Fuck Off

Many of you know that I have a few major pet peeves with the some of the popular trends on Facebook. There are the You Tube Dj’s who think people give a crap about them posting a video we have all seen a billion times. Then there are the “Copy and paste this as a personal favor to me if you hate cancer because I knew someone who had it once.” Yeah, we have all known someone who has had cancer. Suck it up! It’s called life. A big part of that is death. And re-posting your message does jack shit to fight cancer. Ever hear you get out of it what you put into it? Yeah, you can copy and paste. It accomplished nothing. I shaved my head for children with cancer a few years ago. They got two 5 foot pony tails so that little girls could go on the playground and not get laughed at. But you can copy and paste. Good for you you lazy piece of crap. Go out and really do something or STFU already.

Oh, I’m sorry. Am I being too harsh for your sensitive self. Suck it up! This is my birthday and this is my message. You got to flood my inbox with ten billion “Happy Birthday” messages that meant nothing, so I think I should be allowed a little honesty. Notice I have my profile blocked from you posting on my wall? Did you ever wonder why? It was to stop you from flooding my wall with the same damn message ten billion times. Why should I let you take over my wall? It’s my wall and not yours! Don’t be so selfish. This is not about you. It is my birthday so this is about me. Suck it up!

So let me get this straight. You wanted to make my wall worthless by flooding it with the same damn message so that nothing that I wanted on my wall would show. Right? But since I blocked you from doing that now you flood my inbox with the same stupid crap making my inbox worthless too? Sorry but I find that extremely rude and I think you are the insensitive prick. So please go fuck yourself. Seriously.

If you think for a second that this is directly about you. Fucking great! Your ego has finally bit you in the ass. How does it feel to be taken down a few pegs? Now if you can suck in that bottom lip for a second I will inform you that this is not about you. It is about me. There was not one person who did this. There were tons! It was a flood before my birthday even happened. Otherwise I wouldn’t have posted this message. So it is not specifically about you. It is about the trend. If only you did it I wouldn’t be pissed.

Want to make it up to me? Want to actually do something positive for my birthday instead of being an annoying little twat? Go to http://RockMyMonkey.com/tv See the interview I did with Ozzy’s guitarist at the top? Well first click the link to the interview. I know the interview is already showing, but you want to be on that specific page for that specific interview not just the RMM TV page. Ah screw it. How about I make it easy for you? CLICK HERE! Now send that link to your Facebook, Twiiter, MySpace, and Stumble Upon. If you have a Digg, Reddit, or Mixxingbowl account vote it up or submit it there too. Then pat your self on the back. No really. You actually did something. Feels good eh?

Now this was only the first step. Now go out and give blood at the blood bank. Then maybe spend $20 on the best canned soup you can find and donate it to your local food bank (not just the crap you normally send). Do you have long hair? I don’t care if you need that look for your band. Go to LocksOfLove.org and donate it to some kids who really need it. Hey! Ya know what? Screw promoting my website or even telling me you did any of these things. Just go out and help the world around you. I mean really get your ass outside and physically help the world around you. It will make you feel ten times better than flooding my inbox with birthday spam. It will make me feel a lot better too that I can actually have control over my messages again. That would truly make this a happy birthday. Thanks for understanding, reading until the end, and actually caring enough to pay attention.

So everyone knows that my favorite pet peeve right now is people who post 20-30 YouTube music videos a day. Seriously people, there is no need to post a link to every single You Tube music video you listen to or watch. You do not work for MTV and you are not a video DJ. The worst are the ones that post the same songs every single day. Copy and paste is anti-social in my book.

Now the robo response (knee jerk response that requires no thinking) is to say “Would you rather people post what they are eating?” Of course not. I would rather they put some effort into it. I also despise those auto posts that provide you with something funny so you don’t have to think. I want something from your head. I want to know what you are thinking. I want to know the things you have achieved that day. I want to know what obstacles you are overcoming. Facebook is like anything else. The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it. Use your imagination people!

Now there are legit reasons to post YouTube videos. Here is my top ten list of legit reasons to post a YouTube music video on your Facebook profile. Enjoy?

10. Your band did a cover of a song a few nights ago and you want to get some feedback from people other than your IRL friends.

9. A band you love that most people are not aware of releases a new music video.

8. You just re-discovered a song by a band most of your friends don’t even know about.

7. A really bad cover band makes fools of themselves

6. Any band releases a new music video. After a day assume you are late to the game and others have already seen it. You re-posting it makes you look like a noob and just annoys people.

