I am ready to give up on Twitter

I know someone that was into Twitter.  He was excited about it and for a period of time was addicted to it.  He found some of the comments humorous and involving.  He enjoyed the commentary on politics from national to local and even used it for his own run for a local office as well as raising awareness for local causes.  This went on for awhile but after a few months his interest waned and I believe he only gets on Twitter infrequently to check out the latest current happenings but not with the same level of passion.

But he did have passion at one time and that passion aroused an interest in me to try it out.  The other factor was all the attention that Donald Trump was getting from his use of twitter.  For all the media reporting about what he had said or didn't say on Twitter it made me curious as to whether he actually did say or didn't say that on Twitter and was it real, fake, sound bites, taken out of context, incomplete or just spin.  I wanted to see for myself.

Twitter sounds straight forward enough and is probably the reason we have #hashtags everywhere.  In fact, that is one reason it took me so long to take an interest in Twitter, you have to learn to read code.  Tweets are limited to 140 characters which should make for some short, lively, thoughtful and concise exchanges between a community of tweeters.  The #hashtags are used to link the tweets by subjects and can be a way to explore topics by searching for your favorites.  You can choose to follow an individual or subject/topic and any new post will fill the news feed on your homepage.  So far so good.

Now for the reality.  Not all of your friends are on Twitter and if they are they were only there for a short time before losing interest and don't post regularly anymore nor are they likely to be monitoring what you have posted because they just don't check anymore.  They do Facebook.  Everybody does Facebook.  Facebook does not have 140 character limits.  Why bother with Twitter when it is all on Facebook.  Hard to argue that.

Twitter had a 'right now' feel about it. In other words, you could get on right now and make comments about, or read comments from others about what they were thinking about some event that was taking place right now and there was a good chance that someone somewhere was also out there witnessing that event right now just waiting to share opinions and comments right now.  If you are in the moment and have a need to share with anyone in the moment but are separated by distance and acquaintance then Twitter may work for you, if not you are probably on Facebook which for many can still be an in the moment tool.

It isn't for lack of trying on Twitters part.  From the moment of signup they have tried to connect me into their world by way of multiple e-mails asking about all my interest as well their willingness to link me with all my friends if I just give them access to my e-mail address books.  Sorry Twitter, my respect for my friends trumps your desire to access their e-mail addresses.  But I did take them up on initial suggestions for subjects/topics and Donald Trump.

Speaking of the Donald, least you get the wrong idea, I am not a fan and I am not a hater.  I think he is arrogant, egotistical, not nearly as bright as many would like him to be, and going all the way back to his first book, one that is more about the show than the substance.  Can he get things done?  Like all things political it depends on your definition.  And like all things political if it is something he favors he will take the credit and if it is something he does not favor it is the other guys fault.  So what is new here?  (Replace the name Donald with any politicians name and it will read the same.  Kind of like a horoscope.)

For good measure I also signed up for a couple of other politicians to get a lay of the land.  Most were deleted in short order, but I did leave a couple of the more active current noise makers to get a sense of the state of the union, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.  What I have learned from these three could fill a thimble.  Okay, I might be exaggerating a little.  If I stuck it out long enough it might fill the thimble part way.

What I have learned is that if voters were willing to pay just a little bit more attention to what these people where saying there is no way, shape or form that they would have this kind of power and influence upon this great land and it's people.  Funny what we allow when we aren't paying attention.

So again I ask, what is Twitter?  The one thing that is left when you strip away the value of original intent: advertising.  Twitter advertises like most web sites and I am okay with that.  If however, you pretend that your advertisements are part of the real content then I lose some respect for you.  Also, most advertising is supposedly selected for you based on your interest, tailored if you will, but I have yet to see it work well in practice.  I imagine that after many months of participation they might get lucky and hit a few ads that are relevant but I also imagine that I still wont pay much attention to them.  As long as ads pay the bills and keep the service free to use, I can live with that.

So, since real people that spend time on Twitter are hard to find and phony popular celebrity people are a dime a dozen with mostly one way dialogues, the only other players on Twitter are the businesses that are trying to draw attention to themselves in any way they can.  That also means noise.  What is missing in content is made up for with volume.  I have seen some tweets done 4 or 5 different ways on the same story with a slight variation but with the intent of causing action on the part of the viewer, a ploy of marketing.

