The twitter profile @andrewburnett is however dead.

If you want to follow, my new profile is @the_emecks

For months now none of my tweets have shown up in twitter search, as such they didn’t show up in nambu or tweetdeck conversations either. After various attempts to get support from twitter (including offering to pay $100 for it – possible monetisation there ;) ) I’ve given up and decided to get a new profile.

Proof Of Life

Just to prove I’m actually still alive and to put your minds at rest here’s a pic.

Andrew Burnett, the man, still alive and well

Now you’re finished ogling my pic, remember to follow @the_emecks if you still want to get my tweets!

Updates

So, not everyone believed that the picture above was a valid proof of life – I hope this next picture puts your minds at rest again. It was the cheapest newspaper available, so my frugal Scots / Swiss credentials are intact.

The cheapest newspaper with today's date on it.

Also my apologies to Edward for thinking the headline was true, but also thanks to him for his most excellent eulogy for me :D

To access the friend finder options first go to friendfeed.com and log-in. On the right you’ll see your friends panel, click the “Browse/edit friends” link at the bottom of this:

Browse/edit friends

You will now be faced with your friends page, click the “Find / invite friends” link at the top right of the friends panel:

Find / invite friends

You should now see the following panel, with icons from Facebook, Twitter, GMail, Yahoo! & Hotmail, all you need to do is click on the relevant icon and follow the instructions.

Find Friends on FriendFeed - Updated.

Why this is hidden away behind 3 steps and not put right on the main page I can only guess, but it is definitely a time saver compared to manually adding friends on friendFeed!

How Can I Cut The Cost Of My SEO?

If your SEO provider gives you reports, as most do, ask them not to. “But where will I get my reports?” you ask, well you probably already have access to all the details that are reported anyway. It is simply a matter of delving into your google analytics account.

Cutting Your SEO Costs By Rejecting Reports

Imagine how much time your SEO provider spends composing reports on your site(s), imagine how they could use that time to optimise your site(s) if they weren’t compiling reports for you. By learning analytics yourself you can make that time available to them!

Other Benefits Of Doing Your Own Analytics

You know your website better than anyone else. You know the niche you operate in better than anyone else, why trust a 3rd party to report to you on the how, when, where and why of your visitor statistics when you are much better placed to do so?

Don’t delay, analyse your own site today!

:)

Your Social Media Avatar Should Reflect Who You Are

Your social media avatar will be seen by all your friends and should give them an instant reminder of who you are. Often you will want to use a photo of yourself to help the recognition factor, but bear in mind that your avatar will often be displayed at a small size.

So, if an avatar is displayed at a small size how do I go about designing it?

Designing A Small Avatar – Start Big!

Starting big when designing something small helps you in a few ways – a scaled down image retains quality whilst a scaled up image degrades, also on many sites avatars can be viewed in their original size. If you are using a photo of yourself you make it more personal by allowing people to view it at full size :)

So let’s start with our avatar design!

Taking The Photo For Your Avatar

Personally I work on an iMac so have a nifty wee camera built in, but any digital camera will do the trick. You will want to get a photo of yourself against a relatively neutral background, this is the one I started from:

The original photo I took for my social media avatar

In the background my lovely assistant is holding up a white banner to give the neutral background.

Making Your Avatar Stick Out

This is where the fun starts! Colour the background or remove it entirely or use photoshop filters to distort your face. I will go into these methods in more detail in future posts on Design.Build.Promote. For now I will show 3 examples, including my own avatar, which have been created in this (or similar ways).

The Big Avatar Ready To Upload

After playing in Photoshop I arrived at this image:

My big avatar - original size 479 x 479 pixels

Notice that it is square, this is important for most social media sites. It is also large in dimensions but small in size – the original has a total of 112kB which is within the maximum size allowed by most sites.

3 Great Social Media Avatars

These avatars are amongst my favourites (excuse me for including my own here, but I constantly receive compliments on it):

My avatar - with a coloured background

See my avatar on twitter

lyndoman's avatar where the colour is overlayed on his photo

See lyndoman’s avatar on twitter

darylsws's avatar with the background removed entirely

See darylsws’s avatar on twitter

Doubtless you also have your favourite avatars, please do link to them in the comments!

social bookmarking buttons on BBC

The BBC have done this exceptionally well and included a link “what are these?” to explain to their visitors what these links are and how to use them. What unfortunately is not made clear is how to get started in social bookmarking.

What Is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a fancy term for saving links to webpages online where others can see them. You may well ask, why do that? Well, by saving your bookmarks online and sharing them with others you vouch for the quality and interestingness of those webpages. This allows you to connect with other people who have similar interests and see their links which may well interest you too. Sound simple? It is.

Where Should I Start In Social Bookmarking?

With so many options the question of where to start is a very justified one! There is no single answer that satisfies everyone’s needs or interests. In future posts we will delve into the merits and pitfalls of each of these social bookmarking sites, for now we’ll concentrate on how and where to get started.

For the novice or virginal social bookmarker StumbleUpon is probably the easiest and most fun introduction to social bookmarking. Essentially it offers not only a way to collect and categorise (tag) your bookmarks, but also lets you discover new pages you might be interested in. When you sign up, you chose topics that interest you, then when you “stumble” you are shown pages relevant to those categories.

Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against the lady, but there is something inherently wrong about anyone having over 80,000 followers before they have made a single tweet.
Her followers have just become 150,000 as I write this and she has made a grand total of 6 tweets with only one @reply – if that profile belonged to anyone else they’d rightly be called a spammer.

Of course, this has been a major coupe for her and twitter. She had the internet’s equivalent of a blockbuster by keeping the world waiting for her first tweet. A more successful twitter profile launch the world has yet to see, or do they?

Oprah’s 1st Tweet

So what did all these virtually queing celebrity stalkers get rewarded with as her first tweet?

HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY .

All in caps.

Why So Down On Oprah?

It’s nothing personal and it’s not just Oprah. The proliferation of celebrities and celebrity culture on Twitter does have a negative side to it though. Social Media is just that – social, but there is nothing social about having hundreds of thousands of followers and not interacting with them is anything but social. Broadcast media exists precisely for this purpose. That said some celebrities truly seem to “get” social media, Stephen Fry being the obvious example. He follows many of his followers back and indeed often replies to tweets sent to him. Not a trait that can be viewed on many other celebrity twitterers profiles.