This is a short and sweet post:

One of the best twitter tips you can take action on is to change your background and make it part of you, your business, your brand…make it an extension of your blog.

My good blogging friend, Erica who owns the blog, www.EricaSays.com recently published a blog post discussing this twitter tip.

Erica says it all…there is nothing for me to add except just before Erica published her post, I did change my Twitter background.

Take a peek and follow me on Twitter while you are there. Here’s my Twitter page:

www.twitter.com/andrewrondeau

What do you think? Do you like my “Bob (Andrew) the Builder” character?

Now go and visit Erica’s post and take action on one of the best Twitter tips around:

Do You Have a Custom Twitter Background?

Technically Speaking, as always, go read more …

You will want to read this entire post:

There are so many usual tips on money making and a whole lot of them are currently resting on my blog, now here I’m going to share a few tips that will help you make even more money from your blog. Here it goes,

Don’t monetize your blog

Wait, is this a SPEED BREAKER? Yeah this is a strategy. When you start your blog, try to build the content and don’t put any ads on your blog for at least 4-6 months. Promote your blog and add more useful content. When you will do this, people will see that this blogger is not monetizing his blog and will get more interested in reading your blog. People will connect with you and ask you for advertise on your blog. This way when you will open up the ads on your blog after 6 months (when you will have a good readership and a page rank) you will start getting ad offers and make even more money from your blog.

Optimize your adsense ads

If you are using adsense, then try to make it blend into your content and theme. Add less ad spots on your blog and put them in top. So you will get more clicks and more money. Try filtering the MFA ads using the competitive ad filter option in adsense to keep your ad stream free of low paying ads.

Sign up for many paid review sites

When you sign up for many paid review sites and submit your site on their marketplace, the chances are you will receive regular offers and can post the paid review in your blog. Paid reviews are great way to build content and earn extra money without even using ad space.

Offer a service

Create a section on your blog called “services” where you can offer your services such as consulting, freelancing, photography or logo design. I have a section called Hire Me and it has sent so many client toward my web design service. This is a nice way to make even more money from your blog.

Offer paid tweets

Here the key is to create and build a twitter account for your blog. Tweet your posts and useful information. Sign up for paid twittering platforms and you can earn money from your twitter account.

Donation button

Technically Speaking, the blogger that wrote this is from Bangladesh.

I’m deleting my Facebook page today at 1pm Pacific today.

You can watch live here, and perhaps join me!
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/this-week-in-startups

So what about YOU? Waiting for May 31st to roll around? Are you deleting your Facebook account, or at least by June 1st when this poll ends?

Vote in this Twtpoll:

Technically Speaking, are YOU joining everyone else and commit social media suicide as Frank put it?

I’m referring to this post as my spring cleaning event. The sidebar is clean. The theme is now clean. Rid the blog of an old non-functioning service (TipJoy was one that was causng a slowdown in page load since it shut down – check out Venmo for more payment fun), as well as updated the theme to a really simple b&w no frills, very fast loading theme.

Another thing I fixed on here earlier was the Past Writers page is now integrated into the Comments page. I also updated Mae Oakmont’s status with her new blog she is writing on (more than I am writing here!). That is her new Facebook profile picture.

Speaking of Facebook, one of the more annoying aspects is the whole e-mail thing when you comment or like a status. Annoyed me to no end. Of course someone reminded me that I could turn the notifications off. I just did. So the only time I’ll be notified is if someone e-mails me there, or one other item. So far, it’s nice an less inbox notices I’ve received. Nice.

Ever wonder if all the people complaining about privacy these days are all ga-ga over Foursquare? Kind of funny how the complaints about online privacy go up, yet the majority of writers out there are going bonkers about how great location everything is. Why does Twitter care? Why does Foursquare care? It’s all about the data. Data is money. The one who has the data at the end of the internet is the big winner.

One thing that people forget about as far as Twitter goes is what you can do with it. I always like reading a well written post by MK, and once again he nails another good read. Not only that, #pdxboom proves that those who are thinking ahead are going to be the ones that really take Twitter and other things to the next level.

What level is that? One that is not thought of yet, or in the early stages in late 2009 or 2010. That level. Those that want to venture out and try something different than the norm. Location everything was not the norm say 18 months ago, yet today it is the norm and becoming even more normal and not so next level anymore.

