AMEX Rewards Card and 3 2GB USB Pens.  As with many contests this summer, Market Leverage is the affiliate network impetus for the contest. Let me tell you… the laptop in this contest is actually something I crave!

I didn’t play in all of them, but have dabbled for sure. I wonder as to how successful these contests are, and will surely keep up with them after the fact to see the final results.