Which brings me to my biggest complaint with Twitter, namely that 140 characters is never enough for today's messages and so 98% of the tweets are little more than links to some other page in some other location in some other corner of the world wide web.  That's right, the goal of Twitter is to draw you in so that it can send you away.  As a launching pad or gateway it is no better or worse than what a lot of the internet has become other than you can make better choices for launching down a rabbit hole if you have more to go on than 140 characters and #hashtags.  And with that I have to state that for me Twitter is

No Value Added

and that is the only measuring stick that matters.  Time is too precious to squander on something that delivers so small a return on investment.  It would be interesting to see real statistics on usage, retention, membership new and old and participation rates for Twitter.  I am betting that the stock would not trade so highly if logic and reason prevailed but then if logic and reason prevailed we wouldn't have the Twitter we have today, nor those that make the most noise on it.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

News flash 29 Oct. 2017

This just in from the MSN news site, an article from Newsweek reporter Jack Moore,

"The Clocks Are Changing in Europe But Why Not The U.S.?"

I know it is click bait and I sucked in. I mean, I am a pretty savvy guy and usually am pretty good with knowing what is going on, at least the important stuff, and this did come with a big picture of four guys working on the face of Big Ben which occasionally is taken out of service for repairs but what would this have to do with all of Europe and not impact the U.S. in some small way and would it really matter?

If that doesn't smack of click bait I don't know what does but I clicked anyway.

It turns out that this was yet one more lame story done twice a year, every year to remind us of daylight savings time.  Europe is on a different schedule and adjust this weekend while the U.S. will do their clock change next weekend.  Yippy skippy, end of story....or is it?

I read further and there were some words about which countries use daylight savings time and which do not.  How it started with the war for productivity and ended only to be turned on again later.  How research shows that it messes with our body clocks and can result in an increase in car accidents.  There were a couple of other 'facts' thrown in that sounded interesting but there was this one paragraph that made me question the whole article:

Americans will have lighter mornings and darker evenings because of the earlier sunrises and sunsets in what is a tradition initiated by former President Benjamin Franklin to conserve energy, according to Live Science.

I went to the Live Science web site and learned a little more about daylight savings time from an article by Jeanna Bryner, Live Science Managing Editor.  It looks like Jeanna spent a little more time developing her article and although Jack did not copy and paste his exactly perhaps he should have as I could find no mention of a President Benjamin Franklin in Jeanna's.  Perhaps she corrected it shortly after it was published I do not know.

Then again maybe I am missing something.  After all, President Benjamin Franklin is on the $100 bill and he was at least 10 times more important than President Alexander Hamilton who is on the $10 bill.  Besides, why would you put anyone other than a president on your money?

And I wonder why I bother to validate anything.

P.S. I am against daylight savings time, always have been, always will be.  It is dumb. Period.  but that is a subject for another time.  Not this week, maybe next week, unless you live in Europe.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

Too many sites, or is one too many

Last time I talked about spreading yourself too thin by trying to make a presence in every site out there on the web.  The other side of that is belonging to all the sites you possible can and then staying connected or current with all of them even if you are not a regular contributor.

I know some that have their phones constantly monitor their Twitter or Facebook account and are constantly checking it throughout the day to see what the latest is.  I on the other hand have wondered how much of my Facebook post got removed between now and the last time I was in even if I set the sort by earliest and not relevance order.  Lately it only lets me scroll so far and it still doesn't know me well enough to figure what is relevant to me.

And I think that the term relevance is the key.  People will spend time where they find relevance or at least relevance for them.  The other will get left behind.  So even if a site has 800 million members, it is how many, how often, and for how long that matter and those are the numbers we don't get to see very much of.

Another interesting statistic I saw was for a celebrity that had over a million followers but didn't actually follow anyone.  I won't name names (mostly because I can't, which tells you how truly famous they are/were) but that seems silly to me.  A social media site is designed to be social which would indicate some form a social interaction between real live people.  Anything else is a one way street that then places the responsibility on the provider to provide something of value even if it is merely entertainment.

If they can be entertaining then I can accept that.  I would relish it in fact.  I would settle for interesting, amusing, thought provoking, educational and informational.  I have been exposed to quite a lot so my standards are getting pretty high.  Well okay, not that high but with so much to choose from it is getting harder and harder to make my cut.  And with my time being more and more limited I have to make cuts.

And so should you.  If you find yourself missing out on things because you are too busy getting in on things that aren't really the kind of things that are your things but are someone else's things then you need to be cutting out a few things too.

If the choices are good, better, best, choose best every time.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

When do you get to it all

I talked about e-mails and keeping up with all the ones that find their way into my inbox, but what about all the other sites out there vying for your time.  Of course there are selective blogs that must be written and read but what about Facebook, and LinkedIn and Twitter, and Snapchat, and Pinterest, and Instagram and all the other sites I don't even know about.

