The Real Lance Brown

Last night I “live-tweeted” the movie Valley Girl (1983), starring Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman, as I watched it in full for the first time (on DVD). I really enjoyed the movie, and had fun tweeting along with it.

Here’s what came out, unedited:

22:34:51 Watching “Valley Girl”. I know, I’m like, such a fad whore. #grody
22:36:00 bitchin
22:36:42 totally
22:39:02 Nic Cage’s chest hair is in the shape of a Nerf boomerang. I don’t remember that fad. #ValleyGirl
22:39:22 gross me out
22:39:42 I’m so sure!
22:41:40 Wow, what’s Twitter got against “get real”? I tried to post that twice. Totally not bitchin, Twitter. Get real!
22:44:51 The music at this Valley Girl party is nearly inaudible. I get a real sense of what it’s like to be a dancing extra in a movie.
22:45:32 He’s such a total pukeoid…
22:46:31 Freak me out, freak me out, it’s him!
22:49:03 I may be live-tweeting Valley Girl for the next little while, in case you haven’t gathered. I’ll stop if you donate $10K to Japan relief.
22:49:58 “Like, it’s sushi, don’t you know?” I shit you not that line was said within 30 seconds of my last tweet.
22:52:59 Nic the Nerf boomerang-chested just spotted our Valley Girl. Maybe this party doesn’t suck so bad after all, say his eyebrows…
22:53:32 He saw her earlier on the beach, but she didn’t recognize him without his Nerf boomerang chest hair out.
22:54:49 Tommy, the coolest asshole in school, just got Valley G’s BFF to betray her, then shit on her. (Not literally…this was the 80′s, folks.)
22:56:57 I guess they were able to get DVD rights for “Electric Avenue”, because that was cranked up nice at the party.
22:57:53 (Nerf-chest Nic is heading back to the party to re-fight asshole Tommy.)
23:03:13 Nic used the old hide-in-the-bathroom gambit to bypass Tommy-fighting and romance Valley G.
23:04:33 I am simply gonna freak out and die!
23:05:00 Like I’ll be totally bummed out if anyone outside this car finds out about this!
23:07:03 “Hey Harvey! I thought you were gonna get the mohawk!” “Nah, I pussed out.”
23:08:05 Nic, his punk friends, and Valley G and her high-strung friend are cruising the streets in the convertible.
23:08:30 Just one punk friend, sorry.
23:09:28 Reminder: I’m live-tweeting Valley Girl; donate $10 to Japan relief efforts and I’ll stop immediately.
23:10:13 Oh my God, like don’t you have a straw? Totally out of touch with civilization.
23:11:16 In the punk club. Valley G and tight-wound are looking down their noses at Nic’s “home away from home” crowd.
23:11:48 Nic: “that techno rock you guys listen to is gutless!” Valley G: “I’m sure!”
23:12:43 “You’re like her! And all the rest of her friends! You’re all fucking programmed.” -Nic #ValleyGirl
23:15:51 Valley G’s starting to melt. “It’s like I can’t explain it, you know. It’s like my brains won’t stop going! You know?”
23:16:38 They kiss.
23:18:22 Now out at make-out point. Even tight-wound friend Stacey is letting the veil down, if you get my meaning.

Read more…

The Next Web has highlighted 5 things you didn’t know you could do with Twitter. in a recent post. the 5 things are: plan your meals, track your packages, post to Evernote, add to Google Calendar, and track your weight loss. Pretty neat.Check out the post for details on how those work.

I didn’t necessarily know that you could do these specific things using Twitter, though I do know there are a lot of little bots and tools like these that can be accessed easily if you know about them. For example: try tweeting “(sp?)” after a word in one of your tweets, and just wait–the spelling bot will reply with the proper spelling of your word. (Of course it probably won’t work for you now that I’ve mentioned it, but it is out there; I’ve seen it.)

Know of other cool bots and tools like these? Let the readers know in the comments!