5. The song helps make a point you are trying to get across.

4. It’s a new spin on an old theme. Such as one of those misinterpreted lyrics videos. Sure it’s a song we have all heard a million times, but the reason you are posting it is for the humor of the wrong lyrics.

3. It’s newsworthy. If a band member dies, you are letting others know you will be at the show, etc.

2. You are in the band. If you are in the band this is called self promotion. When it comes to being a whore for the stuff you yourself create (or are a part of in some way) my rules and tolerance are massively lenient.

1. You heard this drives Mark Carras freakin’ nuts and it’s really fun to poke him with a stick and watch him overreact.

Socia lMedia

So awhile back (I think a year or two) a couple people started up Twitter accounts for their pets. The accounts got very popular because it was an original idea and the people behind them had a good amount of imagination. The accounts were entertaining to watch. They provided good content. Then a million other people without that level of imagination tried to do the same thing. So we ended up with a flood of Twitter accounts done in tribute of some damn cat. Now I love animals. I have a cat who many people that don’t even live with me refer to as “Daddy’s Spoiled Rotten”. But there is no way I would start up a Twitter or Facebook account under her name. Why? Because I just don’t think I could come up with enough good content to make it worthwhile. This whole “Pets with social media accounts” thing has really gotten out of control.

Now we see everything with social media accounts. I have seen people with Twitter accounts for everything from their bathroom scale to their refrigerator. It’s down right retarded. So now of course we must have a parody. A good friend now has launched a Facebook account for a chair. Yes, it’s another stupid Facebook game and everyone knows how much I hate those, but this has something different to it. This one seems to mock the trend of things other than humans with social media accounts. So although I will not play the game, I do find it entertaining that it exists. So no I will not join, but I will write this entire blog post to help promote it. The question is, will people get that they are being mocked for giving the tree outside in their yard a MySpace account?

My question is, where did this friend of mine learn how to spell the words Sitting and Chair? Either way, go HERE to join up and follow the “Sittin Chaiir”.

And for my regular readers, yes this is one of the very rare occasions where I am posting about the activity of one specific friend. So yes person behind the chair account, this is about you.

Facebook

You Are Not A Video Jockey!
Don’t you wish there was a way to just block all those posts where people think they are some sort of Video YouTube DJ? Do these people think everyone is just sitting around waiting for them to post music links? You do not work for a video channel, you are not that important, so just stop it! I understand if the music video is somehow news worthy. If it is a brand new video and you are a press agent trying to get the word out cool. I even understand the people that post some rare video most have probably never seen or didn’t know about. Of course there is no problem with posting video footage of the concert you went to just last night. I understand that. What I am talking about is the people that flood Facebook with non-stop YouTube music videos. If 99% of your posts like that do not have any comments there might be a reason. No one cares. If Facebook had a way to somehow block by subject that would be great. Then I could block my friends with delusions of grandeur that think they are some video jockey without blocking them from the conversation and networking that I follow them for in the first place.

It’s Not Just About YouTube!
Now keep in mind I am not just talking about the music videos. What about the endless sports posts where someone posts crap like “Wow that was a great touch down” assuming that all their Facebook friends from around the world are watching the same game and have a clue what the hell they are talking about. Same thing goes for the ones that react to some lame reality show they are watching. Of course the worst ones could not be blocked since they give no reference as to what the hell they are watching. I mean what keywords do they watch for if all the twit says is something like “Oh I hate her, they should kick her off the show.” Not everyone is watching the same thing, so make sure and give us a clue as to what the hell you are talking about. Then when Facebook does offer us a chance to block by subject or keyword we can block the posts we don’t care about but still keep in touch.

I Even Want You To Be Able To Block Me!
The truth is that everyone is annoying at some point. I know that many of my real world friends get annoyed when I post music industry stuff. There is no way I can stop doing that entirely. So it would be great if the people that follow me and hate that crap could block that but not block everything I post. I know the automated answer is always “Well block them if you don’t like what they post.” Ok moron, try to pay attention. I do like SOME of what they post and that is why I follow them. However, everyone is annoying at some point. This includes myself. So I think blocking posts by keyword or subject would help my feed as well as the feed or the people that follow me. I am talking about wanting people to automatically block the posts I make so that only the parts of me you care about show. Blocking by keyword would make our friends and family much less likely to drive us to drink. In this stressful holiday season we have enough reasons to drink. So get on it Facebook!

