Tag: Twitter

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Twitter moving towards 280 characters, a good move?

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Photo by Jason Blackeye on Unsplash

Today Twitter announced that they are testing 280 characters with a small number of users. The idea is to give people more characters to express themselves.

We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean).

While only .4% of those who type in Japanese hit the 140 character limit, 9% of those typing in English do. Looking at how many people who are on Twitter, that is quite a bit.

I think this could be a good thing for those who use Twitter. It will give those of us with a little more to share the space that we need. We will need to be diligent in its use, because if we abuse it we will lose followers, etc.

Those of us who manage brands on social media will need to diligent also. We don’t want to upset our followers with a bunch of junk. All posts will need to be creative, catching, interesting and innovative. We can’t abuse the new found characters.

Let me know your thoughts and if you think this is good or not.

via Giving you more characters to express yourself

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What is up with Frontier Airlines?

I just want to know what is up with Frontier Airlines?
They have been going downhill for awhile and they are losing a customer whom was quite loyal to them, me.

I’m an Ascent member on Frontier and would fly them for work and personal trips. I would work my schedule around flying them. The staff was friendly and helpful, the service was on time and the flights were entertaining, especially with TV on the flights.

But as soon as they were bought by Republic and the corporate headquarters moved out of Denver the service has declined, they stopped flying to key airports, have chosen to fly to locations that are quite perplexing, and stopped treating their frequent flyers well. They are no longer the home town airline.

One of the moves that perplexed me the most was stopping to fly to Sacramento, Calif. This was a popular destination for Frontier, flights were full, and they had better service than United and Southwest.

Frontier survived the construction of a new terminal there and once moved enjoyed a nice location and there were more amenities for its passengers. But one day, no more flights. That means flying to San Francisco. Not convenient.

Now services are being cut back. Just announced today that free TV for its Ascent and Summit members was gone. As a frequent flyer on Frontier, this was a real nice perk. It gave Frontier the edge. Not any more.

The service has declined tremendously. Back in February they announced they they would be outsourcing about 700 jobs at stations outside of Denver.

This was quite evident when my brother took my children for their unaccompanied flight back to Denver at SFO. The staff had no clue what they were doing and even failed to charge us $50 for the escort back to Denver.

Even in Denver their service is failing. My wife went to get the kids and the agent gave her the wrong persons pass to go to the gate. She got to security and was forced to go all the way back to the counter. She almost was late picking up the kids.

Frontier is in some serious trouble. From flying to locations such as Wilmington and Trenton to their customer service. They are losing me as a customer and I’m quite upset by it.

Good luck. I hope you survive, but it’s not looking to good.

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What You Don’t Know About The Do Not Call List

I was having a quite wonderful evening until 9:22 when Promark Research Corporation called. I then learned that the Do Not Call List doesn’t apply to them.
While I removed myself from their call list, I’m not to happy that our elected officials sold us out and excluded companies like that. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

What I think that got me upset was that they called after 9 am in the evening. Im still not sure they are supposed to call that late. No research firm shouldn’t be able to call that late. They sounded offended that I was upset.

Promark, get a clue and a conscious. The business you are in and how you are doing it is unethical. You do not get good information when you make people upset.

Update: While the law exempts from companies seeking opinions or completing surveys, including the call hours, best practices specify that companies should follow the law and restrict calls from 8 AM to 9 PM. Promark doesn’t seem to be following best practices.

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Disappointed Frontier Airlines is dropping service to Sacramento

I extremely disappointed that Frontier Airlines is dropping service to Sacramento. It is the best airline to fly into Northern California and not fly into the Bay Area.
I’m not sure who is making the decisions at Frontier but this was a poor one.

For the last two years they have been jerking things around. Flying the Embraer instead of the Airbus, changing the times so they aren’t convenient and then cutting the flights.

However, people still flew them. The flights I, my family and friends would take to Sacramento would be full, if not oversold.

It seems that Frontier was doing something to cook the books to make this route not profitable.

I hope the reconsider and bring back the flights but I doubt that will happen. I’ll have to see if we still fly them to northern California now into San Francisco or see if I need to fly another airline.

Not happy Frontier!

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What a crazy day in college football

Today was a weird but fun day in college football.

  • Alabama showed that it was the best team in the Nation with a huge win over Arkansas.
  • The Football Championship Series and lower conference teams show they can play with the big boys with Western Kentucky beating Kentucky, Utah State should have beat Wisconsin, and University of Louisiana Monroe taking Auburn to OT.
  • Football sucks in Colorado. The university of Colorado got killed by Fresno State. They were down 55-7 at half. That is just embarrassing. Colorado State lost to future Mountain West Conference foe San Jose State.
  • Its not good in Wyoming either who lost to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo at home. A team from sea level coming to play at 7,000+ feet.
  • …and my team the Idaho Vandals going into Death Valley and hanging with the LSU Tigers for a half before bring out gunned.

College football is fun and I can’t wait until next week. You never know what will happen.

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I’m getting tired of this election already, are you?

I’m getting tired of this election already. It’s been going on too long and the yelling, lying, boasting and accusing is getting worse.
If you watch CNN, MSNBC or Fox News all you see are stories on the election. Even the potential hurricane hitting Florida is more about how it will impact the Republican National Convention than how it will impact the millions who live in Florida.

We can’t even get away from it by watching non-network stations. Since I live in Colorado and we are a swing state we are getting bombarded by political ads on tv on most of the channels.

Plus we are getting robo-calls for candidates and robo-calls from PACS pretending they are doing a survey but it is so slanted that they are promoting a candidate.

I’m ready for November and the election to be over. But between now and then I expect to blasted with misinformation from both sides that will continue to turn me off to both candidates.

I just need to figure out which way I’m going to vote and being a swing state, it’ll actually matter.

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What does this photo say about our country today?

20120820-170825.jpgThis photo epitomizes how stupid our country is becoming. People need to figure out things on their own, they don’t need to be told how to do everything.

If we become more dependent on others to tell us how to do things, then the dumbing down of our country will continue.

If you don’t know how to do done thing, experiment with it until you get it to work. Do something for yourself and solve your own problems.

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Twitter Tools 2.1.1 is now out

I just love Twitter Tools. This WordPress plugin updates my Twitter feed when I add a new post to my Blog, this account you are reading. It has now been updated with version 2.1.1.
I was having a problem when I would add a post or save a draft Twitter Tools would cause an error. I would then have to go in and then edit the page in order for it to post.

Some people did some trouble shooting and found out that Twitter Tools was causing the problem.

Congrats to Alex King and his staff for getting this fixed and updated. It’s a great plugin.

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Walmart moves into social media with commercial

Walmart ran the following commercial in movie theaters and it is quite catchy. It even discusses Facebook and Twitter.
Well it looks like it has caught on Walmart has put it on YouTube. It was put on YouTube long after I saw it in the movie theater. They also put a link to the movie on its own website where you can download the mp3, sheet music, or read the lyrics.

I would say it is quite ingenius on Walmart’s part to do this, although it was slower than it should have been.