It would be outrageous to claim that I have somehow opened up a channel of clairvoyance to the world of show business. So I’m not going to claim that. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Consider this:

On January 12, actor Josh Malina was bemoaning his career woes on Twitter (a recurring theme for the Backwash anti-hero). And for some reason, I came to a specific conclusion about a solution to his problem, and tweeted the following:

Some clarification of terms:

“#TBBT” is a hashtag referencing The Big Bang Theory, one of the most popular sitcoms on TV today–and being nerdy and quirky, a pretty good fit for what Josh Malina has become post-West Wing. (See: his guest spot on Psych, his series Backwash, and his Twitter feed.)

“@billprady” is the Twitter account of Bill Prady, co-creator of The Big Bang Theory, who tweets regularly.

Get ready for the spooky part: Guess who was on last week’s (Feb. 10) Big Bang Theory? Me! No wait, that’s not right. Josh Malina was though! (And well positioned for a recurring guest role, no less.)

Did I mold reality and make that occur? I don’t believe so; the timing is too tight. But clearly I bore witness to some sort of intra-state portal of insight on that fateful day in January.

Mere lucky coincidence, you say?

Consider this:

On Feb 5, I tweeted the following…

Clarification: @DougBenson is a comedian who has a podcast I enjoy called Doug Loves Movies. @pnut (P-nut) and @nickhexum (Nick Hexum) are two members of the band 311, a favorite band of mine that is based in LA (as is Doug’s podcast). The only connection I knew of between the two was that they both are known to be fans of the reefer (a.k.a. the demon weed), and I had seen P-nut tweet a couple of innocuous fan-type messages to Doug Benson recently.

The rest was just me embracing my amazing new power…because, unbeknownst to me (but knownst to my inner clairvoyant self apparently), 311 has arranged for Doug Benson to be the onboard comedian on their “311 Cruise” this year. He announced it on his Doug Loves Movies podcast which came out today (Feb 12th).

Again, the timing is too tight for my tweet to have been the inciting factor in this occurrence. And it’s not 311 appearing on Doug Loves Movies, it’s the other way around. But mark my words–well, technically, I’m marking them for you right here, but remember them–members of 311 will in fact appear on Doug Loves Movies before long–making my tweet both clairvoyant and prophetic, if I’m not mistaken. Which I’m pretty sure I am.

What entertainment industry happening will my clairvoyant unconscious stumble upon next? What other celebrity matchmaking will I manifest as 2011 unfolds?

No one knows…but it seems to be surfacing via my tweets, so your best bet is to follow me on Twitter.

I have a pretty absurd amount of Twitter accounts at this point. Most of them are dormant–accounts I started tentatively, in association with a project that I have planned (or that is nominally underway). Having dealt ad nauseam with the frustration of searching for domain names and finding them taken, I have become pretty aggressive in staking out usernames and other official addresses for projects I have a vested interest in. (I have nearly as many inactive Facebook Pages as I do Twitter accounts–probably almost a couple dozen of each.)

I do have a few Twitter accounts that are actually doing something as of this writing, and I figure it was time to get them together and start promoting them. I will add new accounts as they become active enough to justify doing so.

I’m subdividing myself into these various channels because I recognize that different folks are going to be interested in different aspects of what I’m doing or saying or putting out there. It goes both ways, really…I don’t expect that people who have an interest in just one of my niches will necessarily find the other things I’m doing all that compelling. And I also don’t think all the people who follow my main personal tweets want to deal with playing receiver to every single thing I put out into the world. They already deal with an awful lot of random output from me.

So here’s the breakdown. Please follow whatever accounts you think will be of value to you. (Click on the account name to visit the profile page and follow it.) I look forward to seeing you there!

@FreelanceLance – Lance Brown

This is my first and main account. Despite the username being drawn from my business name “Freelance Lance”, these tweets aren’t official business.  They are so not official anything that I can’t really advise you of what to expect. I’m not a one-note, “value provider” type tweeter, who is obsessed with getting followers and retweets. Or I should say I am obsessed with those things, but I’ve adjusted to the fact that my best bet is to just do what feels right for me, and the rest will come when it does.

The result is that I will say almost any damn thing on my Twitter account, and am known to veer in many directions. But I try to always be entertaining, informative, or thought-provoking. At my best, I’m all three.