Socia lMedia

So this last week I was looking at my search analytics and saw something interesting. Facebook had sent me about 300 unique visits over the past week. Google had sent me about 100 unique visits. Are people no longer finding things through the traditional search engine? Or is that more of a difference between things being tossed up in front of you by people you connect to on social networks as opposed to having a specific item you are searching for? Let’s face it, most people only add a “friend” on Facebook if they have the same interests. So if they follow me there is a really good chance that the content I post on my Facebook is going to be something they will be interested in.

Many people in social media discount Stumble Upon, but many times they send my site way more traffic than even Facebook does. Facebook sends my site traffic on a more dependable basis, but when Stumble Upon kicks in I get a pretty good day long spike. So why do so many in social media dismiss it? Maybe the experts are full of crap? Maybe we should try everything and see what connects with our target audience the best and damn what works for everyone else?

So maybe this is a question of “Which Is Better For Driving Traffic” instead of “Are Search Engines Dying”? One is clearly better for driving traffic than the other, but is this a true threat to search engines? I know it used to be that if you didn’t exist on Google that your site pretty much didn’t exist. Now it seems that if you work hard enough on Social Networking it could mean 10 times more traffic than a search engine will ever bring you.

So what does this mean for SEO? Why should you care about your search engine optimization if search engines are only bringing in ten percent of your traffic? Or maybe this is just my experience? I want to know what other people are experiencing. What brings you in the most traffic? Is it networking, search engines, or just your regular readers coming back? Facebook was around 300, but all of my networking brought me in about 1,000 unique visitors within the past week. Is this an anomaly or is this a pattern?

Consider this post more about asking questions. I want to know if others have experienced the same thing. Where does your traffic come from?

Facebook

10. Posting REALLY old internet jokes
Yes I know about Rick Rolling and no you are not funny. You are several years behind in fact. Get with the times.

9. Bored People With Nothing To Say
Oh these types are the worst. They have nothing to say but yet they keep typing. Why? Because they don’t want to admit that their lives about about as pleasant as a chainsaw enema. It’s like taking some bimbo home who wants to talk afterwards, but blabber on and on about crap you couldn’t even pretend to care about. Please save me the trouble and just go play Farmville with the other idiots. You can’t handle a real conversation anyways.

8. Posting Things I Hate Because You Think It Is Funny
This is the same as posting a Rick Roll and thinking you are cutting edge. If one of my friends does this funny thing a day, is it still funny? No. You didn’t “Get me real good that time.” I’m just irritated at your lack of imagination. When I had my wall open I would get people pulling that same prank everyday. Sometimes several times a day. Somehow each one of them thought they were funny and original. They weren’t.

7. Invites To Farmville
So I ignore your invite my email, but you think I will fall in love with that waste of braincells game if you post it on my wall? I’m not on Facebook for brainless games. I’m on Facebook for conversation. When I want to unplug I will go in the bedroom and watch tv.

6. What About My Friends Who Just Want To Catch Up?
Sometimes I want to catch up with an old friend. So I go to their wall to read up on what is happening in their lives. What I end up reading is endless lists of crap from other people. When you go to my wall you will only see what I am up to. Makes it easier for everyone.

5. Posting Videos Of Bands I Hate
No I really don’t care about the latest whiny little bitch emo band. I also don’t care about the latest flat monotone metalcore band. If the band didn’t come out between 1985 – 1995 I think they suck. I’m old and cranky. Deal with it. You are blocked for trying to make my wall look like I’m some trendy loser who still lives in his mothers basement. Get a real job!

4. People who post a reply to a thread by starting another thread on my freaking wall.
You really think you are THAT special? Why can’t you post the reply within the thread of the conversation along with everyone else? You give arrogant Bastard a bad name. I’d rather drink the beer.

3. Things that are better put in the Facebook email system
If you want to ask me a question send me an email. No one else needs to read about your computer problems (or whatever other lame thing you are asking about).

2. Spammers
Ok, this isn’t too common as Facebook has a pretty easy way to block unwanted people, but with what I do online I can only be so picky. A spammer does get in from time to time and I don’t want gay pron sitting on my wall for 8 – 16 hours before I notice it.

1. No Reason For It Really
Ok, now I run three fan pages for three different websites. I totally understand why someone would want to posting something on those walls. It would be stupid to block fans from posting on the wall of a band. If I do an interview with a band that band should want me to post a link on their fan page. Their fans probably want to see that. But a personal wall? No reason. When I posting something, reply within THAT thread. Don’t start a new one. If you want me to check something out, use the email system. If I like it I will hit that share button. There is no reason for you to post on my wall. There is no reason for anyone to post on anyone’s personal wall. There are better alternatives. Use them.

