╠ The internet is stalking me! ╣

So via facebook everyone can see photos of you, twitter can share your every thought and foursquares allow people to know where you are. Is it just me or does the internet have enough information to make any stalker happy?

With each of these opportunities there are chances for organizations to access this information as well and try and use it for their own advantage.

I have to ask at what point will we rebel? At what point will the internet ask for too much information? We seem to all have a sharing fetish and I believe its something that will come back to bite us.

╠ Utilizing Twitter ╣

One of the things I've been determined to do since finding twitter is actually find a way to use it for something useful. At Manifest the main thing with twitter that I did was to run a competition where during the weekend if you made a tweet with #manifest in it you were eligible to win. It went down quite well...

The question as to whether it was worth the merch is yet to be raised, however the point is that it sparked discussion and we were getting quite a few tweets, all aligned with the right tag.

The reason I bring this up is that I saw another style of competition today, except this time you had to tweet this '@GuitarHero: “Today is the day I’m getting @GuitarHero 5!” RT for your chance to win 1 of 5 #GuitarHero 5 bundles!'

Basically a set message. One message posted a million times, that my friend is spam. Creating content based around your brand, that's community building.

So what are your thoughts, do I get to feel the pride of one upping a worldwide brand, or is there some trick to this Guitar Hero tweet that makes it more valuable?

╠ Twitter is Broken ╣

Whilst most marketers would believe Twitter has had it's time on top, ranking with the likes of facebook and myspace. I beg to differ

My first thought for Twitter was that it's really gimicky. First twitter in unique location here, unique individual twittering there. That's most of the news around it.

I think Twitter in it's current state has run out of steam, however it's not actually the gimickyness that has caused it in my opinion. Thanks to programs like Twollow the entire follower/following dynamic is blown, accounts can auto-follow you that will never actually read what you post. To prove my point I've made an account to follow anyone who talks about Gruen :P

Because of this I think Twitter needs to change its dynamic before it gets more flooded with Twollows than Twits.

PS: Interesting note, as I was writing this Twitter was actually not working, fail whale and all.

╠ Back in my day we had to type in the full url ╣

Stan Lee over at Brand Dna made a post about a new website recently. What this site does is takes any website and creates a smaller url for it.

It's a brilliant idea and a great idea for what is becoming a more and more upcoming need for consumers. Especially with the growth of twitter the need to limit character number is something that is more and more useful.

Whilst this site may generate a url longer than some sites like www.blogspot.com, however if you were instead trying to link to this exact blog post the character count is huge. If I wanted to post about it on twitter what I can say is incredibly limited, however using this site opens huge opportunities.

A site like this is really satisficing a market need before it flourishes into an actually well recognized issue. Personally I think the thought behind it is so brilliant and I hope whatever car that is is paying them advertising because I really like this idea and them making nothing from it would just be a shame.

╠ Wolf in sheep skin! - Twitter ╣

Now this is something that has been sort of building up since I first heard the word twitter. I honestly don't get it. I don't understand the hype about it. This video sort of shows the kind of feeling I have towards it. However despite all this it is still labeled as some huge marketing thing that everyone is up on. So I got one then after having the first status update I receive being 'having eggs for tea tonight. Yum!' I gave up and never returned. Yet it was still in the background as this big thing. I thought 'You know one day I will get it.' But I don't.

I mean I can see the marketing potential here, it is a very useful marketing tool, but so am I...haha wit! Either way cannot see how it has taken off. I mean yes I do use facebook a lot and find the twitter element of it fun but that is because there is so much else to that site. I really can't see myself being so drawn to something so simple though.

So this is my cry out to any twitter fans out there. What is there that makes it such a must have. I mean there are even books being made about twittering. So please if someone can explain it please go ahead and save me from having to get one of those books in order to see what I'm apparently missing.