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@1minuteofnature – One Minute of Nature

This would be a good account to follow for your health. One Minute of Nature aims to calm your harried mind. OneMinuteofNature.com is a site that is gathering short videos of soothing and otherwise fascinating nature footage from individuals all around the world. (Once I figure out the submission process, that is.) The slogan is “Bringing you back to nature, one minute at a time.”

It’s a newer project of mine–though, like a lot of my stuff, it has been percolating for some time now. I finally have videos up, and the site and Twitter account both are not shamefully incomplete anymore. (Great promo, eh?) And the YouTube channel is fairly stylin’, actually. The Twitter feed will consist mostly of links to new short nature videos, as they are posted. Follow and retweet…unless you hate nature!

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@FreeWPAdvice – Free WP Advice

I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with the awesome website software WordPress since it first came out in 2003. I fell in love then, and have only fallen deeper with each year since. Now, WordPress is the hottest thing since pepperoni pizza, and I’m kind of an elder statesman of people who’ve been using it. So I know it pretty well.

The FreeWPAdvice Twitter account is part of my effort to give back to the WordPress community, and to help others get to know and love the software that has become one the true foundations of the modern Web. Ask and you shall receive free WordPress advice. I’ve been planning on more coordinated stuff, like a day-long workshop or something, but I need to get some followers on this account first. I’ll be doing mini-tutorials via tweets in the meantime.

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@jokesonreince – Reince Priebus Jokes

The official Twitter account of America’s greatest hope for childish ridicule, ReincePriebusJokes.com. I still can’t fully articulate to myself why I started this site and Twitter account compiling jokes about the oddly-named RNC Chair, but there it is. It’s quite an array of humor…I’m not sure there are many other topics that have had such a wide variety of different kinds of jokes made about it, especially in such a short time.

Eventually, most or all of these various Reince Priebus jokes–of which there are hundreds, or more–will be catalogued on the site (which as of this writing is crushing the Google results for “reince priebus jokes” ;-)). A couplefew hundred  have already been posted at that Twitter account. At this point, expect a few more a day, unless Reince Priebus hits the news some more (or the site hits the news). There may be a contest or voting down the road as well. (There probably will be.) Priebus!

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Honorable Mention:

@ActivistStories – Activist Stories

This is the Twitter account for my planned podcast, Activist Stories. It will be a series of very personal interviews with activists of all sorts. From one activist to another, I aim to dig in deep and find out why we activists are the way we are, and why we do what we do. Both the Twitter account and website for this are skeletal right now, but Activist Stories is on my 2011 mindmap, so progress will be made on it this year. If it sounds interesting to you, you can get in on the ground floor by following now. (If you pass, don’t come complaining to me years from now, when we’re all rolling in billions of dollars from the Activist Stories IPO and you aren’t.)

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The active ones above are featured in a widget in my sidebar too now, in case you aren’t ready to take the plunge yet.

In an extremely unexpected turn of events, I have launched a site dedicated to jokes about the new Republican National Committee chairman with the funny name, Reince Priebus. The site is called (surprise!) ReincePriebusJokes.com. It’s mostly based off of tweets that I have skimmed off of the Internet – some 250+ jokes have been re-tweeted at the Twitter account @jokesonreince, and 150+ of them have been copied over to ReincePriebusJokes.com. (Technical difficulties have made the others not get copied over, but you can see them all at the Twitter page. I will get them all on the site soon enough.)

I take at least a little pride in the fact that the new site was the #1 result at Google for “reince priebus jokes” within 24 hours of launching. Unless something weird happens, I expect it will hold that spot for a long time to come. That’s part of what made me decide to go ahead with launching the site (after it loosely crossed my mind, when I invented the idea of the site in a tweet about all the Reince Priebus jokes from the day). I may discuss the reasons behind the site’s genesis more soon. In the meantime, feel free to check out the jokes, join in the fun, follow the site on Twitter if you want, and certainly pass the word to anyone who you think might enjoy this strange combination of comedy, wordplay, politics, and social media.