Foursquare

My Life Sucks Too Much For Foursquare
So Foursquare keeps growing and growing eh? Fine, but I don’t think it can ever be as big as Twitter or Facebook. The reason is that most of us are boring. I include myself in this category. I used go from home to work and then a few hours latter I go from work to home. Well, I’m not going to announce where I live so the only thing I would ever post is my workplace. Sure there is a rare time that I go out to a restaurant with my wife. A few times a year we go to the movies. About 5 times a years I go to a concert. Other than that I might go to a friends house, but I’m not going to post that. Ok, I also go to the store. So let’s say 20 times a year I go to a restaurant, 5 times a year I go to the movies, and 5 times a year I go to a concert. That’s not exciting at all! Is that worth posting?

Most Peoples Lives Suck Too Much For Foursquare
With 30 postable locations a year other than my workplace, this is less exciting than if I posted what I’m eating for dinner every night. Sure I post a photo of a really awesome meal every once in awhile, but for the most part I make fun of people that post boring crap like that. Sure people in Silicon Valley go to all kinds of exciting places all the time. Of course people with a really good job can go out to all kinds of interesting places every weekend, but most of America is poor as hell!

Foursquare Will Be Friendster In A Year
Can Forsquare really survive on people posting updates of work, Wal-Mart, home, work, Wal-Mart, home? That is most of America with very little diversity. The amount of people that can afford to go beyond that are a small percentage of the country. According to most internet ranking sites Foursquare ranks inside the top 1,000 websites on the internet. I think this is about as far as it is going to get. Yes, it will get a little higher for a short blip of time. They will make some deals to get those home, work, Wal-mart, home level users. But those users will get bored of the site really quick since they don’t have the exciting updates that the top users post. It will only remind them that their life sucks and is boring. People don’t like that and they will stop posting updates. Once this final spike of the site is done even the cool kids will leave and the site will be the latest Friendster.

Mark my words… At this time next year Foursquare will be looked back on as a failure.

Facebook Events

Are You Training People To Reject Your Invite?
I follow a ton of people from all over the world on most social networks. So I get invites to things all over the world. The problem is that I loose money on my music industry related activities already. So there is no way I am taking a private jet to your local club show. I know, what’s the harm when all I have to do is take a few seconds to click ignore on the event that was mass blasted to everyone on that persons list? Well, it’s kind of like when the “Are you sure you want to delete that” pop ups that our computers give us before hitting delete. Does anyone even pay any attention to them at all? I am so used to hitting that ok button that even if a part of my brain is questioning the deletion, my hand has already deleted the item before I can even save it. The same thing happens with your events. When I see that question of “Will you attend this event”, I hit no before I even stop to check the location. I click that no button before I even look to see what that event is.

Why Did You Promote The Event On Facebook?
Because everyone just blasts everything to everyone, everyone is jaded to the event invites. So no one really pays any attention to them at all. Sure your best friend will click yes. Your girlfriend will click yes. Your bandmates will mostly click yes (sorry but your drummer is dumber than a rock and doesn’t get it), but will this improve attendance? Not one bit. You will be lucky to get one person to attend that would not have attended otherwise. Wasn’t that the point? To get more people to show up than who would have otherwise? Then stop blasting it to everyone because you are training people to reject your events without even thinking about it. It is a knee jerk reaction because of the constant blasts we all get from every band from all over the world.

Have You Ever Even Mentioned The State Or City?
Most band’s don’t even mention the state or city. So I have rejected events and found out later it was a local show at a club I had never heard of before. At least list the state and city or your event post failed right out of the gate.

It’s Not All Bad News
So is this nothing but bad news? No. You can stop it. We all need to do our part to stop people from blasting everyone for an event that only 10% of their followers are even capable of attending. Most of the social networks have a way of selecting only the people from your area. Can we start a campaign to not just click no, but to say why in the comments. When an online friend invites you to an event in another state or country, link to this article. Or you can just type “Stop inviting people from out of state, it hurts us non-spamming bands jerkface!” Ok, make up your own line if you want. I just think it would be funny if EVERYONE started using that one. If they don’t list the city and state post that you have no idea what part of the world the event is at and that is why you will not attend. It will take more of an effort than most will be able to muster, but if enough of us do this we can change the pattern and maybe a few habits. Or maybe this is just a way for your band to rise above the rest?

Facebook

For most of the time I have been on Facebook, I have been bothered by some of the posting behavior of my fellow users. Recently it has started bothering me less and less. Why, because I have started to accept that everyone looks to Facebook for different reasons. These reasons are starting to intrigue me.