It seems that we have all been told (and especially those in business) that we need to have a presence in all of these sites all over the whole world wide web.  I say WRONG.

The more I have learned about different sites a couple of things stand out.  Some sites are better suited for some people, businesses, cultures, types etc. and some are not.  Find the one that best matches your clan, with who they are and who you are and where they are and where you are and go with it.  That is because of the second thing I have seen.

You will spread yourself too thing and not be able to be in all places at all times.  I am sad to say I am a bad example of this.  I wanted to learn about the other sites and so went on an expedition only to come back to base to find that no one had been keeping the place up.  I was gone for many days, weeks, months between entries in my blog while I was off making entries elsewhere.

I am not the only one with this problem.  Many businesses have tried to put there brand all over the web only to have the site one would go to have the last entry be months and sometimes years ago (outdated and no longer relevant).  If they had multiple sites they might have tried to produce one entry and copy and paste it to all the others and it would leave me asking why bother with the others.  Or, the business had grown beyond a solo player and so different teams would maintain different sites only to end up with a different persona at each of the different web sites.  (Big corporate has a real problem with this even though they think they are just marketing differently to various niches.  Maybe so but it feels more like sending mixed messages.)

So my word of advise for now is to produce our product and placed it where it belongs.  If you produce a different product and it belongs in a different place then so be it.  But don't spread yourself so thin that you can not support who and what you are with what you have.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

How I do Swagbucks

It's Swagbucks turn.  So what is Swagbucks?  It is a web site where you can get paid to do some of the typical web surfing stuff like doing searches, playing games, watching videos, taking surveys, and being exposed to a boatload of advertisements while getting a small reward for doing so.  This is the one site that can really add up if you are willing to put in some effort and time.  Just be careful that it doesn't take up too much of your time as it can become far too addicting.

Like all of these sites, the first thing to do is to find and collect the easiest points, or low hanging fruit first.  Only after this is done do you start spending your time on the points that take a little more time and a little more effort.  This will help control how much time you are willing to spend as the margin of return to time spent will let you know when you have done enough for that day, and you can put it aside and work it some more on the next day.

The easiest place to start is the daily poll; one quick point and your on your way.  The next item is the NOSO or No Obligation Special Offers.  Quickly load the page and hit the skip button that moves you finally to a captcha that you enter to earn your two points.

Next pick a game to play, one that doesn't take too long to lose and then repeat as you will get one point for every two plays.  One of my favorites is the Swagasaurus Run as I can cycle through it about as quick as any of the games.  Of course if you like the games you can still enjoy them just realize that they will eat into the time that you are building your Swagbucks points count.  Unless they are doing a special day deal, there is a limit of 10 plays for 5 payouts of 2 points each for a total of 10 points per day.

Next thing to check out is the main page for any easy special offers.  Look for the small point offers as they are easy to do, don't require much effort, and they don't require you to register for anything or give a credit card to buy anything.  You will want to check out the main page every time you refresh it as some of these offers will refresh with the page and let you get paid for them multiple times.  There are different offers for different times of the day.  Also look for the Radium One tab on the Special offers page for many of the same types of things.

As you get familiar with the site you will begin to recognize which items are worth doing and which ones to avoid.  If it is an item to avoid you can hit the X in the squares upper right hand corner to delete it from appearing each time...at least for that day.

Some items will have a big point payout but that usually means you have to sign up for something even if it is a free trial something.  The trouble with free trial somethings is you forget you signed up and you get a monthly bill on your credit card for that something that you forgot to cancel.  If you can make yourself a list and keep track of when your need to cancel by dates are then you can pick up some major points this way.  I can not and I know it so I don't even bother with these.  And if you do the insurance quotes you have no one to blame but yourself if you get the occasional phone call...

Next up are the Swagbucks TV videos.  Pick a topic and go.  Watch the credit bar to see when you have earned the credit for watching that video and as soon as you have it is time to pick the next one.  Don't worry that you have just made it through the commercial and haven't actually watched the video, that is not what this is about.  It takes 10 videos to get 3 points for a total of 150 points per day unless there is a special thing going on.  I have never hit the limit if that tells you something about what this takes.  I do however use it to help build the points I need to meet my daily goal.