I have no idea where this might go. My goal is to automate it as much as possible, or maybe to delegate to folks who want to keep building the library and the community around it. We will see. I do know that as long as Reince Priebus is a national political figure, there will be Reince Priebus jokes, and as long as there are Reince Priebus jokes, there will be ReincePriebusJokes.com. Unless I get bored with it or sell it for hush money. (Big hush money, any of you hush-money dreamers.)

Here are the tweets that led up to the site’s formation… Read more…

I have to say, living alone for a very long time has made me really, really funny. To me.

-Tweeted by me, Sept. 5, 2009

It’s finally come time for me to admit something. It’s been out there in plain sight; people who cared to look would have immediately seen my dark and disturbing “secret”. But I need to say it. To own it.

Wow, this is tougher than I thought it would be. OK, here goes:

Phew! Man, do I feel better!

Sorry to burden you all with that. I know it’s sad, and the fact that you’re willing to stick with me and wade through such a disturbing truth is what makes you a true friend or unfortunate random reader. And I love you for it. (Unless of course you only favorite your own tweets. In which case, get away from me, freak!)

There’s a reason I don’t favorite tweets from other people, though: they would get in the way of my awesome tweets. So really, I just have your best interests at heart. (And by “your”, I mean “my”.)

In all seriousness–because there is literally nothing more serious on our entire planet–you can get those other people’s tweets anywhere. They’re laying around all over the place. But my own favorite things that I’ve said on Twitter? Where else can you get that? Answer me!!

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Nowhere, tough guy. That’s where. Now don’t you feel bad for implying that I was mentally ill or some sort of egocentric weirdo earlier in this post?

I really hope not, because if so you are very susceptible to persuasive rhetoric. Almost too much so. You did nothing wrong. And even if you did, it was coming from a good place. I know you only want what’s best for me, true friend or unfortunate random reader.

Now go read my favorite tweets, you easily-persuadable teddy bear! Here are a smattering of my favorite favorites to whet your appetite:

When I get on a rhyming kick, I start trying to will new words into the English language. The results so far have been sanguage.

I bet the guy who created “apostrophe s” has second thought’s about it now.

If you consider Beetlejuice as an existential pre-rendering of “Dirty Work”, Norm McDonald seems a lot more like a visionary. #thinkaboutit

P.S. – I did not waterboard those butterflies. And if I did, I didn’t know about it. And if I did know about it, I was misled.

…wondering if it’s a problem that every business plan I make, whether for my project or others’, somehow involves taking over the world.

DNKT = Did Not Know That, BTW. (BTW = By The Way, FWIW. {FWIW = For What It’s Worth, FYI. [FYI = For Your Information, in case you DNKT.]})

Little-known fact: I put the bop in the bop shi-bop shi-bop. But then I took it back out. It was so noisy!

Twitter’s like people-watching IRL–except the people you’re watching get a little note that says, “I’m watching you.”

Like what you see? There’s more of that, plus links to a bunch of cool resources, in my Twitter Favorites.

Do you have a favorite favorite tweet of mine? Post it in the comments! (<– a really clever scam to generate a big copyright infringement lawsuit against my fans) (<– a not-so-clever way to accidentally discourage comments) (<– ignore those two; they’re just being silly)

When I decide whether or not to follow someone on Twitter, I always visit their profile page–even if I already know I’m going to follow them because of a tweet they made, or their bio blurb, or a recommendation. I’m following around 1500 people now. At a rough guess, 500 of those might be people who I followed because they are famous, or famous-ish, or connected to famous things (i.e., TV writers, directors, producers.) Those folks didn’t really undergo scrutiny, other than to decide if the account was really that person, or a fake. But the other 1000 or so were strangers, and I visited most of their profile pages in order to decide whether to make a connection with them.

Everyone has their own reasons and uses for Twitter, and aside from flat-out scammy spammers, I hold no grudges against anyone for how they do their thing there. You hear a lot about supposed norms or etiquette on Twitter, and how much you are supposed to do this or that, but I don’t subscribe to those in general. The people who are pushing these norms are just one part of a small wave of an interpersonal revolution that is ultimately beyond anyone’s ability to fully grasp or reliably predict. In my opinion, to say there’s a certain right or wrong way to do Twitter actually shows a lack of understanding of what’s happening. There’s only one rule: 140 characters or less.

