From Dimes to Dollars

by Ben Lopez

The problem with social media these days is that we’re constantly being pushed to make everything connected, and encouraged to share exactly what we’re doing, buying, and where we are. What does this equate to? NOISE, and lots of it.

Perhaps you read somewhere in one of those dime-a-dozen SEO e-books that maximum exposure is critical.  Well, not when you’re scaring off users from your website and social media accounts, readers from your blog, and potential customers for your business with information overload.  You wouldn’t call someone 10 or 20 times a day to tell them you’re playing a game, would you?  Of course not, that’s just not socially acceptable.  When you post things online, think of it as a real life conversation, and remember this when considering how often you want to inform people of every minute detail.

It’s inefficient for all of us; the chronic poster loses subscribers, friend interactions, and it is more difficult to keep track of their own activities due to the very clutter they themselves create. For the rest of us, it clutters our friend feeds, RSS feeds, and inboxes like nobody’s business, good grief. Same concept as people that forward a dozen or more e-mails a day. You’re my friend, and I still like you as a person, but at the end of the day it’s just bothersome to delete all those e-mails. In the same way, it’s bothersome unsubbing/unfriending, hiding individual apps, and tweaking my display settings due to the pseudo spam of others.

My advice: DO NOT LINK TWITTER to your Facebook, LinkedIn, or Myspace account, or else we’re all doomed to suffer endless pages of “LOL yea i no” and “help me tend my crops in Farmville!”. Assuming you don’t post a new article every hour, auto updates from your blog are generally considered acceptable. If you play games, get rid of the ridiculous number of updates that flood both your wall and our friend streams.

Follow these simply rules and it’s entirely possible our planet may not be doomed (maybe). What do you think? Is there still a chance of redemption, or is society beyond hope?

by Ben Lopez

We’re hot off the heels of Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone 4, which I covered on D2D’s Twitter page, and excitement is still buzzing in the tech community.  There’s been some excitement in my own life as well, as I have recently stepped in as the Director of Marketing for App Collab, ideal for anyone interested in developing or investing in mobile apps.  As you can imagine, that has put my former schedule in a blender, so I wasn’t able to sit down and get out much original content this week.  Another fail, my bad.  This week, I’m vowing right now: more meat, less filler!  Leave me some digital-slap-in-the-face comments/threats below to keep me in line, won’t you?

That of course leads me to my one announcement of good news: comments are working again.  I had nearly become a hypocrite after making my plea to Tumblr users  explaining why comments should always be enabled!  When I upgraded to a premium theme this week, I wondered why I wasn’t getting any e-mail notifications for new comments.  But the problem is fixed, so let’s resume the conversation with the great community we have here at Tumblr!

This week’s highlights:

Less than 24 hours after I shared my predictions about Reblogging becoming a widespread standard, Wordpress announced they’re adding a feature to allow reblogs.  It won’t be long until you se this feature adopted by all major blogging sites.  Well, the smart ones, anyway.

A bombshell announcement was met with a surprisingly low-key reception in much of the tech community, when Skype announced they have finally been authorized to allow calls of 3G networks.  Naturally, I tried it out immediately like a giddy schoolgirl, and giggled uncontrollably when it worked like a charm.

RFS Claymations is not a happy camper after taking Microsoft Office 2010 beta for a test drive, and delivers a rant accordingly.

No comic strip for this week’s humour, we innovate here at D2D, gosh darn it.  A blogger introduces the new Myspace Pro service, which got at least a few chuckles from me.  It’s a shame this is fake, if there was a service really like this I’d pay for it…

If you found any of the above particularly interesting or useful, please consider recommending this blog for the tech, startups, or entrepreneurs category.  Thanks for reading!^_^

Hi everyone, glad you could make it!  

If you’re reading this blog, then we have at least one mutual interest: using the internet for business.  Perhaps you’re an aspiring entrepreneur who is determined to divert their career to the online realm.  Maybe you own a local service or brick-and-mortar store that you’d like to take online for greater business potential.  Or you may already be a well-established online presence, and are practicing the one key principle that any good entrepreneur should always be consistent in following: KEEP LEARNING.  

This Blog will focus on:

-How to stay organized and streamlined both online and offline to increase productivity

-Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and the various ways to utilize these powerful tools to their full potential

-Trends, techniques, and discussion of online marketing practices

-Adopting the entrepreneur mindset

-How to build-up your own personal brand

-How to be persuasive in your writing, and personable in your everyday interactions for maximum success

-Discussing issues that will have a significant effect on online/small businesses and what it will mean for the future

But let’s pause a minute.  I’m probably being a bit too dry, aren’t I?  If I am, for pete’s sake, konk me on the head and tell me to stop writing so formally.  As long as we’re busy learning from each other, we may as well have a fun time doing it, and that’s the experience I’m aiming to deliver for this blog.  I’ll do my best to make each entry interesting and readable.  We best retain knowledge of things we have a genuine interest for, and it’s my goal to make these entries not just readable, but something you’ll be genuinely excited about!  Before long, you’ll be waking up in the morning enthusiastically saying things like, “Yes!  These stupid spreadsheets aren’t going to keep me down, I’m going to dominate them and move on to the next task…all before lunchtime!”, or “Ha!  I’ve just mapped out my hourly tweets for the rest of the month.  Nothing can stop me now!”  I hope your reason for visiting this blog will be both for business and pleasure.

I’m still fleshing this thing out, so if there are any tweaks I can implement to make things easier for you guys, just let me know.  I always invite suggestions on how things can be improved, so fire away.

I have a few articles prepped, and will start posting a little later this week if nothing changes, but I’d really like to hear from you all and get some feedback on what you’re currently working on, questions you may have, or where you’d generally like the focus to be for this blog.  Let me know if you have any useful ReBlog candidates as well, I’ll certainly consider them.  Like I said, I hope we’ll all be able to help each other in the long run for success all around!

The faster we begin the discussion, the faster we’ll be exchanging long-distance-high-fives.  Let’s get to it!