Can Twitter management better monetize the company?

| September 2, 2017

For the fun of it, I ran a lightly responded to Twitter poll (200+ votes and nearly 40,000 views) with an idea that could generate some subscription based income for $TWTR – yes I would like to see the stock price rise too. My purpose was to see just how many users would be interested […]

Colorado looks safe – but seriously watch Hurricane Irma #humor

| September 1, 2017

… although for the “real” current Friday morning Weather Channel Hurricane Irma watch report – click here

The new CFO of Twitter – what do we know?

| July 12, 2017

From a shareholder perspective we know investors seem to like Ned Segal – share price is up significantly after the announcement. From a Twitter USER perspective, we don’t even know him – Segal isn’t active on Twitter. Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) confirmed Tuesday the appointment of Ned Segal as the company’s next chief financial officer. […]

TechFriday: Twitter updates their mobile look

| June 16, 2017

We’ll see how the new iOS Twitter update is received by users, but since it is my go-to social network for all things news, I’ve download the hefty update to my aging iPhone5s and will see how bogged down it feels (very sluggish of late on most apps). Hopefully it will continue to run reasonable […]

TechFriday: Twitter updates 140 character count rules

| March 31, 2017

Last year, the social networking company Twitter announced it would begin changing the requirement that all tweets could only contain 140 characters. They started with not counting characters of the media attachments or @ replies. Some users are concerned that Twitter will stray too far from its roots as a public text messaging service tool. […]

A beautiful sunrise, then storms – and retweeted tweets

| March 20, 2017

It was dark for a panoramic iPhone5 photo, but while doing my "last bag" garbage run this morning, I couldn’t resist a photo of the sunrise while the lightning was cracking to the west. Within an hour it was pouring rain and became a dreary, damp day. On a social networking technology note, it is […]

Setting up WP-to-Twitter after the demise of TwitterFeed

| December 14, 2016

This is a test post after setting up the well documented WP-to-Twitter plugin for WordPress. So far so good. I’ll be tweaking a few of the options over the next few weeks. EDIT 2/17/2024: Updating to XPoster after a server fail.

Trying to keep a sense of humor about the upcoming election

| October 23, 2016

It has NOT been an enjoyable campaign season … a very long year and a half! Citizens of voting age in the United States (see Twiitter comment below) voluntarily head to the polls to decide who they want or more appropriately DON’T want as their president for the next 4 years. I doubt I’m alone […]

Again, $TWTR is great for traders, not so much for investors

| August 18, 2016

If I were a bit more savvy and listened to my own advice, I would have traded Twitter ($TWTR) for a few dollars this week. On a downgrade to a SELL by Evercore ISI analyst Ken Sena, shareholders listened and poured their sell orders onto the exchanges after seeing shares climb the last few days […]

The moon passing between climate observatory and earth

| July 28, 2016

Astronaut Rick Mastracchio (‏@AstroRM) posts some terrific space oriented photos. Here’s one showing he moon passing between the NASA climate observatory and earth. As he tweets, "almost unbelievable that this is a real photo."

Twitter marks 10 years of 140 characters

| March 22, 2016

Twitter marked TEN years of micro social networking this week … or perhaps more appropriately stated as a real time newsfeed and feedback mechanism? At least that is how I have used the service for over 9 of those 10 years. Most journalists, politicians, corporate heads and notable celebrities use Twitter (and other social networks) […]

Is Twitter better as a standalone business or as a buyout target

| January 22, 2016

I’ll admit, I’m not an expert when it comes to social networks or even using the many developed and developing services available. I do occasionally stay in touch with close friends and family on Facebook and monitor the news and events on Twitter, but that really takes up enough of my time … I don’t […]

Confused over direction: Both for Twitter and $TWTR stock

| October 29, 2015

Now that the popular social networking company Twitter has a “rudder,” Jack Dorsey, CEO, one would think confidence  would be higher? That is difficult to tell when reading and monitoring those who are paid to research, have deeper insight and advise investors (graphic on right). The consensus is wildly split, both on the direction of […]

Following and being followed – the 2000 follow limit on Twitter

| September 25, 2015

Those who are social networking gurus know that each network establishes limits to reduce abuse and spam. It is also a way to manage an excessive number of unbalanced following. New users may not realize the limits until they bump up against them. A common limit on Twitter is the number of people being followed […]

Twitter could be a marketing juggernaut – $TWTR

| September 18, 2015

Twitter is an untapped monster. When $TWTR management (ie. new CEO and team) decides to market to "viewers" of tweets (not just the user base).

