Twitter Acting Up Again

It appears that last weeks timeline slowdown wan't enough bad news to happen to the microblogging site Twitter.  Service has been spotty today as various APIs were having trouble connecting to the service.

Is this an issue surrounding massive growth or is it just the result of too many spam bots trolling the open waters?

I don't know about you but I have recently been hit with a number of users that have account names with more numbers than letters, and churn from the affiliate marketers has been rather high.  Turnover on some of these "followers" has been as low as 24 hours (the required time to follow someone before dropping them like a hot potato).

Anyway, you can find more information about the latest errors here at Mashable, The Social Media Guide.

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Twitter Timeline Has Been Restored

It appears that Twitter is back online, the Timeline has been restored, and the Spice continues to flow.

All is well with the Universe once again.

Or at least with the Twitter-verse.

No word on what happened yet.

Here is an article from Computerworld giving us a look at the impact of the Twitter slowdown.

And here is the Twitter status log.


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Twitter Timeline Not Moving

It appears that the communication utility Twitter is experiencing some technical challenges as timeline updates are not flowing, unlike the spice which always flows.

The crew, however, is working diligently to resolve the issue.

More as it happens.

Twitter Timeline Delays


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Free Social Media Icons For Your Blog

In a past post, I demonstrated how to acquire a badge from Linkedin and install the HTML code in your Blogger blog.

A number of you out there made good of that code and put it to immediate use.

Here’s what you need to know.

Facebook also offers a badge.

Plaxo offers a badge as well.

And Twitter gives you the opportunity to create a window into your tweets right on your blog.

The downside for some of these badges is that they take up a lot of real estate on your blog.

In perusing some of the other blogs out there and getting some insight from my friend Lewis Howes, I discovered a way to shorten down the badges into a few well recognized icons that will still allow your followers to follow you on your favorite social network.

For an example of what I’m talking about, see the sidebar on the right hand side with my social network connections on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. I’m still working on YouTube.

Before we talk about putting the connections into your Blogger blog, you will need to collect the social media icons. You can find these icons at a site called Iconspedia. These icons are subject to the creative commons license. While you can use them free of charge, don't alter the image as the logos belong to the respective companies. Still, for promoting your own personal brand and expanding your social networks, they can't be beat.

When you pull up the site, you’ll notice a bunch of different icon classes. The ones that we will use are the social media icons. You can find them by going to the catalog on the left-hand side and locating the “Internet Icons”. When clicked, it will expand to show your options. Click on the entry entitled “Popular” and then you will see a bunch of selections in the middle window pane.

The ones that we’ll use in the next blog post are in the “Social me” entry. Of course there are a number of other interesting entries and you can get innovative when creating the look and feel of your blog. What we will discuss can be transferred to any of the other icons.

But for now, hit the download button and you will begin downloading a zip file with all of the icons listed. For the “Social me” pack, that would be thirty, including icons for Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Be sure to place the zip file in a location where you will have easy access, and after it has finished downloading, go to the file location, double click the file and unpack the icons out of the zip file. This should be fairly straight forward, but if you have trouble, leave a message below and let me know.

You will end up with four variations of every icon: one file will be an ICO file type, and the other three will be of file type PNG in three different sizes, 32 pixels, 48 pixels, and 64 pixels wide.

The ones I’m using on the right side bar are 32 pixels wide.

Once you have these icons extracted, come back for the next post when we’ll look at how to put these into your Blogger blog with the appropriate social network.

Good Selling.


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Third Linkedin Event Rocks Cleveland

Linkedin Networking Event In Northeast Ohio Is The Biggest Yet

Unless you live way out west and the biggest Ohio city east of you is Toledo, then you probably attended the largest LinkedIn Networking events in Northeast Ohio.

That’s right. Lewis Howes has done it again. The Cleveland Linkedin Networking Event at the Rock Bottom CafĂ© was the largest yet. Over 700 people registered with over 250 people stating that they wanted to attend but had other engagements.

Of course, the place didn’t seem as packed this time.

For starters, the food was placed upstairs which encouraged more people to explore their inner adventurer and migrate to the second floor where all of the fun was staged.

The other addition to this gathering was the Speed Networking event that Lewis put together.

Like Speed Dating, this exercise involved getting 50 people together and having them sit across from each other in a line of tables. And for a pre-selected amount of time, each pair had the opportunity to introduce themselves to each other and make a favorable impression while asking questions of their partners.

And when the bell went off, individuals got up and “slid to the right” to engage their next new partner.

I guess when you are in these kinds of situation, much like you are when you are in sales, you have to know the kind of questions to ask and the outcomes you are trying to achieve.

You didn’t have to pay extra for this event, nor was there a lottery. The selection process was very simple – the first fifty attendees got to participate.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the location in time for the Speed Networking. I was engaged in creating one of the rather unique door prizes for the event so I didn’t arrive there until 6:30. I think the next time we put together promotional door prizes, we’ll get someone whose knowledge of basketball is not limited to Cheech and Chong’s “Basketball Jones” and their vocabulary extends beyond Cavaliers, Bulls, Lakers and Celtics.

I didn’t see Barry from RippleResults, but photographer Robert Schleimer from Erie Shore Photography was there. And unfortunately, no one was interested in getting a headshot for the LinkedIn profile.