Oh yeah, the daily goal.  There is your own personal goal which can be whatever you want it to be but in case you can't decide let them set a goal for you.  Swagbucks sets two daily goals, kind of a level one and a level two.  Each level comes with a bonus points amount that is collected through out the month and paid in the first week of the following month.  These can add up nicely and it is a pleasant surprise when you notice your balance just took a jump and you can't remember why.

There is another points bonus that you can earn by hitting the level one daily goal several days in a row.  Seven days will get you an extra 25 points and you can get up to 300 bonus points for hitting your level one daily goal every day of the month.  Combined with the daily goal bonuses this makes for a nice bump but it can become a little stressful trying to make sure you hit it every day.  Also be ware, everyone used to have the same daily goal but now it is a moving target for each individual based on how much activity they do.  The more you do the higher the goal becomes, the less you do the lower the goal...your basic two edged sword.

Encrave is like Swagbucks TV but works slightly differently.  Some are short, some are longer combinations.  It used to pay better but it has cut back some lately, also they took off the notice of what the payout is for each viewing offer.  That means learning it by trial and error.  Look for the ones with a circle like symbol as they will go from one video to the next automatically which is nice...set it and forget it.  Sad part is you have to have your cursor on the screen to have it give you credit for viewing.  There used to be a countdown timer but they took it off.

I haven't said it out right yet but here is a good place to mention that with a little practice you can figure out how to open up and have several windows running at the same time.  This is the real way to get to the daily goals.  If you had to do this all one shot at a time you could kill off a whole day and not even realize it.  You really need to do multi tasking to make this work out well.  By the way, I am watching Swagbucks TV, playing Swagasaurus run and doing Encrave right now as I am writing all of this.

Next up is surveys.  You can be honest about who you are but be aware that if you don't meet the desired demographics you wont get in.  If you try to be who they are looking for you can get paid fairly well.  It can be like a game trying to figure out how to take on a different persona and answer survey questions in a third person in order to gain the prize.  I know one person that has been pretty successful at playing the survey game whether he needs to be a teenage game playing boy or a single hispanic mother of two.  It kind of makes you lose faith in the outcome of surveys and polls and even more in the people that pay for and act on the information that comes out of them, but don't let that hold you back from getting paid for their folly.

Last mention is the searches.  The payout is given randomly, totally hit or miss and usually pays in the 6 to 11 point range, so I don't count on it for much other than icing when I get one.  I do search and go to a site known as sc-s.com.  It stands for swag code spoilers and will let you know if any of the Swagbucks social sites like Facebook, Blog, or Twitter have a special Swag code phrase you can use for a limited time to gather some bonus points.  Quicker to use than the sites but it is all hit or miss for timing.

So when it comes to being paid (and that is the best part) just know that there are several cards to choose from where 1 point equals 1 cent and you can pick many different cards in different denominations starting from $5.  One card that can be bought at a discount is the Amazon $5 card which you can get for 450 points, up to 5 cards a month.  First place to start and the one goal you should shoot for is these 5 cards each month.  It doesn't take long to build a nice credit balance at Amazon.

Now if you think this is all small fry I must state that my friend has bought a lot of nice things through Amazon with the $1000 plus he as made in the past 10 months he has been doing this.  This is all part time outside his regular full time job.  He is driven and goal oriented and does what it takes to get where he wants to get.  Way to go.  I haven't done that well myself but I do like what I have been able to do.

If you think you would be interested in giving this a try then use my referral to try SWAGBUCKS. (or http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/c5ed) and enjoy.  It doesn't cost anything to try but your time.  I like that.  I like that.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

Making a slow buck on the internet

There are get quick schemes out there on the internet and most aren’t worth the time spent reading through the hype.  There are few ways to make slow money out there, you just have to invest time and a little effort to see some results.  Be forewarned, those results won’t allow you to quite your day job anytime soon, but it will allow a little extra spending monies for some of the little things you might need or enjoy.  I will tell you about the top three that have worked for me.

All of these are some form of click to earn sites; that is you earn points for doing searches, playing games, watching videos, taking surveys, shopping or just plain watching commercials…and believe me you will be exposed to lots and lots of advertisements.  They also have referral programs which pay you a bonus if someone you refer joins so if you would like to try them out please use the links.

#3.  IRAZOO--I have mentioned this one before and have had a few payouts from it, just not consistently.  They have changed the rules frequently and the payout comes slowly but with minimal effort you can earn a $5 gift card every 2 to 3 months.  This is really making a slow buck on the internet but combining it with the others it will add up over time.  Also with this as my number 3 it should give a pretty good indication of what the rest of these types of site out there are like, in other words be careful and read all of the fine print.  You have to be referred to join so click here for IRAZOO. (or http://www.irazoo.com/ReferedNewUser.aspx?RefBy=farrwest).

