On Experts

Browsing the web I’ve come to the conclusion that everyone is an expert these days. It used to be you went to school for years and years, read everything on your topic, and published articles and books in your field and then, and only then, you were considered an expert in your field. It doesn’t seem that is the case anymore, especially with emerging technologies and trends. I’m looking at you Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Experts.

SEO Experts are charlatans trying to sell you snake oils. Many of them are extremely shady, using shady processes to get the “guaranteed” results. You’re not an expert because you’re able to get your website higher in the rankings on Google, especially since it is a field that Google can switch up at the drop of a hat and especially since their complete algorithm is still secret. I concede that there are things you can do to get your rankings higher, but because you know those things that will get you closer to the top does not make you an expert. Anyone with a few minutes of time and an internet connection can find your entire wealth of knowledge on the subject. In fact, any web developer should do those things as standard practice. I could go on and on about the shady practices of many of these so-called experts (I’m sure as soon as I publish this post I’ll get a ton of spam because I said SEO) but let me tell you about the other group of experts I really can’t stand: Social Media Experts.

Social Media Experts have to be the most arrogant, full of hot air, BS spewing people in the world. Just because you have MySpace, Facebook and Twitter doesn’t mean you’re an expert. Yes, your degree might be in marketing or advertising, so you may know how to reach an audience, but because you also know how to get on the internet doesn’t mean you are a Social Media Expert. Wow, so you signed up your company on Facebook, Youtube, Digg, and Twitter. Big deal. You are a user. You want to know who the real social media experts are? People who came up with the software you’re using to promote your crappy products and services. MySpace was a great idea. They found their niche in artists and hit it early on (anyone remember Soundclick? They failed.). Facebook did the same thing (Oh, how I long for the days when it was just the people you went to college with on FB). Twitter took a simple idea and let it explode. These companies are the real experts in social media (even if Twitter has still yet to make a dime). Because you use it for your company, makes you a user, not an expert. Come up with something original for your company and make it truly social, then we’ll talk (and no, your Ning site doesn’t count). Until then, please stop promoting your BS and remove the title from your resume. It might as well read that you are the leader of the Republic of Elbonia. Means just as much to me.

(Edit: I know I’ve ranted about some of this before but something set me off at work and I felt I needed to rant more).

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What Bugs Me About Twitter

I am not an “expert on all things web 2.0.” Nor am I a “social media expert.” Heck, I’m not even a “social media enthusiast.” I’m just a regular person who finds value in various things on the internet. One of them is Twitter. I fear it could fail because of certain things that bug me about the Twitter phenomenon. When I say they might fail I mean that users may stop using it, not because it doesn’t have a business model (although, that’s probably a problem as well).

There’s always going to be someone who will try to duplicate what Twitter did in a new way. Plurk tried, and last I checked they had quite a community but I don’t know anyone who actually uses it (at least not anymore). Even if something better comes along, that doesn’t mean users are going to jump ship. They’ve already invested time in Twitter. It will be hard to leave. How else do you explain how MySpace is still popular? I’m betting it’s because that’s where the cool kids were, then it became popular and that’s where people have set up homes. Twitter is the same way. That could change though. If you use Twitter you might have noticed that as each month passes the amount of spam followers seems to increase. Some days these spam bots follow you as soon as you post an update. Twitter needs to do something about this problem if they want to continue to grow. MySpace used to have the same problem. It has been several months since I deleted my MySpace profile so I don’t know if the problem is still as rampant as it once was. The point is, it may eventually drive users away, or make the move easier when something bigger and better does come along.

Another problem I have with Twitter is now that it’s popular it’s being inundated with another type of spam. The new spam are not pre-programmed robots, though one could argue differently when you look at their updates. I’m talking about the so-called social media experts, mavens, and enthusiasts. These are the people who do nothing but post links to their site/product/service and retweet other more famous people. They bring almost no value to Twitter and actually, in my opinion, lower people’s opinions about social media and what it can and should be. Social Media Experts are to today as SEO Experts were to a few years ago. Yeah, there might be a few people who honestly “get” it and can actually help you, but most are trying to peddle their goods and services that you don’t need. Just because you’re on LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter doesn’t mean you’re an expert. It means you use the internet. In fact, I’m betting there are 14 year olds that know more about social media than you. I’ve actually had many of these human spammers follow me then when I don’t follow them after a day or so they quit following me. 7 times out of 10 they are back following me the next day. Is that because my updates are so great? Not at all. It’s because they follow anyone and everyone to try to pump themselves up more.

Along with the so-called experts, you have real companies on Twitter. Some of the accounts are good. There are some that try to help customers out and provide valuable information. There are also some that will jump all over you because they are watching if anyone says something bad about their company or product. Then you have something else entirely. I think everyone remembers the Skittles mistake. Skittles decided to make Skittles.com pull in anything anyone was saying about Skittles from Twitter and display it. Of course obscenities were rampant once it launched. It was funny for a few minutes, then it got old. It also made Skittles abandon Twitter for their homepage to Youtube. I bet they will actually think before they implement something like that in the future.

The last thing that bugs me and might not cause Twitter to fail, but it’s not helping. These are users that use Twitter as a lifestream. Now, it is your account and I can’t tell you how to use it because Twitter is what you make of it, but do you really need to use it as a lifestream? Twitter wasn’t meant to be a lifestream. That’s what Friendfeed and other applications are for. I do not need to know where you are every 5 minutes, so stop posting your brightkite status. I also don’t need to know every time you’re listening to a new song, so please don’t update me with your blip.fm status. It’s cool if you want to post these things every once in a while, such as when you find a great new song or if you need other Twitter users to know where you are for a meetup or if you have a new blog post, but when that’s all your updates are then chances are you won’t have many followers for long.

