Pulling the Obama card 28 januari 2009

One of swedens major newspapers referred to Ashlee Simpson being angry about Fox News picking on her sisters apparent weight gain. I quote:

A week after the inauguration and with such a feeling of hope in the air for our country, I find it completely embarrassing and belittling to all women to read about a woman's weight or figure as a headline on Fox News.

I'll go out on a limb here. For 2009 I'm predicting a new trend: Groundless references to Obama to instill shame in ones counterpart.

"Why did you get so drunk tonight, now that Obama is in office?"

"What do you mean, 'No I can't have the last piece'? Would Obama be that cheap?"

"There is a new president and so, no, you can't take the day off."

My thoughts on twitter etiquette. 26 januari 2009

Twitter is a wonderful tool for news discovery, sharing of information and casual conversation. Many interesting people are on twitter, like Guy Kawasaki, Fred Wilson or Jason Calcanis. They're all entrepreneur heroes of mine.

Here are some of my thoughts on proper twitter usage:

1. Retweet any link you find interesting. By doing this you let great links go viral, and you bring attention to people who post interesting links. Allways include the original posters @name, to give credit to the starter of the meme. (Good point Mike!) Consider also including the @name of anyone retweeting an interesting link (retweeting a retweet).
2. For retweeting use the format "RT @name text...", and not via, retweet or anything else. This is for clarity and for readability.
3. Write in english. Most people on twitter is not of your nationality, and for better reach use an international language.
4. Keep you conversation clear. Twitter messages are like a river, that you take a dip into once in a while. Therefore, many of your followers didn't read your last tweet, or that which you're replying to. Thus you should try to help them understand your conversation. Try to answer with

   Thank you @name for commenting on my post on Twitequette: http://tinyurl.com/cnwqrw

   rather than

   Thank you @name for your comment.

   Every tweet is like a headline, and a good headline is clear and obvious.
5. Shorten your URL's. Use a tool like TinyURL.com to keep them from cluttering the conversation. Many twitter tools include this feature.
6. Use #hashtags often, but not too often. Don't clutter an hashtag with your tweets unless they're relevant.
7. Converse briefly. A few @'s back and forth is fine by me, but I don't really want to see your whole conversation. It's rarely that interesting. When conversations gets more personal, consider moving to direct message (DM) (Or maybe your favourite IM, since twitter directs are fubar). Guy Kawasaki is a master of this, I've got quite a few DM's from him from @'s he's replied to.

What are your twitter etiquette tips? I'd love to complete my list.

Also, if you don't allready, please follow me on twitter.

Internet users surpass 1 billion 24 januari 2009

ComScore reports that the global internet users surpass a billion. Pretty amazing. China is #1.

I took the numbers and multiplied the global share by GNP per capita:

Indicates you what countries are the most interesting if you want to capitalize on your users. I realize that internet users may be in the higher percentile of earners in their respective country, but never the less.