#2. BING– Yes the same Bing that is part of the MSN group and trying so hard to compete as your main web browser has a program where you can earn points for your searches.  Every day you can make 30 searches which will earn you 15 points plus they have a special search or two worth a point each.  Sometimes they will have days where you can earn double the daily point limit.  15 points a day doesn’t seem like much but it can add up to a $5 gift card to Amazon about once a month.  Bing doesn’t take a lot of time or effort, is consistent, pays out quickly and has worked well for me.  I wish they would expand the program beyond just searches with other point earning offers but it is because of what they do that I do recommend them.  You can add a search bar to your Internet Explorer (which it prefers but you can also use Firefox) for extra ease.  Use this link if you would like to try BING. (or http://www.bing.com/explore/rewards?PUBL=REFERAFRIEND&CREA=RAW&rrid=_95a992a4-7aa7-0195-b0d8-087fa58f6722).

#1. SWAGBUCKS –You may have heard of them before and they seem to be the real deal.  This one doesn’t have the limits (other than running out of offers) that the others do.  You can earn as much as you are willing to spend time on but more realistically you should shoot for the daily goal which is around 100 points a day.  If you are consistent this can translate into $30 or more in gift cards a month.  If you are ambitious it can be much more.  Use this link if you would like to try SWAGBUCKS. (or http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/c5ed).  I have done a lot of looking and this seems to be the best of its kind out there and has been for several years.  I have added a couple of hundred dollars to my Amazon account with Swagbucks…very nice

If you decide to do any of these here are my top suggestions, 1. Read and follow the rules carefully.  It is their game and they make the rules and if you follow them you will be successful, if you don’t you risk getting terminated.  2. Get a new junk e-mail account and use it to sign up.  If you click on any offers at these sites use this new junk e-mail account and just expect that there will be junk mail coming.  That way you won’t plug up your regular e-mail account and we can still be friends.

Some friends from work got competitive and were really racking up the points so if you set some goals (like a new game console, Blue ray player, TV???) and invite your friends to do this also you might enjoy some building fruits from your efforts.  I must warn you though, this can be addicting and you may lose track of time and end up spending way too much time on this.  Self control is required, both for your family and your sanity.

Anyway you go at least have fun doing it.  Good luck on your way to fame and fortune.  I will follow this up with a how I do it post later but for now this is Ed Nef with a view from the Farrwest.

6380 page views as of 12 November 2013

Hello all,
I have been away for a little while but I came back over to take a look and noticed that the Google formats have all changed.  I wasn't even sure if I still had an account or not, but if my nosing around is correct I have had 6,380 page views of my first 140 entries and I wish to thank each and everyone of you that took the time to make a visit.  I hope it was worth your time and I am now motivated to be once again a blog publishing author.

I am surprised at how long it has been since my last post.  Time flies in the face of a life.  Someone once said that life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.  It sometimes feels like life is what happens to you to spite your other plans.  It may feel like the world is plotting against your plans but I also think that it is a good indication that you are on the right track when you start running into opposition.  It is that opposition that helps you determine if there is enough energy in your plans or whether you will quickly lose interest and forget what it was you were after in the first place.  Personal goals are like that for some reason.

What I am getting at I guess is that there are many obstacles to the meaningful things in our lives and some of those obstacles take the form of distractions.  Distractions are those things that divert your attention away from what you really should be focusing on, those important goals in your life that are truly yours.

I have found myself chasing down several time-sucks lately thinking that they were useful in the pursuit of the goals that I think are important, and even though the time-sucks might move me toward my goals they are doing so in a glacially slow manner.  I need to speed up the process if I still wish to complete some of these goals within the normal life span of a normal bloggers life.

I think that means that I will have to give up something good for something much better (kind of the definition of sacrifice).  Of course much of knowing if you are going to something better is a matter of trial and error.  So I have done some trial and and done some error.  I haven't discovered the correct path just yet but I am still working on it.  That is the thing about worthwhile goals, you only lose if you give up on them.  As long as you continue towards a worthy goal you are making progress.  You will either complete the goal and be ready to move on to the next one or in the midst of working toward step one you will see step two and no longer need to complete step one.  Progress is progress, recognize it and move forward.

As you can tell I have still been working with and thinking about goals and such and I am sure there will be more to follow.  I will also have some things to say about time-sucks, but that as they say is for another blog post.

And as always (even with the pauses) this is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West.