How many of you like Zemanta? Now that is a service that makes blogging so much easier for lazy non-updating bloggers like I have become. One of the things I do like about blogging here is that more people tend not to read my rambles more than ever before. That’s fine. It seems like the last time I had any readers here was when I offended an entire region or metropolitan area. The best way to tell if you have any real readers is via the comments. If there is a thread of comments, you are doing well. Obviously by the comment streams here, it’s the same six readers that I had back in 2006.

What do you think of work rant blog posts? I was reading one earlier today which reminded me of some items I put up back in 2004 about an old job I had at the time. The person blogging there might put up a work rant blog, on a new domain. We shall see if she decides to roll the dice and have some fun blogging about the weird yet cool experiences she has in her life. Those are usually the best blogs to read as well as the ones that receive the best traffic – and sometimes book deals, etc.

Technically Speaking, March 2010 now has a blog post entry!

MyContextualAds has an easy way for you to add a few bucks to your paypal account with their “Twist & Tweet” contest. You just have to tweet like I did here and here.

To participate in this contest, all you need to do is include the #mycontextualads tag in any tweet on Twitter. You can be creative with your tweet or re-tweet our message, it’s entirely upto you!
Don’t forget to follow @mycontextualads to find out if you’ve won!

You can tweet #mycontextualads as often as you like. Each of these tweets will be eligible and the winners chosen will be the top four highest tweeters! It’s as simple as that!

But please, no bots or automated scripts please! This is purely meant for fun and lets keep it that way!

Rules:
1. This competition is offered by Zytes Technologies Inc. (“Zytes”) and is open to anyone with a Twitter account who is at least 16 years of age. Employees and agents of Zytes and/or its affiliated companies and family members of such employees are not eligible to enter.
2. The competition starts on Dec 22nd 2009 and will continue till February 14th 2010
3. To enter the competition you must send out a tweet from your own Twitter account and include “#mycontextualads” in your message. The rest of the message is up to you, and you are welcome to retweet our competition tweet URL. Or just say whatever you feel like. And you don’t have to be a user of MyContextualAds to enter, so no purchase is required.
4. You can tweet as many times as you like (though entries using automated tweets will be disqualified).
5. Winners will be chosen at the end of the contest. Winners will be announced after the close of the contest from the MyContextualAds Twitter account and official blog.
6. 4 grand prizes will be available, one each for US $25
7. The prize money would be sent to the winner’s PayPal account – no other payment mechanisms would be entertained
8. Entrants’ personal details will be used by Zytes strictly in accordance with Zytes’s privacy policy.
9. Neither Zytes nor its affiliated companies shall have any liability for (i) any technical failures of any kind, including but not limited to malfunctions, interruptions or disconnections in phone lines or network hardware or software; (ii) technical or human error which may occur in the administration of the competition; (iii) any malfunction of or damage to the prizes; or (iv) any restrictions or delays imposed by any customs authorities or any import or other taxes of any kind imposed by any taxation authority in respect of the prizes.

Technically Speaking, it’s Friday, why not?

Twitter is totally worthless. Won’t make it until next year. Just a flash in the pan.

If it is so worthless, how did the Red Cross become tangled up with such a worthless communication tool? Guess that $10 million isn’t worth anything either in helping victims of this terrible disaster in Haiti? Worthless, flash in the pan, won’t last next year.

Those are direct quotes said to me. While it might be totally worthless to send out your 140 character or less tweet, it appears that those that can think outside the box and utilize it as the tool it can be is making it a difference maker. Who would have thought that something that is nothing more than another communication tool would be the one to rally people around a disaster?

Technically Speaking, those that dismiss technological advancements are the ones resigned to working the jobs that we all hate to say is a job at all.

Facebook is more like a two faced bitch if you ask me. Awhile ago I use to be part of a small Facebook ad network called Lookery. Well even back then, Facebook’s constant rule changes annoyed the hell out our publishers as well as other ad networks we worked with. They were basically a big fat PITA.

Now one of the so called “rules” – or as I like to say – “it’s my ball, and I’ll take it home whenever I damn well please rules” was you can’t pull user info into a banner ad. Like the ones that were quite annoying, but intriguing nevertheless. The ones that said “Your friend Todd Sawicki is now playing Vampires R Us, you should too!” – those ads. Yes, while rather annoying, they made publishers and advertisers a ton of money.

Well a few minutes ago I logged onto my Facebook account. At the top I saw the below banner.

Facebook banned ad networks from running these type of ads, but now they basically steal the idea and put it into play for their own use – what is more annoying – stealing a great idea or first saying it’s illegal and then stealing it and using it for your own use?!