With that said, we each have our own vision of what we’re trying to get from Twitter, just as we do with what we’re giving to it. So I do have likes, dislikes and preferences, when it comes to who I decide to follow on Twitter. (The folks I decide not to follow aren’t doing it wrong; I just don’t want to follow them.) When I go to a person’s profile page, here are some of the factors I consider when deciding whether to follow or not:

• For starters, I try and determine if it’s an actual person tweeting real things, and not just selling things. Pure spam accounts are usually pretty easy to detect. The worst of them have outrageous following/follower ratios, meaning they are following many many times more people than are following them back. (Like 800 vs 2, or 1800 vs 120, etc.) And the other worst of them just have a constant flow of super-salesy tweets that just say the same things over and over and over. (Some of those accounts manage to get thousands of people to follow them back, and when I see that, it makes me wonder dark things about the fundamental reality of “follower” counts on Twitter.)
• If you haven’t tweeted more than once, I will probably only follow you if you are local to me, or there’s something really compelling in your bio or link. I’m not someone who hates on folks who don’t tweet a lot or at all–I’m patient like that, and I know from running a web community that most folks are “lurkers” online, meaning they just don’t post much. However, spammers also use the trick of not tweeting anything at first, hoping you’ll fall for the innocent-looking newbie’s profile. So I pass unless I have good cause to believe the newbie is real and sincere; it’s not worth the risk (of encouraging spam on Twitter).
• Whether they follow me is not a make-or-break criteria at all. I’d say it can put someone over the fence if I don’t see other reasons I should follow them. If they follow me, they made some sort of positive determination about me, so they can’t be 100% bad. But I won’t follow someone whose tweets I don’t like just because they follow me.
• Unless the account is a media outlet of some sort, I hope to see actual words that the person wrote from their own brain. Meaning, not just quotes, retweets, and headline/link tweets. I’m here to connect with other people–specifically their minds, for the most part. If your mind isn’t on display on your profile, I probably will not follow you. (Your mind doesn’t necessarily have to dazzle me; I just want to see traces of your actual individual human thought.)
• I try to look past the one-on-one conversational tweets and find the ones that go out to everyone. Some profile pages are LOADED with back-and-forth conversations, which is fine. I like to see someone who engages folks in the back and the forth. But that’s not what I’ll mostly be seeing in my stream, so I will go down a few pages if need be to find the handful of broadcast tweets that may be there, so I get a feel for what I’m really signing up for. One slight twist on this: I do see back-and-forth conversations in my stream if I’m following both parties, and too much of that can get annoying. So if that’s a factor, I might just choose one of the parties to follow and skip the other. Or follow a couple folks from a group of friends and then stop.
• If your follower/following counts are nearly matching and huge, I will think twice about following you. Even if you are following back, with that many tweeps, you can’t really be reading most of what you’re “following”. So you are probably a broadcaster or a broadcast-and-engage type. Twitter superstar-style. Which is all well and good, but there’s only so much of that my stream can reasonably handle. That said, I’ve had fun connecting with folks just like that from all around the world–and most of those folks will chat back and become more “real” friends at the drop of a hat. But honestly, if I follow someone who isn’t a traditional celeb who has zillions of followers, and doesn’t post tweets that are vital to me, it’s probably because I hope to gain something from getting closer to them. I also like to be inspired by successful people who have reached heights I aim to reach; there’s a fine line between those two things I suppose.
• I need to enjoy your tweets. It may seem obvious, but these things go cruising past my face all day, and if I don’t enjoy seeing them, there’s not much point to all this. I have a very wide range of interests, and I’m happy to meet people in general, so I’m looking for a reason to follow you. I’m also looking out for reasons not to follow, but the bias leans toward the former for sure. I will dig down a page or few on a profile, trying to find something that makes me think, “Well, this could be interesting.” If I see something, I’ll probably follow.
• Thanks, but I’m really not looking for that many more links in my life right now. It’s nothing personal–I’m an information junkie just like you probably are–I’m just getting more than I need already. Accumulating open browser tabs is my main Twitter-related problem. So while of course I expect and even hope you share some web stuff in your tweets, if that’s your main or only thing, I’ll probably pass just because I’m totally full. Over-full really. If headlines and links are all you post, you’ll need to be a really interesting politics, writing, or entertainment resource, or I’m definitely going to pass.
• Ditto quotes and inspirational retweets–I’m full. When I was co-editor of The Simplifier for ~4 years, one of my jobs was to find the quote for each issue. In the course of that work, I sifted through thousands of quotations, inspirational and otherwise. I still get a few here and there in my Twitter stream, and I will even retweet one on occasion, but I don’t need a solid stream of them. An exception goes to people who tweet primarily their own inspirational thoughts. That’s a different story. If you have inspirational stuff to say from your own brain, you’ve probably got my ear.
• I’m a sucker for the ladies. Judge me if you must, but I might follow someone mostly because I’d like to see her pic floating down my stream every now and then. (If that sounded like a GOB-or-Lindsay Bluth -style awkward double entendre, congrats to you for noticing. Now let me lay my sweet crown upon your head…) But see all other caveats above–I’m not going to sign on for spam or anything else I don’t like just to see a hottie’s thumbnail picture now and then. I may be a sucker, but I’m no loser. ;-)

