I love Twitter. My first use of Twitter was as an account for a band I was with at the time, a way to communicate with fans, update them instantaneously, and tweet the shenanigans that we were up to. About a year ago, though, I decided to sign myself up for it. As I became more interested in social media and in engaging with the world via the internet, I recognized this little bird as a force to be reckoned with.

Since then, I’ve really come to enjoy it! Twitter is a great source of immediate news and interesting items. I follow numerous world news, local news, business news, music news sports news, sports teams and athletes, celebrities, comedians, businesses, bands and friends so that I can log in at any time and get information that is actually beneficial. I feel that Facebook focuses on people, particularly friends. Honestly, I’m not sure it’s worth much besides keeping up to date on friends that I would rather call, text, or hang out with anyways. With Twitter, I can connect to the happenings of the world. Also, being followed by people I don’t know is much less creepy than being friend requested by those people on Facebook.

My roommate and I often get caught up with trying to be retweeted or responded to by the many Pittsburgh Steelers that we follow. I also love to spout off opinions on matters that my 100+ followers will see, many of them companies, professional musicians and professional athletes. I believe that the endless struggle by many Twitter users to gain followers and to be retweeted is driven by something everybody wants: attention.

Twitter is an incredible place for Steve Jobs, Ben Folds, LaMarr Woodley, Taco Bell and Dan Van Matre to have an equal voice. Try it out!

www.socialmediamarketing.com

Thats all you need. End of blog post.

Just kidding. This website has everything you need to help develop a successful marketing and media campaign. As quoted from the site,

“SocialMediaMarketing.com creates and leads powerful social media campaigns that will intelligently rocket your traffic, promote your brand and grow leads and sales with maximize ROI to give you a feeling of power and importance in the marketplace.”

They are quoted to having helped Levi jeans, LG, facebook applications, and more. They talk about how, using facebook, twitter, and feedburner, they can help develop traffic to your website and interest in whatever you want people to be interested in.

Seems like a cool website for people to check out if they are starting a business.

Internet Brokers have existed since the creation of the internet, but in a much different form than we see today. Only the mega rich had any use for them as the transaction fees were astronomical and the lot sizes had to be huge. If any novice investor such as a college student wanted to purchase some stock, they had to call up a broker and make the order

Fast forward a decade to today’s busy work where anyone can trade stocks – even babies as E-trade has advertised. The influx of brokers and investors (the average Joe’s to the Wall Street Kings) have created a system where everyone can simply log on and trade live any amount and lot size all for a small transaction fee under $10. This system has turned the markets into something that is no longer distant and only for the super wealthy.

Plug into a broker today and start your investing career:

www.etrade.com  - www.sogotrade.com – www.tdameritrade.com – www.vanguard.com

.co has just recently been released as a new website ending, as if there weren’t enough already out there.  The question is what is this new domain and how is it different from .com.  Due to the rising traffic online a lot of .com names have been taken so people are constantly looking for new endings so that SEO rich phrases can be used for their website.  Different endings have also been used make dictions as to what type of site the user would be entering.  For example, .gov websites are only aloud to be federal government agencies, and .orgs are supposed to be for non-profits companies.  .net was created to be for technology and network companies, but as become a viable substation for a website when .com is taken.  So the question is what is .co? and what does that mean for it’s future and place in the market?

.co used to be the international ending for Columbia but the Columbian government in a effort make money decided that it would allow non-Columbia companies to register for .co and it moved all of its national websites to .com.co.  These meant that domains like ford.co, e.co, and apple.co were up for grabs.  E.co was reportedly sold for 81,000 dollars.  It is still uncertain if .co will become popular or how Google will treat .co websites verses .com for SEO purposes, but it is sure causing a lot of noise in the website community.  Domain distributers are really advertising about how successful these new .co are going to be.  Research firms have also surveyed consumers about .co and found that they mostly associate .co with either a corporation or a company.  .co could be a huge success or a big flop.  There have already been over 600,000 .co domains bought and there millions of great domains left. This could be a great opportunity for entrepreneurs.  Time will tell how successful .co will be.

For other Blogs written by Ford Jordan check out www.fordjordan.com

YouTube is the single most helpful website on the web.  If you can think of a better one feel free to comment below.  It might not give you detailed search results such as Google, and it might not be as informative as Wikipedia, but it is the most practical website available.  Most humans including myself are visual learners.  Thus it makes sense that a video site such as YouTube would make learning easy.  YouTube is filled with self help videos from encouragement and testimonials on quitting addictions to learning every song known to man on the guitar.  Just this morning I needed to dress up for an interview and had forgotten the technique to tying a tie.  I searched YouTube for a tutorial video and the first one I clicked on perfectly explained exactly what I needed in an easy to learn format.  This semester I also taught myself to play guitar using YouTube.  Tutorials for every instrument exist on YouTube.

YouTube also is helpful in that there are reviews for every video game and every movie.  These reviews are from normal people.  You can watch gameplay from games before buying them.  The whole process is painless and you can know exactly what you are getting before laying down the money for it.

You can learn to cook on YouTube

You can learn to ride a bike

You can learn the most efficient way to mow your lawn

You can learn the lyrics to your favorite song

YouTube is going to replace your music teacher, your friends, your parents.

You can learn how to walk on YouTube.  What more do you need?

Anything and everything imaginable, you can learn about it on YouTube. There are step by step visual instructions on how to build stuff or take stuff apart, or even if you wanted to; learn about something completely new.

Instruction manuals that are given with a product are from some corporate company where these videos are just from regular people. The videos also show better visual instructions than just small non-moving panels with captions do.

There are also videos out there of stuff you can do that there aren’t any instruction manuals written for. Some of it illegal, others just cool things you can do with products already available to the public. Since its Valentine’s Day, here is a cool video on how to make a rose.