The Reasons I post
When I ost something it is to share some form of information that I think others may have a want or need for. This could be a music video, article, or perception of thinking. However, I try my best to not share things that others have seen a million times before. No matter how much I love a song, why post a video most have seen already? Wouldn’t it be better to post something new? I have always heard that social networking is all about content. The better the content the more people will not only follow you, but also pay attention. If I post some Nickelback video, to me it is a bigger mistake that people have seen it before than the mistake of posting something so many so passionately hate. I find no issue with posting a video people despise. I do however have a major problem with people posting a video that people have seen a million times before.

Sorry I was offended by your offensive behavior
There was once a person I followed on Facebook that would post the same mainstream videos everyday. There was about ten of them. I have wondered if it was some posting bot on a loop because there was never much variation to it. I majorly offended the person when I asked if that was the case. I was honestly just trying to find out why one would post the same thing over and over again everyday. It made no sense to me.

Who Pays For My Therapy?
Here I was thinking that it was silly to post something most have seen and this person goes and posts the same thing over and over again everyday. How many people on her list of friends had not seen that video by the tenth time she posted it? I am willing to bet that most of them had seen it before she posted it once. It was pretty mainstream. It would be like teaching a child that humans never eat hot dogs ever and to eat one would be wrong. Then that child goes to a hot dog eating contest where someone eats packages after packages of lips and bung holes. That child might need some therapy. This wasn’t just someone breaking the rules that I held sacred. That I could deal with. This was pissing on the bible in front of the Pope and and setting the book on fire!

I’m better now, really
Now I see people posting mundane things all the time and it still makes me twitch a little. I still see people trying to pull off Rickrolling like it’s a new thing! But now I see that even though Facebook and Twitter are for posting content of some sort that most have not seen, for others that is not the case. For that person that posted that Nickleback video everyday, Facebook might be the place where you are letting others know what you are listening to. So you can post a video because you think others should see it, or just because you want others to know what you are currently listening to. So before you go off on someone for breaking some sacred rule of conduct in social networking, know that for some it’s not about the actual networking. Hell, sometimes they just want to unplug their brains and play Farmville…(*shudder*).

Money

So this question was posed on Facebook recently by the ever so awesome folks at Social Blade. What I liked about the question was that it was so vague. It made a horrid question for Facebook, because it made such an awesome question to answer in blog form.

Full credit for the inspiration of this post goes to Erin of Social Blade though.

So let’s dive into this question first by asking the questions that it ignores. Most importantly is what part of Social Networking are we talking about? Social Networking is a pretty massive thing. It’s like saying that computers are evil. Sure there is a ton of evil connected to computers, but there is a ton of good too. There are tons of elements within social networking that I feel should never be paid for, but there are other services within that that should totally be paid for. It’s all a question of what you consider to be part of social networking.

The Sites Themselves
So sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Mixx, Reddit, etc should never be paid for. If they can’t figure out how to make a profit from the tons of eyeballs they need to just shut their proverbial doors. They can charge for advertising of all different types. They can charge for not showing any ads, they can charge for features on a profile that do not directly affect the voting algorithm, they can charge for access to some of the analytics (if they are careful), they can charge for access to their API, sites like Twitter and Facebook can charge for extra features on business related pages, they can charge for conferences, they can charge for merch, and I could go on forever. The truth is that there are endless ways they can make money without charging for the basic services. For the most part they need to stay free or their integrity will be questioned.

API run services
I have always thought that websites should be charged for access to another websites API. Then services that run off of the API can be more dependable as well as more powerful. This would also make it more understandable for the API dependent services to charge their users. If an API does something that saves me some time and makes my business more efficient, I have zero problem with some $5 a month charge. $5 a month times a few thousand users adds up pretty fast. Make that a few million users and that service can make insane amounts of money.

Pro Run Social Media Accounts
As a person who gets paid to run some of the social networking accounts of my clients, I must insist that I get paid for the work I do. Would I pay for someone to run my accounts? At this point I think it might make people question my integrity. However, if you had an a-list band, ran a shoe store, had a HVAC company, or had a major motion picture opening soon, you would be stupid to not hire someone to handle that for you. You have more important things to do. Plus, someone like me will be able to do it better than you since you have so little experience in this. Since I sit around all day and do nothing but this, I am going to be able to do it better and more efficiently. Most of us can cut meat up, but hire a butcher and they will show you how a pro does it.

In closing
So there are elements of social networking that you should NEVER pay for, but there are things you SHOULD pay for as well. You have to use a little common sense to pick which is which. If you have questions, ask an expert. That is what they are there for. No, really… ASK ME!