Hey @Greg_Guenther & @mikulsky, weren't we just talking about this earlier? Looks like I jinxed it! :) I did the same thing Greg was talking about... I opened a bunch of Twitter windows open at the same time (over 15) and all of a sudden I get denied.

And to make things extra sucky, you can't even check out your own lists or messages without getting that stupid error. Also, it seems that all profiles other than your own show up as not being valid accounts when you attempt to view the profile page. I guess I'll be doing my clean up via Friend Or Follow tomorrow after things chillax at Twitter.

#sigh

 

Oh. Em. Gee.

Talk about a fun time last night! The Mrs. and I got to the SpicyTweetup (organized and hosted by the ever-charming and gracious Carrie, AKA @SpicyPants from http://www.celebritysmackblog.com/) at about 6:10PM at the Pyramid Alehouse and from the get-go it was a super time. There were at least 30-something people all said and done, maybe even 40-ish. Most of it was on uStream, too: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4187309

SpicyPants had 3 different games planned for the evening:

1) "Guess the candy in the jar." 414 candy hearts were in a mason jar and the closest guess was 412. I guessed 573. Apparently my candy-guessing-fu was in fail mode last night. :) I don't remember who won but it was a helluva guess!

2) "Who am I?" Spicy put a small sticker on everyone's back with a celebrity's name. The object of the game was to ask someone one yes/no question RE: your celeb until you figured it out. There were some really great celebs, too: Pee Wee Herman, La Toya Jackson, Tommy Chong, Pamela Anderson, and Mickey Rourke to name a few. Me? I was Mike Tyson. This was a great mixer event and I got to chat with a lot of people I might not have if not for this game.

3) "Fail Whale picture" Everyone got a pen and a piece of paper and drew the Twitter fail whale. A lot of creative entries. I believe @Inky_Poo was the winner, but I could be wrong. I got 3rd place.

Everyone had custom printed name tags which was a nice touch, and spouses/significant others or anyone else who didn't tweet was also given a name tag and made to feel super-welcome. Capping off the evening was a free beer glass giveaway to everyone. To see all the chatter on Twitter about the event, just look up the hashtag #SpicyTweetup at http://search.twitter.com/.

Anyhow, for those who missed it, maybe next time. It was a blast! Thanks so much to @SpicyPants for making the whole evening so much fun, getting everyone together, and for all the games and prizes.

PS - Much thanks to Katie and Kenny, our fantastic servers! Friendly, on-the-spot with service, and just really great people. If you've never been to the Alehouse... go. And try the fish and chips. It's fantastic!

I used to be real picky about who I'd let follow me on Twitter. I knew about private tweets, but I didn't want to go that route with my @halfbrown account in case someone who might have otherwise followed me chose not to. No judgement if you do go private, it's just that I fully embrace the "social" aspect of social networking and setting that account to private didn't jibe with how *I* want to use Twitter.

The problem with being picky is that it's time consuming. Between work and play I'm online 10+ hours a day on average anyhow, and I don't need to spend any more time online than I already am. So... after a while I decided to only filter my followers once week (give or take). However, if the mood strikes me during the course of a day, I may look at any new followers and immediately prune based on the following:

- Blatant spammers. I don't mind people marketing themselves or their products, but I don't want to see *only* those kinds of tweets. If all you do is talk about what you've done or what you sell then I'm not going to be interested.
- Hardcore porn. No judgement at all; I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination. I just don't need to see that stupid Britney BJ pic any more. Also most of the porn accounts I see seem to be blatant spammers, so see the previous item for more background on that.

OK, so those are the immediate spam report, block and/or non-follow rules. After that I look to see what a person and their tweets are like. This is the part where it gets interesting. I try to give anyone who seems real the benefit of the doubt, but I might not follow them right away. Here are a few examples of folks I wouldn't follow (not immediately, at least):

- Non-tweeters. I don't mind following someone who only has a few tweets (we've all been there), but I need to see some consistency before I'll follow. With most Twitter accounts having less than a dozen or so tweets (ever), I don't want to follow someone who isn't active. Often times I'll add someone to a list before following them to see if they are follow-worthy or not.
- No profile pic. While it's not a strict requirement, it's not going to help if you don't have one. It's 2010, people, there's no reason to not have a picture. Even if it's not one of you, something that's funny, intriguing, or in some way interesting... get a picture.
- No bio. I've seen people with a few pages of mostly RTs, LOLs, or some other kind of tweet that doesn't tell me about them. The bio is a great place to put a little something about yourself: what you do, what you like (or don't like), and who you are.
- Repetitive tweets. Seeing the same tweet over and over (hello, "Don't pay for white teeth" people!) is not only annoying, it's not what I want to see. They say that "variety is the spice of life" for a reason.

That's really it, for the most part. I have a wide variety of interests and there are a lot of different people I'll follow, and for a lot of different reasons. If I'm not 100% sure about someone I won't block them, but I won't follow them immediately either. I check back to see who is following me using friendorfollow.com about once a week and review everyone I'm not following for the above and go from there.

If I'm not following you and you think I should, just @ me on Twitter and I'll check you out. :)