That’s about it for now. I may update this post over time, as I continue to try and develop the right balance and a smart method for following. My process is definitely a work in progress.

Maybe these rough guidelines will be helpful in some way; I honestly couldn’t say whether my views represent many other people on Twitter or not.

Do any of my guidelines match up with yours? Do they surprise you? Frighten you? Excite you? Will you write a furious diary entry about them, sitting under the hanging coats in the back of your closet, lit only by the bare-lightbulb lamp sitting on the floor next to you?

It didn’t seem super-easy to find a simple list of the Twitter accounts for the cast members of NBC’s “Community”, and since I was already following them all, I took a moment to make a Twitter “List” featuring them. You can follow it here: Tweets from the Cast of Community (@FreelanceLance/cast-of-community). The accounts of the actors are listed here: Cast of “Community” on Twitter.

I will keep it updated with additional cast members as they become available. Please let me know if you know of any additions by posting a comment below. (I don’t know all the actors’ names off the top of my head, but I don’t have accounts for the Dean, or Vaughan, or Brita, or Danny Pudi a.k.a. Abed. Or Chevy Chase, but I’m not holding my breath for that one.) (EDIT: Gillian Jacobs (Brita) and Danny Pudi (Abed) are now on the list, as is Jim Rash (the Dean), now that he’s become a full cast member. Some others involved in the show–including creator Dan Harmon–are on another list I made: Others from “Community”.)

NOTE: NBC has also created Twitter accounts for the characters that the actors play; this list does not have those accounts, nor @NBCCommunity‘s, nor that of Dan Harmon, the creator of “Community”, or anyone else behind the show. It’s just the actors–currently: Joel McHale, Allison Brie, Donald Glover, Yvette N. Brown, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Ken Jeong, and Jim Rash. I thought it could get too crazy and unfocused if I opened it up to all the crew and “creatives” behind the show. But you should follow show creator Dan Harmon too probably, right?

There are many thousands of instances of the magic of the “social web”. Here is one:

How Twitter Got Me a 6-Figure Gig
By Karen Post
TalentZoo.com

In case you’re still wondering…

Online Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » 6 reasons why you need to get on Twitter

There are actually 4 (very brief) “tales” in this blog post by The Financial Brand. They include a bonus tale, so I guess I’m spoiling the surprise. Sorry. ;-)

The blog entry discusses how 4 different financial institutions have used Twitter to successful ends both small and large. Most involve making previously-unhappy customers happy–something that many companies could do well to improve at.

Speaking of crappy banks, one of the “tales” here involves my least favorite bank of all time, Bank of America. And despite my pledge of honor to encourage people to never do business with them, I’m linking to this article that praises them for their customer service efforts…because I care about my clients that much. After all, if a giant turdball like BOA can successfully use Twitter to improve their reputation, think of what your company, which isn’t despicable, could do with it. :-)

3 tales of Twitter success

The Problem:

Twitter’s real-time search index is not tracking everyone’s updates, and their people search is not showing everyone either. This has been reported at Twitter support, but they have not posted any news or fixed the problem for over a month.