Twitter $TWTR: What is the catalyst for growth?

| September 8, 2015

For those owning Twitter stock (TWTR) – trading Tuesday afternoon at $27.22 (down 3.3%), it has been a year without all that much good news to cheer about, followed by a declining stock price since May 2015. Today another executive, the former CFO Mike Gupta (overseeing the company’s venture capital arm) jumped ship. One wonders […]

App users help @Periscopeco with their Mad Libs update

| June 20, 2015

Users had some fun with a few of the Twitter Periscope programmers this past week in participating in their Mad Libs update copy for the App Store. In keeping with geeky humor (see the “Peter” joke), the jovial staff decided to include 900 of their users in the live update of Periscope Version 1.1.1. Each of […]

Twitter autoplay: Save bandwidth and data by changing settings

| June 16, 2015

By default, Twitter now plays video as you scroll through posts. This can both be a bit annoying and will use data, especially on you mobile device with minimal data. To turn off the “autoplay” feature, go to the setting menu on the mobile Twitter app (currently Apple iOS devices only) and “check” either Use […]

Can $TWTR turn things around without being acquired?

| June 15, 2015

With the stock market opening off 150 points or so this Monday morning, the short sellers are having their way with the social networking stock of Twitter. TWTR is down 3.8% to $34.50 as of 11AM. What is it going to take to see this commercially and widely used service change direction … or will […]

What is the Twitter’s plan for Flipboard?

| May 28, 2015

It looks as if Twitter is getting a head start in taking social media into the publishing realm by going after Flipbook. Facebook is working deals with news organizations and consolidating into users streams, but $TWTR has decided to buy their way into the publishing business – undisclosed price but some speculate it is close […]

TechFriday: Playing with Periscope from Twitter

| March 27, 2015

I wasted a couple hours on Thursday morning while “working” (cough, cough) from home and downloaded the Periscope app for iOS on the iPhone.  To the novice “tech geek,” these live broadcasting social networking apps will soon have the Internet filled with video streams. Currently I’m seeing broadcasters like CBNC’s Julia Boorstin (above) jumping on the […]

Nearly 8 years and 10,000 tweets as @richc on Twitter

| November 25, 2014

Twitter has been my preferred social networking connection since February 2007 as @richc (and as a blog announcement @mydesultoryblog) and tweets are nearly 10,000.  Hmm, I wonder what it should be … maybe this post? As for social networking, I prefer Twitter for immediate news, customer service issues and a quick exchange of ideas or […]

Good grief … what else should our government subsidize?

| August 8, 2014

Even after the Sandra Fluke plea to congress over free birth control, is hard to believe the 2700 pages of Obamacare overlooked including feminine sanitary products? [/sarcasm] Tweet from noted feminist Jessica Valenti: Twitter friends: Anyone know a country where tampons are free or somehow subsidized? — Jessica ValentiJessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) August 8, 2014

Viewers opine on $FB vs $TWTR as an investment

| July 29, 2014

My morning routine includes turning on CNBC for my business news, trading and investing “fix” and the segment on the Facebook vs. Twitter social networking challenge peaked my interest. As expected, the focus was primarily which stock would make an investor the most money. Obviously Facebook has a significant lead both in platform maturity and […]

Choking up the Internet and wireless highway with Tweets

| July 15, 2014

I didn’t think I spent all that much time posting comments to Twitter, but over the years it does add up. I noticed that my Volkswagen Crossblue post Monday hit the 9000 mark (below). But then it occurred to me that those tweets don’t include the automatic notifications sent out by WordPress MyDesultoryBlog.com … add […]

Closing in on 7 years with Twitter as @RichC

| February 12, 2014

It has been 7 years since I (@RichC)first started using the social network known as Twitter and in that time I’ve tweeted over 8000 times from my personal account and almost 2900 from @MyDesultoryBlog (RSS feed style blog updates). I’ve added 1600 to my stream (many news feeds) and am closing in on 1000 followers. […]

Twitter announces planned IPO (on Twitter)

| September 13, 2013

Short and sweet. As one would expect from the 140 character social networking company. — MT @Twitter We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. But here are a few more tweets collected by the Associated Press. — #FunFact: In the first hour of @Twitter sending that IPO announcement tweet, 7,872 […]

Why is President Obama following me?

| July 21, 2013

Hmm, I’m not really sure what to think of this? I’m sure those who supported President Barrack Obama’s campaign don’t mind being followed by his twitter account, but for me it is probably an indication that the IRS or Department of Justice is next. For those of you who are not socially connected, the President’s […]