Technically Speaking, if you trust Facebook to do anything but make a ton of money, you really should look a little deeper at what they do. What they do is all for the benefit of Facebook only. Like any good enterprise company should do I suppose. Just drop the act, no one is buying it. You are not a startup. You are full on corporate American greed at it’s finest. Just re-tooled for the internet and 21st century.

Yes, I have been around. Busy, busy. Miss me?

Check out my Tumblr blog

My Twitter stream

My Facebook

AIM (rexdixon2006), Skype(rexdixon1), etc.

Yes, even still keep a MySpace page going.

And somewhere out there I have a Bebo, Hi5, and Friendster account(s)!

Technically Speaking, if you can’t find me, you haven’t tried hard enough – because I’m pretty easy to find! If you didn’t get the GeoCities vibe, you missed the boat sometime back in ’99.

The news of the moment is that Twitter has been officially down for about 1.5 hours now, and looks like Facebook has suffered it’s own meltdown.

MySpace however seems to be rockin’ right along just fine. I haven’t checked any of the other social net’s – but it seems that out of the big two, the one that everyone has abandoned seems to be working just fine. A little too messy looking still, but hopefully in time the new leadership sees the error of the past administration that was in charge there.

It does bring up an interesting thought of maybe just possibly the social net revolution isn’t over quite yet. Stay tuned for sure, as with this mornings meltdown and people that can get in to update their fb status, all are crying that Twitter is down. Now I’m sure once everyone wakes up and the services come back, there will be a lot of analysis of this event.

Technically Speaking, a new social world is in order about right now; well if someone can tune the cloud, but as someone once already stated “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish!” >:-?

It looks like one of the leaders of the podcasting, blogging, videocasting movement if you will has decided earlier today that he had enough. He paid someone to trim his stream to a trickle. That almost sounds like a cheap porn movie title. In reality the stream became Scoble’s porn. He was addicted to it. Blogging, Podcasting, Videocasting, Twitter, Friendfeed, Area 51! Er, Building43! I think you get my point. Someone who has made his livlihood by living in the stream, drinking from the stream, has declared stream bankruptcy.

I saw that coming though. While certain people like Marshall will never unfollow you, there are others like me who have taken smaller drinks from the stream known as twitter, Friendfeed, blogging, podcasting, and videocasting. Sorry, no Area 51 for the moment for me! I’ve come to find that my current ratio of follow to followers keeps things interesting enough, yet not overwhelming. It also keeps my stream a worthwhile pursuit vs a living daily nightmare to even look at or make any sense of.

The bigger picture of course is the graphic I found earlier today on Seth’s site this morning. That is the question of the moment more important than any stream trickle trick. The main question that is brought up while we are in this downturn time we live in is where do we go from here. He laid it out in a very simple graphic on two axis that made sense. We see what works. We also see what takes longer to work and requires more work to get there. Twitter is something that worked due to Scoble and some of the early believers in it. They kept squirting their stream all over everyone, every single moment, every single day – until you just had to try it!

Technically Speaking, with Seth’s graphic from this morning in mind – A television show about a book reader that likes to IM his or her friends, while occasionally e-mailing a mysterious person they saw at the movies last weekend while they were tweeting someone from their cell phone and watching cable news and blogging their reaction to it – should go over like gangbusters! Wait for it… Wait for it…. >:-?

This is your last chance to leave your opinion via a twitter hashtag – #freeschtuff – and all you have to do is check out one or all of the Church Tongue songs below and leave your thoughts on twitter. Made it a simple click operation (ie: you can listen right here on this page) since I just installed this WP-Plugin.

Simple! You’ll be entered for a chance to win a – $25 eGift Card from RizzoTees.

– i’d f**k elvis (ruff memphis demo) – JUST released in the past week!
– SEX KISS – semi-NEW SINGLE!
– impress us with your drugs
MySpace Page – Church Tongue – leave comments/friend if you have a MySpace account!

More info / background is here:

The Gutter : pre-Church Tongue (for a bit of a background)
– Casket mp3
– Outlook mp3

Church Tongue : Your Opinion could be worth $25 via – #freeschtuff

Technically Speaking, I’ll be drawing the entrants to the #freeschtuff (only 3 so far) out of a black top hat tomorrow – Wednesday 7/15/09 – Live on UStream! Here are the 3 that have entered (left their opinions via #freeschtuff) to win that $25 eGift Card from RizzoTees or FREE T-shirt:

@klasinski
@kopper
@jonconnelly

As of this morning, the experiment with the twitter hashtag has been a big #FAIL. No worries, many of you are probably asking “Why Church Tongue?”. Well it’s a friend of mine’s experimental gothic music mix send up. He asked me to help him promote the page, and I said, “Sure, why not.” Church Tongue isn’t your ordinary band or even your run of the mill music offering. That is exactly the point of it!