I think the majority of people where there to socialize and take in an adult beverage or two. But, if Bob shows up again, I’m gonna bring my hat and get a more interesting headshot taken for my profile.

The next LinkedIn Event will most likely be held in Columbus, but it will be after the CONES event on September 17.

Keep your eyes open, your ears to the ground, and keep monitoring the LinkedWorking groups for Cleveland and for Columbus.

Good Selling!

And now for some fun!


Lewis Howes at the entry table signing in guests at the Linkedin event.

The activity on the first floor was fast and furious.

However, the second floor is where a lot of the new action was happening - such as the 50 person Speed Networking session.

Not to mention the fantastic spread that was available.

And as usual, Lewis was moving about the crowd making sure events proceeded as smoothly as possible.

If you stayed on the first floor this time, you missed out on some major action. The next time this event is in Cleveland, be sure to unlease your inner explorer and wander around a bit.


Here's Sheryl Berman, an event planner who wants to get back into nonprofit and Zolt Seregi from Onelink Technical Services. When people make connections, the effect is obvious and the results are outstanding.

Here we have Michael Smercina, a mechanical engineer and recent grad specializing in metallurgy, and Andrea Jakubowycz, an active distributor of PartyLite. Both are looking oh so serious...

...But after unleashing their passion...

...They look like they have taken Jonathan Crane's advice to Batman and have lightened up. Networking events can be fun when the pressure is off and we can truly connect with people.

Drew Grdina, Patty Quinonez, Daniel Ramos and Mark Klanac exchanging contact information and professional history. In fact, I discovered that Drew Grdina, the only guy in the picture with a tie, was a former Dale Carnegie Sales Advantage graduate and Instructor before striking off to create Crestwood Management LLC.

Have an interesting experience in any one of the Ohio LinkedIn Events?

Leave a comment below and share the wealth.


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Linkedin Networking Event in Cleveland is Tonight

Cleveland Linkedin Networking Event Tonight Will Include Speed Networking

OK gang. It looks like the Cleveland Linkedin event is a go with a hefty 650+ people scheduled to attend to do some serious networking.

In order to accommodate those serious networkers, Lewis Howes, master Linkedin Consultant and creator of the event plans on holding a speed networking event upstairs for the first 50 people in the door.

I have it on good authority that there will be some really cool door prizes drawn as well.

Remember that the Premier Cleveland Linkedin Networking event takes place today at 5:30 PM at the Rock Bottom Cafe in The Flats. Get there early, grab your spot in the speed networking session and prepare to network you brains out.

The Rock Bottom Cafe 2000 Sycamore St. Cleveland, OH

See you at the party!


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Open Multiple Yahoo Accounts In IE8

Gaining Access To Multiple Yahoo Accounts Using IE8

OK. I logged into my second Yahoo email account recently. I typically login to my catchall account everyday to look at the spam, check email marketing samples, and look for anything of value that may find it’s way into the account. But I login to my “technical” account about once or twice a month.

For the longest time, if you had multiple Yahoo email accounts, you had to log out of the one that you had opened on your machine because Yahoo only allowed access to one email account per machine.

So before I could open a browser window and log into my Yahoo email tech account, I had to log out of my Yahoo catchall account, even if I had the “stay logged in” box unchecked.

Well, I made a mistake two days ago. I was on my laptop logged into my Yahoo email catchall account in IE8 and I opened a second IE8 window and opened the Yahoo site. To my amazement, it didn’t come up with my catchall account logged in.

Out of curiosity, I signed in to my Yahoo email technical account and it allowed me to do that. Furthermore, I was still logged in on my Yahoo email catchall account in the first IE8 browser.

What happened?

I mean, for the longest time, when IE7 was in full bloom and IE8 was nothing more than a sparkle in an engineer’s mind, I could only login to one Yahoo account per machine. Which meant that while I could open up multiple browsers and login to multiple Google accounts simultaneously, Yahoo only allowed me to login to one account on one machine regardless of the number of IE7 sessions I opened.

Now, my Yahoo accounts were behaving almost like my Gmail accounts.

First, I thought it was the new IE8 browser configuration that accounted for the change.

But that didn’t wash. I had another machine still running IE7 and I saw the same behavior on both configurations with Yahoo email accounts.

Then I thought that maybe it was because I also had Firefox and Chrome loaded on my test rig.

But that didn’t make sense either because I had no other browsers on my machine that was running IE7. My Yahoo email accounts still behaved like my Gmail accounts on both machines.

Eventually, I determined that regardless if I was running IE7, IE8, Firefox, or Chrome in combination with Windows XP, Windows Vista Ultimate or Vista Business, Yahoo mail was now behaving more like Google Gmail.

After much brain wracking and gnashing of teeth, I came to the conclusion that it was nothing that I had done. It was something that the good people at Yahoo had done.

Was it a result of the new portal look?

Did it happen after they killed off their personal blog and briefcase services?

Or maybe the team up with Microsoft had something to do with it.

I’m still waiting to hear something from the Yahoo team.

For now, know that if you configure your IE8 browser using the “nomerge” flag, your machine will handle multiple Yahoo email accounts the same way that if handles multiple Gmail email accounts.


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