How to check

To see if you are impacted by this, go to Twitter Search and search for: “from:yourusername”
without quotes, and with your Twitter username instead of “yourusername”

• See the results for my username: Twitter Search “from:FreelanceLance”
• Compare that with my Twitter profile, which shows that there are in fact tweets from me.
• Here are two people with ~8,000-10,000 followers who are in the same boat:
  • Peter Pek: profile |  search results
  • CJ Robinson: profile |  search results
• Actually they are worse off because they have the double whammy: they also don’t show up in People Search, as you can see: CJ Robinson |  Peter Pek
  There are results in both cases, but they do not include those two users. (I’m lucky enough to still be in people search for whatever reason.)
• Update: I just brought a restaurateur friend onto Twitter (@mainstreeteats) and he is immediately not available in People Search. See here.

Lots of other people are having the same or very similar problems, as you can see in this support thread at Twitter (which has been open since June 4) about the tweets missing from the public timeline/search, and this one (open since May 29) about the people missing from People Search.

Why it’s a problem

It’s pretty easy on the surface to see why this isn’t good, but it might not be quite as obvious why it’s a big enough deal to bother doing something about. There are a lot of ramifications for the Twitterverse that spring from this problem.

People who are not included in Twitter’s search index:

• are not indexed at hashtag-tracking sites like hashtag.org and wthashtag.org
• are not included on other sites that rely on the search database:
  • Specialized sites like (for example) 311 Tweets or industry-based directories
  • General Twitter tracking sites like Twitalyzer (which won’t add you to its index unless it can find you in Twitter’s)
• are not able to really play along with fun hashtag games, including #followfriday (plus #coolbandsmadeuncool, #1stdraftmovielines and so ons)
• are not able to really participate in important and/or topical hashtag threads (like #iranelection
• are not able to include themselves via the self-indexing function of hashtags (i.e., #tlot) or using event-based ones (like #nctweetup)
• in many cases, can not be found by name via Twitter’s people search
• can not be found in searches based on keywords
• in many cases, can not be seen when they @message someone, unless that someone is already following them
  • result: people can be giving props or thanks or saying something negative, and the @target of those words is not made aware of it
  • another result: people can be asking questions or trying to communicate with “big people” (celebs, etc.) or companies, and not be heard, and not be aware that they aren’t being heard
• are not able to enter contests or promotions that are hashtag-based (and may not even know it – see the Moonfruit example).

The bottom line is that until the search index is fixed, a large population of twitterers being arbitrarily excluded from a lot of the functions that make twitter so cool and useful. Not only are they at a disadvantage in trying to grow their network and spread their message, they are unable to do everything they could be doing for and with the Twitterverse–which does a disservice to everyone on Twitter, and to the natural organic growth that should be occurring in the community there.

The worst part about this is that these “hidden” folks have a much harder time even getting this issue out there, since they can’t hold a hashtag-based awareness campaign, and in many cases can’t be heard by the “influentials” on Twitter in order to get the word out. And Twitter seems to be pretty silent on this issue.

So it’s up to everyone to realize that this problem affects all of us on Twitter, and to demand that they make addressing this problem a top priority.

NOTE: Yes, I know Twitter is free, but let’s not kid ourselves: the people who created and run Twitter are going to make a great deal of money, and it is the “twittizenry” that has brought about the growth and momentum to make that the case. We are the value in Twitter; and I’m pretty sure the people who run it know that.

We just need to let them know what’s important to us. In this case, ending the second-class status that has been applied for whatever reason to some unknown population of Twitter users. Or to put it less dramatically:

Dear @Twitter: Please solve your search index problem. (Plz RT)

Ideally, they will respond quickly and let us know what’s up, and we won’t have to apply much pressure. They may even have a solution in the works, and all that we need to do is get some loud enough voices to ask them what’s going on.

That’s where you come in.