I know that those who have listened to the tracks probably have an opinion. If they saw the tweet on twitter or even not, they could easily leave an opinion with the hashtag system. That is all that Church Tongue is asking for. Right now, there is exactly ONE opinion - and looks like @klasinski is going to win the $25 eGift Card from RizzoTees by default. Quite sad.

I thought that the tweeps out there would have an opinion. I watch people be opinionated daily via twitter. Here is the chance to just take a few listens to some interesting music, and if you don’t like it, all you need to do is say so. If you love it or have suggestions, leave that also with the #freeschtuff hashtag.

Again, to date ONE opinion, looks like the winner will be easy to crown! Here are the details of this contest that is an easy chance to win a $25 eGift Card:

i’d f**k elvis (ruff memphis demo) - JUST released TODAY!

SEX KISS – semi-NEW SINGLE!

impress us with your drugs

MySpace Page – Church Tongue – leave comments/friend if you have a MySpace account!

This is your chance to leave your opinion via a twitter hashtag – #freeschtuff – and all you have to do is check out one or all of the Church Tongue songs above and leave your thoughts on twitter. Simple!

You’ll be entered for a chance to win a $25 eGift Card from RizzoTees.

Technically Speaking, it’s one of those things like the lottery – you can’t win if you don’t play – I posted the original details of this contest right HERE!

Technically Speaking, this guy understood the economic impact of writing stuff for twitter!

Literally in seconds after I posted that below post, @jamievaron was paying attention. She just showed and proved to me that she deserves the J-O-B @twitter. In fact, if I had influence over @ev and @biz, my advice would be to snap her up before someone else grabs her. Talent like this will get away really fast.

Technically Speaking, what do I know or what does it matter if I throw out an endorsement or not? – I’m just a former co-founder and publisher relations person from a small startup who is also looking for work.

Is this for real? Twitter Premium? As many of you know, siliconANGLE went through a bit of growing pains earlier in the week. It should be returning in the next few hours, but wanted to put the twitter premium information out here.

The details of the accounts are as follows:

* Sparrow ($5/month) – Users get 145 character limit, 5 extra random followers.

* Dove ($15/month) – Users get 160 character limit, 25 extra random followers, 1 random celebrity follower, auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” T-shirt.

* Owl ($50/month) – Users get 250 character limit, 100 extra random followers, 2 random celebrity followers, 30 minutes on recommended list, auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” hoodie.

* Eagle ($250/month) – Users get 500 character limit, 1000 extra random followers, 3 celebrity followers of their choice, 5 hours on recommended list each month, Twitter Concierge for Tweeting while user is asleep or busy (and more), auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” tuxedo, custom “Fail Whale” page when service is down.

There is even an embellish fee if you like. Explained as:

Users in any tier will be able to purchase an EmbellishTwit add-on for $100/year, which directs tweets to a well-educated offshore employee who will embellish tweets. For example, “Just had a whole wheat bagel and coffee for breakfast,” becomes “Just got in from clubbing all night and Heidi Klum is spreading brie on a baguette just flown in on the Concord for my breakfast.”

Technically Speaking, I’m still wondering why there is hardly any coverage of this today/this morning? It is fun to read at the very least!

One quick twitter note: @jamievaron updated her blog (slash site, online resume, online projection of job wanting/hunting, etc..) and may actually receive an interview by twitter as well as will be in Fortune magazine. Funny thing, she still won’t follow me! UPDATE: See the next post above this one!

She even uses my original post about her site/blog on her press page. haha!

Now, I just wanted to let you all know that…
I AM GOING TO BE IN
FORTUNE MAGAZINE!

THE Fortune Magazine! I can’t even believe it. I am not sure at this time in what capacity I will be featured, but I will let you all know when I get more information.

ALSO, as if that weren’t enough…
I’M GOING TO THE TWITTER
OFFICES ON TUESDAY!

Well it’s Friday once again, and time for a quick siliconANGLE round up post. Things are starting to really heat up over there with new contributors coming in and dropping a post or two down. We have other contributors coming soon! That means – you won’t have to read my constant angle, or Rizzn’s, or John’s! There will be other bloggers that you’ll recognize by name. Nate D’Amico showed up the other night for example.