To leave on a more positive note I’ll tell you one thing that I love since Twitter hit the mainstream. Celebrities. I’m not talking about Britney Spears or Barack Obama and I’m not talking about celebrity gossip. I’m talking about the celebrities that are actually fun to follow on Twitter. People like Michael Ian Black, Rob Corddry, Jimmy Fallon, ?uestlove (of The Roots), Demitri Martin, etc. are great because their real life personalities transform so well onto Twitter. Even Shaq has some of the funniest updates on Twitter.

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Charter Communications Still Sucks

In case you haven’t noticed, I am not a fan of Charter Communications. They have horrible customer service and high prices. If you haven’t gotten screwed by them yet, you’re about to. Over the weekend several sites broke stories about how Charter Communications will put a cap on bandwidth at 100gb a month starting on February 9th. Of course there was no announcement or anything on Charter’s website, and up to this point, there still isn’t. If you drill into the TOS, you will find that the terms have changed. If you look at number 13 you see how they added the cap to the terms of service.

So, if you are someone who likes to download a lot from iTunes, Amazon.com, watch movies and TV on Hulu and Netflix, play online games like World of Warcraft, do offsite backups with services like Mozy or Jungledisk, don’t be surprised if you use up your allotted bandwidth quickly. And of course Charter does not provide any sort of bandwidth meter tool to see how much you are using. At least Comcast provides a more reasonable 250gb a month cap. I really can’t wait to be done with Charter.

My Rant on Ranting

I’ve noticed that the majority of my posts lately have all been me ranting on and on about various topics. All the ranting has made my blog, and me, seem very negative. I’m not really a negative person. I guess, like most people, I tend to only talk about something if something bad happens. I guess I don’t really sit and take in the good moments and write about them. I never usually do New Years Resolutions, but this year I will. I resolve to write about things that interest me, that I find funny, and that I enjoy instead of all the things that bug me all the time. After almost 4 and a half years writing here, I think I can find something positive to write about again.

Do Not Ship UPS

A few weeks ago I shipped a package via UPS. I went to the UPS Store near my house to ship a Christmas package to a friend that lives near Chicago. I was shipping her a custom made t-shirt and a gift card. I declare the valued amount of the items I’m shipping in the form, get insurance, and check out. I shipped it on a Saturday and it was supposed to be there on Tuesday. Awesome. That gave it plenty of time to arrive at its destination (a full week) before my friend had to leave her house to head to Vermont for Christmas. The UPS Store employee packaged my items, knowing what they were, entered in the information to the computer and handed me my receipt. Little did I know, my package would never arrive.

I head to the UPS Store a couple days after it was supposed to arrive in Illinois to see what was up. The package had never been scanned. When shipping from a store like that, the package is scanned when the driver picks it up, then scanned again when it arrives at the local sort facility, then shipped, then scanned when it arrives at the destination’s sort facility, then scanned when delivered. My package was never scanned. Not once. So, they put a tracer on it to find it and after a little over a week they declare it lost.

I go to the UPS Store to begin the refund process. Of course, there is no manager there so they can’t help me one bit. The girl working, who was actually the girl who originally shipped the items, tells me I need receipts to prove that the items were worth the insured amount. Umm, what? Why? If it was insured a certain amount and I paid for that insurance, then I should not need any receipts. On top of that, one of the items I don’t even have the receipt for. Furthermore, the girl tells me that gift cards aren’t insurable because they are replaceable. Isn’t everything that you’d have a receipt for replaceable to begin with? What kind of sense does that make? She tells me I need to go to the place I purchased the gift card from and tell them it was lost so they can issue a new one and then when I have the receipt for the reissue, UPS can reimburse me for that. Here is the catch though. I don’t have a receipt for the gift card. Knowing that gift cards can sometimes malfunction, I did what every store tells you to do when you give a gift card: I included the receipt in the gift card envelope. So, my receipt for that card is in the package that UPS lost. That is beside the point though, I shouldn’t have to provide receipt proof of the value of something I shipped, especially when UPS saw the items, packaged it, and entered everything into the computer for shipment without questioning a thing. This is their mistake, they need to pay up. On top of that, someone is going around with a brand new t-shirt and gift card, and I’m betting it was someone at that store, since while I was there, a lot of whispering was going on about someone who worked there before the manager made faces at the employees telling them to be quiet.

I will NEVER ship UPS again. I’ll update on Monday when I’m supposed to talk to the manager.

UPDATE: I was promised the manager would call me on Monday. It is Wednesday and I have not heard from him. They run a great business, don’t they? I have not had time to swing by after work because on Mondays and Tuesdays I teach at Sylvan after my regular job. I plan on going by there today after work to see how much more they can screw me over.

UPDATE #2: I went in at lunch today, for the 4th time since the manager never contacted me, and spoke with Mr. Tom Surkamp. He told me my claim was approved for the missing shirt but not the gift card since gift cards are replaceable. Again, I argued that anything that has a receipt is replaceable and since the receipt was in the package that they lost there would be no way for me to get a replacement card from the store I ordered it from. I gave him proof of how much the gift card was for (via a bank printout) and that I am owed the money because they lost it and the receipt. He then was rude to me and told me I should have made copies of the receipt. Well, that might be true, but UPS, a company who delivers packages, should not lose packages. They are at fault here, not me. Me not making a copy of a gift card receipt is no where on the same level as failing with the one thing you were created to do. He said he’d take it higher up but he thinks it will be denied, which means I am out the amount of the gift card. Awesome. I will NEVER ship via UPS again. I will use FedEx, DHL, or USPS from now on.

Warning to people in St. Peters, MO. Do NOT use The UPS Store on Mexico Road at Mid Rivers Mall Drive, store 3392, they are shady and untrustworthy.