What to do:

• Tweet about this problem and spread the word so that everyone knows about it. (Include @Twitter in your tweets, but don’t start the tweet with it.)
• Start a #fixTWsearchplease(or something like that) hashtag campaign and try and get it into trending topics
• Ask twitter celebrities and influencers (people with big/loyal followings) to spread the word and to directly pursue Twitter themselves.
• Get in touch with groups and sites that depend on Twitter search or hashtags. Everyone who uses hashtags to organize tweeters is impacted by this.
• Check to see if you are included, and if you aren’t, get suitably perturbed about it. Tell people of your perturbery. Perturberate profusely. Also pontificate and/or pronounce, if needed.
• If you find that you or anyone else isn’t being indexed, post a message at Twitter’s support forum : here if your tweets are missing from the main search, and here if you are missing from people search. (Starting a new ticket seems to be a waste of time, as they just send generic auto-replies, according to multiple accounts.)
• If you notice someone else isn’t included, let them know. The more people who know they are being impacted by this the better. Ask them to help spread the word.
• If you have extra time, you can check to try and find high-reach twitterers who are not being indexed. They have the best chance to bypass the imposed silence and get the word out directly. And they will have motivation to do so. (Also see above about places and tweeps who rely on hashtags/search.)
• Publicly tweet to @Twitter about this. Examples:
  • Dear @Twitter: Please Fix Your Search! http://bit.ly/lInXj (Plz RT)
  • Your search isn’t working right, @Twitter! Can you tell us when it will be fixed?
  • I’m not in @Twitter’s search! What’s up with that, Twitter? http://bit.ly/lInXj
  • My friend @myfriend’s not in @Twitter’s search! What’s going on, @Twitter?
• When tweeting the word about this, be sure not to start your tweets with “@”-someone, or it will be hidden from most people’s timeline. You can just put a dot in front of it if you want; this will make sure people see that this is being talked about.

If you have any other ideas or know of a better way to get the search fix moving along, and/or get Twitter to be more forthcoming about it, please post them in the comments below. (But if you know of someone missing from search, make sure you post about it at Twitter’s support ticket (here and/or here first.)

Web site company Moonfruit is having a contest on Twitter where people are encouraged to include #moonfruit in their tweets, with each such tweet being an entry into their random daily drawing. Problem is, Twitter’s search index is not properly tracking everyone. For example, my tweets (those with #moonfruit or without) have not shown up in Twitter’s search index for almost ten days. So is Moonfruit using that faulty index from which to find their pool of #moonfruit contest entries? My attempts to find out (by tweeting questions to @moontweet, who seems to be answering other questions freely) have been unsuccessful. So I went to their website and sent the following message using their contact form:

Hi,

Your @moontweet person seems to be ignoring my inquiries, and I’m just wondering if you have figured out some way to deal with the fact that unknown thousands of people’s tweets are not currently indexed by Twitter search. (See: http://ow.ly/gnUE)

Perhaps you are using some other index for your #moonfruit contest; again, no one has replied to my many queries. But if you are using’s Twitter’s own search index, then you are essentially defrauding a huge number of people, who are being told by your contest page that their #moonfruit tweets are entries in the contest, when actually they are not.

If you are using Twitter’s search index, and if there is a known problem with that index, then you are unfairly taking advantage of the many people who are promoting your company with no possibility of winning a prize for their efforts. I believe that is something that should be addressed by you. And if not by you, then maybe the Twitterverse can decide what to do about it for you.

Given how quickly your @moontweet person has chosen to reply to others’ tweeted questions, I have concluded that I am being ignored by them. And of course I don’t show up in Twitter search, so my protests and queries are unheard by most. But if I don’t hear back from you on this issue, I am going to take measures to bring it to very public light. I really don’t like the idea that you have all these people tweeting ads for you 24/7, and a big chunk of them aren’t being tracked and don’t even know it.

Please tell me I’m wrong; tell me your contest index shows the #moonfruit tweets that I posted as @FreelanceLance. That’s all I want to know, that mine and others’ entries are actually being treated as entries, as your contest promises.

I would appreciate a reply to this email as soon as possible. Thank you.

-Lance Brown
lance@lancebrown.org