Tech Friday: Cleaned up my tweetstream this week

| June 22, 2012

I’m probably not the only one who has “excessively” followed people on Twitter over the past few years … so I am trying to clean up my tweetstream with TwitCleaner. So far so good. Twit Cleaner [web] (free) If you follow a large number of people and are looking to clean up your timeline, Twit […]

Happy 5th Twitter Birthday to me

| February 29, 2012

Just noticed this when cleaning out my inbox … 5 years on Twitter. Wow … it doesn’t seem as if RichC has been posting tweets that long until you see over 5000 of them! Hmm, but it looks like MyDesultoryBlog on Twitter is still a youngster? [

What does NASCAR, Tide and Twitter all have in common?

| February 28, 2012

All highlighted at the Daytona 500 of course! In an odd turn of events, Sunday’s rain delayed big race was delayed further due to more rain for the Monday afternoon start, but eventually got underway Monday evening, much to the dismay of my wife (she would have preferred something other then watching cars turning left […]

Volkswagen gets a free Passat TDI advertisement via Tweet

| January 12, 2012

There’s must be an easy way for social media users to capitalize on advertising products or companies using social media …hmm? For example, yesterday morning I passively plugged a product by recommending the Volkswagen Passat TDI to Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of the CNBC Squawkbox anchors and NYTimes columnist.  He is looking for a safe […]

Just a little Christian humor …

| October 4, 2011

Thanks Jeff … although not sure I appreciated the “this reminds me of you” comment!

Smartmoney article: 10 Things Twitter Won’t Tell You

| August 17, 2011

From “10 percent of users create 90 percent of Twitter‘s content” to “ICanStalkU.com” … there are a few good reason to read Sara Germano’s SmartMoney article. WSJThisMorning Sara Germano on Twitter Here’s a tip on paying attention when uploading photos from your smartphone: “… smartphone pics are embedded with GPS data, making it so easy […]

Tweetdeck’s deck.ly for longer Twitter messages

| February 9, 2011

The latest install of the Tweetdeck (v0.37.2) Twitter client added a new feature, a shortcut link called deck.ly, that allows for longer messages. Although the feature enables significantly more text to be included in a tweet, it does take away from the simplicity of Twitter … and the necessity to be concise. Personally I doubt […]

Fun Twitter related web app: twbirthday.com

| January 25, 2011

Every once in a while an unusual and simple web app catches one’s attention – in this case twbirthday.com. Plug your Twitter name into this site and it creates a Birth Certificate along with “assigning” a Godfather; who is your Godfather? In my case it is my New Hampshire friend Scott Bilik (@sbilik). Wow, has […]

Tech Friday: Create a newspaper page with Paper.li

| November 5, 2010

Here’s a last minute Tech Friday idea; a website that creates your own newspaper from Twitter connections.  Paper.li is a service that assembles a newspaper-like page with links, photos and media from Twitter users, lists or #keywords. Within a minute you can publish and share a randomly composed page of interesting, or not so interesting, […]

Apple iPhone TV marketing and social networking sites

| October 7, 2010

I don’t recall recall if the Apple iPhone advertisement appeared during the Philly’s no-hitter 4-0 win against the Reds or not, but the ad was intriguing in that the Twitter and Twitpic information had me checking the links. The marketing establish @gagebock account (currently 60-some friends) and Twitpic photo (700+ views) that was used in […]

WebOS 1.4.5 requires cleaning & speeding up my Palm Pre

| September 4, 2010

As the Labor Day holiday weekend kicks off, I did some light technology housekeeping chores on my Palm Pre smartphone. Besides finally getting around to smoothing out my app card screen order, I updated my UberKernel and the  Govnah app to include a 1gHz screen-on mode. The doubling of clock speed may be pushing things […]

Twitter Email to Twitpic photo posting problem

| August 9, 2010

I’ve been having problems emailing photos from my Palm Pre (or computer) to Twitpic since last week, which is photo sharing service tied to my Twitter account … not that it’s all that important … but the digging turn up just how rapid the growth has been. Pretty rapid: In the couple of years since […]

Strong technology pushed the stock market higher

| June 15, 2010

After dipping below the 10,000 mark for early June, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 213.88 points, or 2.10%, to 10404.77 today breaking out of the closely watched 200-day moving average. The S&P 500 was also up 2.35% seeing every sector moving in the up direction. The biggest gains 2.76% were over at the Nasdaq, […]

A ‘pop’ culture movie and social networking entertainment

| May 10, 2010

“Bueller… Bueller… Bueller“ Who can forget the Ben Stein line from one of the enjoyable comedy movies in the 1980s – Ferris Buellers Day Off. The movie continues to see success reaching near cult status for some and even found a following on social networking giant Twitter last week. A group of Chicago based Twitter […]

