Twitter Not Helping Me Much…Maybe???

I’ve been experimenting with Twitter to broadcast my scanlation releases and looking at my blog analytics, Twitter is completely ineffective.  Of the 69 sources of visits to my blog, Twitter accounted for 1 out of the over 2000 visits to my anime and manga blog last week.  Most of the visits to my blog originated from the popular manga websites, Google searches, links from other people’s blogs, or people directly going to my blog.

And here comes the VERY BIG BUT

There is a big unknown, though, with respect to Twitter.  I often don’t directly “follow” people on Twitter because I don’t want to broadcast to the world or the person that I’m following them, so instead I pull an RSS feed of the tweets into Outlook.  Clicking on link from Outlook gets counted as a “direct” visit to my blog.  I don’t know how to get information on pulls from RSS feeds, so I have no idea who pulling RSS from my Twitter or my blog.

Soooo….now a simple comparision:  there’s a BIG jump in visitors from the popular manga sites on days when I release compared to days in between releases.  On the days that I release, 70 – 80% of traffic comes from those sites.  On the days in between most of the traffic comes from Google searches and direct visits (about 50% combined).    I tweet the release at time of the release, so from this I conclude, that Twitter is most likely ineffective and the best way to get the news out about my scanlations is to go where the audience is and that appears to be the popular manga websites and their forums.

I don’t know how Twitter is working for other people who are trying to promote themselves or their products.  But this is my story and I imagine it’s not an uncommon one.  What does this mean for Twitter?  Well, it may not be the best tool for advertisement as hoped, but I think it needs more time and some serious studies to make a conclusion either way.   As always, its good to know where your audience is and to tap into those sources.  Following that logic, if your audience isn’t on Twitter, you certainly aren’t going to bring them there and it’s probably best not to waste your resources on maintaining a Twitter account.  A good way to find out if people are tweeting about you or your product is do a search of Twitter and see what comes up.  I did is for myself and my “product” and not much came up.   As for my future on Twitter: the experiment continues …

When Laptops and E-Reader Converge in the Classroom

I’ve been hearing bits and pieces of news stories about the digital revolution that is happening in the classroom.  Coupled with the histrionics about state of the US education system and the seemingly constant cutbacks, it’s got me thinking about how the digital revolution can help.

Let’s face it, textbooks are a scam.  Most cost over $70 each, with some college textbooks approaching $200 each!  K-12 schools struggle with wear-and-tear of paper textbooks and publishers put out new editions yearly, thereby putting a damper on used book sales.  It only seems natural to go to electrons to cut the cost of firing up a printing press for a limited run of specialized books and to save schools the burden of having to replace worn out or outdated textbooks (not to mention the trees).  When coupled with input features like highlighting and notes, digital books are just as powerful, if not more, than paper books (especially considering in K-12 public schools, student cannot write in the textbooks).  The news reports that electronic textbooks run about half the price of paper textbooks.  There are also experiments around teacher tailored content and textbook mash-ups to add diversity to the content.  This is all very exciting and I can’t wait to see how the copyright laws will change to accommodate these innovations.

The most exciting thing to me about the classroom digital revolution is all the technology that will spawn from it.  I can see E-readers converging with laptops as E-readers gain functionality and laptops limit functionality to meet pricing goals.  There will be new ways of collaboration within a class, between classes, and potentially on a worldwide scale.  I can see blackboards replaced with large touchscreens that broadcast the content (both visual and audio) to the student’s devices.  The blackboard can seamlessly display handwritten content as well as display content from the Internet, and feeds from places outside the classroom.  There can be fun stuff like class polling, instant pop quizzes, and in general, easier ways for more student to get more involved in the class.  Of course, this also facilitates cheating — but I think this just requires a new way of looking at learning and understanding how people will collaborate in the future given all the new technology.  Maybe in the future, it’ll will be commonsense to ask those available for assistance and to be able to search to the find the answers needed on a test — that is the way work gets done now, isn’t it?  Anyhow, this all means that screen technology will have to leap to bigger manufacturing formats (or better stitching of smaller units into big ones) and there needs to be a significant jump in durability to withstand the beating a chalkboard takes and the abuse children inflict upon paper textbooks.  There will also be breakthroughs in collaboration.  Something constant has to stitch all the communication together and it doesn’t necessarily have to be one piece of SW, but rather there needs to be a set of protocols so all software can work together regardless of device (I imagine most of that’s in place now, and it’s just a matter of following the rules).  That’s a tall order, but I’m a believer!  The digital revolution is a big task!  Lots of hardware will be needed, lots of people will be needed to design the hardware and the software, and lots of people will be needed to install the infrastructure.  The contracts will be huge!  And in the end the digital divide will be no more and there will be efficiencies gained with the demise of the paper textbook (plus battery and power optimization technologies for convenience and greenness).    I think it will be a leveler and hopefully lead to more prosperity for everyone.  Or so that is what this wide-eyed idealist believes …