Below are some posts over the past 24 hours or so, check it out and be sure to start following us on twitter: siliconANGLE, John Furrier, Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, Rex Dixon. Put us in your RSS feed!

Six Degrees Of Social Separation – Or basically me trying to interconnect many stories into one post, and make it come out smelling like a rose. I think I did a good job of it, as by the time you get to the end, you just realized the story trip I took you on!

Niche Startups You Might Miss – Two startups that you might just pass by completely. I saw them this morning, and decided that since it was Friday, maybe some people out there would have time to check them out over the weekend. The one is a site that is purposely targeted to the demographic of women over 40, but the other one is a very interesting and valuable piece of software if you work in the IT industry, at least it should be in my opinion.

Client/Server Apps Making a Big Comeback – Nate D’Amico makes his second posting and appearance giving his angle on the infrastructure area. Glad to see Nate laying down his angle.

Jason Calacanis Makes No Apologies for Hiring a Hacker – Rizzn covers the Calacanis issue on this post. Nothing to take lightly, but than again, Jason is letting the guy keep his job until he goes to prison. How does it affect Mahalo? Only time will tell!

Cloud Math: They Didn’t Have this Course at my School – Rizzn again explains this bit of fuzzy math, or really lays it out there for you to ponder. I sure pondered it after reading it, as that kind of math causes all sorts of problems.

Online Parenting: Part I: Cyber-bullying: Who is responsible enough to take the first step? Parents, Law Enforcement, Social Networks, or the Schools? – Long title, but really good thought provoking post by Linda Miola Furrier. Hopefully Part 2 will be coming up soon, as this is going to be an issue that won’t be going away until someone grabs it and owns it. No one so far has been willing to take hold of this major issue.

Technically Speaking, that is not even the complete 24 hours over on siliconANGLE! There still is the Zoho post, the Green Tech post, and the twitter nation post from yesterday (Thursday 3/5/09). So read the above and even the ones linked in this paragraph if you have the time or interest. We encourage you to sign up and become a regular contributor!

The more twitter grows, the more people try to do something different with the API. Here is one that I thought was rather amusing. It’s called follow cost. After seeing this, you may not want to follow me!

Technically Speaking, the more we twitter and tweet, the more fun things that people will come up with.

Hey, when someone is giving some tickets away for FREE, and you have interest in attending a cool show for the price of nothing, you really need to get over to @KarenSTL‘s site. The contest is not hard at all, and it’s basically just a very easy way to receive some FREE tickets. Plus she has some past contest winners with some great pictures from the area.

Like this office space here (would love to own this space!) – picture is from the post:

Loft - 1st Prize winner

How to enter:

There is no limit to the number of times you can enter the contest. Every photo or comment counts as one entry, and each link counts as two entries. Tweet about it on Twitter and get a bonus entry. All entries must be received by Saturday 2/28/09 Monday 3/2/09.

Karen has extended the contest until tomorrow. So if you want FREE Tickets to the show, you need to go visit her site today and read all the rules, how to win tix, etc… Also, if you use twitter like Karen does, she’ll give you a bonus – maybe more FREE tix? :)

btw, she has had some really good listings lately, so if you are in the market for a house – you should check out her site as well as start connecting with her on twitter, for starters.

Technically Speaking, this post was written because I like a person that uses and utilizes all available online tools to make her offline business grow. @KarenSTL has the makings of being a the top notch real estate agent here in the #STL.

Twitter has been on steroids over the past few weeks. Interesting enough, it was about 2 years ago right before SXSW that twitter fully took off. I hadn’t even signed up for an account until right about the time before SXSW 2 years ago. Interestingly enough, as seen by the below tweets by @marshallk and locally here in the STL @weatherbird we see the full power of twitter.

The hardest thing now is like it was the days before e-mail went mainstream. That is convincing the non-twitter users to grab their own twitter account soon. Before long, there will be people that will not be able to have the name they want. Trying to get someone to use twitter shouldn’t be hard since ABC News appears to be fully plugged into twitter, and even the Weatherbird from STLToday is plugged in.

It shouldn’t be hard to get people to use twitter, but there are some people that feel it’s still not mainstream enough. If ABC News can use it, I think it is really close being mainstream!

Technically Speaking, I’m not watching the speech, just following along via twitter in tweetdeck is fine by me.