The 2010 season premiere of 24 highlighted the Palm Pre

| January 18, 2010

There was a day when we didn’t watch much TV, but nowadays that wouldn’t be true. Besides too much football and cable news, my wife and I have become addicted to a few weekly programs … one which had its 2010 season premiere Sunday evening: 24. As usual, it was exciting and left me hanging […]

WordPress 2.8.3 upgrade made easy

| August 4, 2009

Once again another incremental upgrade of WordPress moving my install to the 2.8.3 release … and thanks to Keith Dsouza‘s open source plug-in — WordPress incremental backup, it’s a painless and pretty easy step by step process (perhaps 5 minutes with database backups and all). Speaking of open source, one of the other projects that […]

Twitter: From idle chit-chat to business marketing

| May 1, 2009

If you pay attention to technology news at all  you’re probably getting fed up with Twitter  — even if you find yourself tweeting, blogging and talking about it. At least once a week I hear someone say, “I don’t care what someone had for lunch.” I use to try and explain that Twitter is not […]

Tweetmeme and Nielsen looking at social networking sites

| April 30, 2009

While adding a new Twitter feature call Tweetmeme (see retweet button at bottom of post), I stumbled across an interesting statistic compiled by Nielsen which concludes that 60% of Twitter Users Quit within the First Month, at least that is how Mashable writer Pete Cashmore sees it. I’m not sure how that stacks up to […]

Twitter CEO Evan Williams unveils business model

| March 20, 2009

It has finally arrive, the Twitter business model. The co-founder and CEO Evan Williams announced that the Twitter Premium accounts would be the way the company would begin to generate income. He explained that since corporation and celebrities are “flocking to Twitter for their social media needs” that this gives them an opportunity to have […]

How long will the Twitter phenomenon last?

| March 17, 2009

I’ve been enjoying using Twitter after a brief learning curve trying to figuring out how to get my head around the concept of following 140 character text messages (TweetDeck is my favorite client on a computer). Surprisingly it can be somewhat addictive even for someone who is a not hyper-stimulated video gaming kind of guy. […]

Twitter 2009-06-11: A weekly archive for @RichC

| March 15, 2009

Laughing at my idiocy. I dislike shaking spray paint cans so taped to end of recipricating saw blade & squeezed the trigger. Hey it works! # Wrapping up the day although my whiteboard still as a list of unfinished tasks. Going to weld & paint a broken gate tonight. # New laptop battery is no […]

Twitter 2009-06-11: A weekly archive for @RichC

| March 15, 2009

Laughing at my idiocy. I dislike shaking spray paint cans so taped to end of recipricating saw blade & squeezed the trigger. Hey it works! # Wrapping up the day although my whiteboard still as a list of unfinished tasks. Going to weld & paint a broken gate tonight. # New laptop battery is no […]

Chuck Norris and 140 characters messages

| March 12, 2009

This past week, folks on Twitter celebrated the birthday of popular actor, martial arts/fitness star and conservative political supporter Chuck Norris as he turned a very young 69 — Happy Birthday. (Chuck Norris search) In keeping with one of the curious trends started some years ago, fans began sharing the short “tough guy” jokes, or […]

Twitter: 110 is the new 120 was the new 140

| February 11, 2009

While reading Kara Swisher‘s AllThingsDigital’s “Boomtown,” I came across a quote she posted in the side bar of her blog pulled from Brian Solis … … 120 is the new 140. Retweeting is one of the most valuable currencies in the Twitter economy. Leave room in your tweets to make it easier for someone to […]

Twitter tools: Pingfire and TwitterLocal

| December 4, 2008

I’ve posted a few times on the social networking/micro-blogging tool called Twitter. This inspired a reader to send me his favorite Firefox add-on and an excellent Twitter related website that is worth sharing. First is the Pingfire (Ping.fm) Firefox add-on which isn’t working on my VistaOS notebook (surprise, surprise) and the other, a search tool […]

Nice TwitSnip bookmark feature from Twitter.Grader

| December 2, 2008

A couple days ago I posted on a Twitter related site called Twitter.Grader. They have a quick ‘bookmark’ feature for sending ‘tweets’ and including links or text. Add it to your browser if you are a Twitter user … I’m betting you’ll find it useful? On a related topic, here’s a great Christmas gift for […]

After a few minutes of trying to “tweet” …

| November 18, 2008

I’ve figured out that Twitter is down … again (Tuesday AM). I’ve been wondering just what the business plan is for this popular social networking site and suspect that we’ll eventually see deep pockets google gobble it up. 😛 It seems that the many of the media outlets are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and […]

Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee

  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
My Desultory Blog