US Patriotic Song Lyrics

Here’s a nifty website I ran across as I looking for the lyrics to “America the Beautiful.”  It has a list of US patriotic songs and complete lyrics.

Link

Strangely enough, I knew the most lyrics of the Marine Hymn — I’m not sure why either.  Eitherway, I was very surprised at how many verses the songs have and the fact that I only know the first verse of most of the songs.  “Yankee Doodle Dandy” is a mystery to me — it gives my the image of a patriotic “Pirates of the Caribbean.”  “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is powerfully descriptive, but I must say I like the clean straight forward nature of the Marine Hymn best.

Anyhow, if you have 15-minutes, take a quick look at the songs.  There all very nice!

Teens are Not Driving Twitter Growth

Thank goodness someone is finally debunking the myth that children and teens drive all technology movements!  Forgive me, but teens are NOT all that tech savvy.  Here’s an interesting article about how adults are driving Twitter adoption while teens stick to texting over mobiles.

Link

It is interesting that the teens interviewed for this article said that Twitter is for professionals and that Twitter is redundant with texting.  I think the important thing, and this sorta gets glossed over in the article, is the one-to-many nature of Twitter.  Teenagers’ lives revolve around their friends.  I recall, as a teenager, people outside of my immediate clique were non-existent.  So it makes sense to me that teens would want to stick to ways that maximize connections within their clique and texting over a mobile is probably the best way to do that now.

I also think it’s a good thing kids and teens are not adopting Twitter en masse.  About 90% of the folks that try to follow me are either people peddling porn or people peddling some sort of get-rich-quick scheme.  For me, the number of people I have to kick off my Twitter almost makes it not worth doing.  I think most kids are smart enough to stay away from unsavory people, but at the same time, people can disguise themselves as normal and “Twitter Stalk.”  Thinking about children’s safety, I wouldn’t want some unsavory people stalking kids over the Internet.  (I think, though, that starts with teaching kids about the dangers of the Internet and technology, rather than banning or limiting use.)

As for the “professional” aspect, I can sorta see that.  I mainly use Twitter to “advertise” my manga activities and the people I follow are mainly “advertising” too.  I could see teens following a string of “advertisements” they want to know about, but I don’t see them actively Tweeting into the vast ether.

Anyhow, it is an interesting article and one that I will probably mentally chew on for the next few days.

Mommy Bloggers Confront Ethics

Hahaha!!!  It didn’t take long for greed to spoil “Mommy Blogging.”  Here’s a little article from CNN about some of the upcoming self regulation and  government regulation coming for blogging.

Link

Well, I don’t know what to say other than greed is human nature and offering folks free stuff subtly corrupts.  But to me it comes down to the question of whether blogging a life supporting career?  For me, getting paid to generate specific content is the difference between blogging and freelance writing.  I think as soon as a writer is paid (either by cash, items, or services) to generate content, then that person is an employee and, as such, he or she should disclose they are doing a job for an employer.   It’s as simple as that for me.

Haha!!! Aside from that, a brilliant thing has happened here.  The professional news folks,  for years now, have been trying to discredit blogging and here’s the perfect ammo.  Have at it guys!  It’s a really good argument.

So where does this leave the advertisers?  In the same place as always — despised by everyone, but somehow still prowling around for the next convenient dupe.

As for Mommy Bloggers:  choose whether you are blogging or starting a career as a freelance writer or freelance advertiser.  Be clear with your audience as to which you are and all things should be fine.  However, if you choose to be a freelance advertiser, don’t be surprised if you find yourself despised and not believed.  I think this follows for all of us writing on the Internet, including me.