Twitter addendum

I actually get some time at my other job to read magazines that are, uh, not really held in high esteem. I came across an "article" about Twitter and how celebrities use it to comment on all sorts of things and people can follow these tweets without having to be a "friend" like you would have to be on Facebook. It occurs to me that Twitter, and possibly the reason I don't really like Twitter, is perfect for marketing a personality. Even if that personality is not a person. One day, and I don't think it will be that far in the future, there will be enough people on Twitter to make it a worthwhile marketing platform. And then, not too long after that, everyone will stop following anyone or thing on Twitter because it will be like carrying around a bunch of annoying advertisements trying to sell you on something.

Thing 25: Bloggers Toolkit

Oh geez. I spent what seemed like ten hours looking at widgets, trying them out, making them work, and making them fit my page. I spent WAY too much time looking at things that were broken, useless, or ridiculous. I ended up adding a favicon, a search bar, a subscription feed, a widget that turns my posts into a podcast, and a widget that pops-up mini-screens over the links on my page.

I ended up rejecting many widgets mostly because they came with advertising attached. I guess that's the downside of free widgets; I despise ads because they make the page so cluttered. In fact, I'm not sure how long I'll keep Odiogo, the podcast widget, and Snap Shots, the pop-up box widget, because both of them add a visual element to the page that I don't like. The podcasts themselves are hilarious, though. They're all wooden and mis-pronounced in a charming, robot kind of way.

The really great widgets were the ones that could be added with one click. My favicon was a little more complicated and even now seems to only work intermittently. Also, during the customization part I had no idea what to put in for number of pixels that I wanted the widget sized at. Mostly, I'm pleased with what I found, and I'm still thinking that Lil Wayne widget would have looked SO good...